09 October 2006

Where are my voices?

I hear about characters whispering to their writers…I mean, I hear that it happens to other writers. My characters never talk to me. They live and breath and exist as their own, independent beings…they even have stories about where they came from and why they’re where they are now…they just don’t share their thoughts with me. I imagine they have dinner parties where they sit around and debate my existence in that sort of pretentious, intellectual way that suggests by it's very tone the pointlessness of the conversation. They're not really interested, it's just something to talk about that doesn't involve anything that matters. I'm left feeling like the obnoxious cousin nobody actually wants to invite to the wedding…the traffic jam you didn’t spot in time to avoid…the anger storm there’s no escaping from. You know, whatever it is you’d avoid if you could and you endure because you don’t have a more appealing option. Doesn’t ruin your life, you barely notice as it takes a little bit of the joy out of each day, bit by bit until finally, it’s just that little bit you couldn’t stand to lose…and you barely notice it’s passing. You’re left looking around, wondering when the world turned grey and everything started to taste like unvarnished chicken, when the music became one long ride in the elevator. That day when you either give in to the monotony of it or find the balls to do something…else. What can you say? The day I made that choice, was the day all my choices…paused and shifted direction. Oh, I was talking about how my characters ignore me…and I got distracted. There might be something to that, you think? Anyway, the day that last bit got sucked away and I made my choice, the world, my world…became. All this, and my characters still won’t talk to me. I wonder sometimes if they’ve all just reached their elevators and I forgot to notice…or maybe I have…and that’s the point.