The Trouble with Writing - Especially Love

When I was young, I wrote over 100 short stories. Literally, until last week, I had completely forgotten that part of myself. For some reason, the only thing I can think about these last few days is writing. I ache to write. But I have nothing to write about.

I can’t write (or respect myself if I did) plot-driven characters. I can’t just pick a plot and run with it – firstly because I have no original ideas whatsoever. Secondly, I don’t like empty characters, or untrue characters.

I’m not looking to write Shakespeare here, but I do envy his ability to be true to characters – it’s really as if he’s recounting an actually story, rather than forging it artificially. It may seem a bit harsh to label the writing process artificial, but fiction is just that. You create the characters.

My dilemma is this creation. Whoever I choose for my characters will make decisions based on their personalities and free will that bring a story into being. I, and I imagine I’m not alone here, long for something to make me special. Unique – even if only to one other person. In that way, I love the idea of a magic only available to some, or a gift only one possesses, or something. However, battling my whimsical protagonist is The Everyman. He learns his skill, and his value or uniqueness is in his choice, not in his abilities. He is me, the author, and you, the reader, and everyone else there could ever be. He’s batman, with attained strength, to Superman, with supernatural strength.

The most potently fire-lighting reads (in the words of Hemmingway) are the ones where there is at least some romance: To me, an American, this is the most natural use of the literary tool called “choice”. As a woman, perhaps as a human, I long for my female protagonist to be chosen by my male protagonist. Who knows if it’s an instinctive dance or just my culture, but amidst all my feminism, I resonate with male pursuers, especially bedazzled ones.

I have never known a man to be like men in fiction – rather, I have never known a man who notices my scent, and the way I frown ever so slightly when I’m concentrating, or thinks it’s adorable that I only take baths. And if by chance one ever did notice such a thing, it was sure to be just a noted feature, it was never a source of adoration. I’m not entirely sure that adoration like that exists. Not to say that simply because I don’t experience it, it isn’t there, but I don’t have a grid for it. Adoration in my understanding is infatuation, and something stronger, longer, takes hold after that. The adoration is not desirable in itself, and is in fact dangerous and immature, limited. The choices that make up the second kind of attraction make up love. Perhaps I should not call this second thing “attraction” – perhaps that is the distinction – perhaps the initial sensation is attraction, and the second is the permanence, that which holds the proximity resulting from the attraction.

One example of this, is that I forget what people I love look like. I don’t mean that I literally forget and can’t bring their faces to mind, but once upon a time when I met my husband, every time I looked his way I was struck by how insatiably beautiful he looked. Now, I still think he is one of the most gorgeous people in the world, but it does not come to my mind every time I look at him. When we’re on a date, I’m connected to his soul, not his face. It isn’t that I don’t care about it anymore, not at all. It’s only that I don’t think about it – I don’t remember to think about it – I’ve become accustomed to his face, as they say.

This kind of love is not volatile.

But this is not the stuff of my imagination.

Again, I most connect with the image of a protector/pursuer – one that protects everything about my female, her ability to choose for herself, her physical safety, and her changing personhood – yet is forever frozen in that state of pursuit.

An important part of the interplay between my favorite protagonists is an overstepping of roles in the protector capacity, resulting in a diminishment of the role of the pursuer. Leaving the girl in order to protect her safety or her desires is the most abominably overused example from modern literature that comes to mind, but there is also the Austen model where there is a forced nonphysical distance, or lack of honesty or trust in order to protect misinterpreted wishes of the female.

My female protagonist in this image is somewhat undefined. She isn’t – can’t be – one who needs protecting any more than the male. I can’t connect with the cliché construction of the woman who needs help more than the man. To make the love believable, she must protect and pursue the male as well (I like how it sounds like I’m talking about gazelles here). J But it’s different, and I only lead myself into clichés and untruths when I consider my mysterious female. So here is one point at which I am stuck.

Another, vital role in this interaction is the satisfaction of the pursuit; progress. The single most potent turn off to me in the creation of a plot is the endless circles of television miniseries. The entire first season is usually planned out, and more often than not the girl and the guy get to have each other. But eventually, they fall back out of love, totally untrue to their originally sweet (if not slightly quirky or gruff) dispositions, and circle forever until the station pulls it off the air.

The only appeal to this pursuit is its gratification. Which seems to necessitate that it does become less volatile. But the overstepping of bounds from the protector can be an ever-present device, as it is in my own human relationships.

Love to me, then, is a form of choice, literarily – it makes the protagonists completely unique, because they did not choose anyone else. The hope in this is that they are the Everymen – the giddiness felt when hearing such a story is the believability, the desire or the temptation to be in their shoes.

And that's just one manifestation of literary "choice" - there are others that equally confound me... and don't get me started on the antagonist. I'm so torn on him/her... I want (we shall call him "him") him to be believably bad - not just wielding his desire for everyone else's harm. There's no character in that, only an overdone plot device. Yes, even the greats are fell prey to this: Tolkein, Lewis (at times), Goodkind, Asimov, - I don't think I would say the same for Austen as a general rule, but certainly Rowling (like how I lumped her into this group?) and *GASP* Meyers... oh dreaded Meyers...