This is one of my favorite quotes, and a thought that goes through my mind many times a day. Everything is inspiration to a writer, or even nothing. A moment of quiet or a break is an opportunity for complete character takeover. They rush in a wave, some or all of them quickly filling the perceived emptiness. Of course, they tend to launch their invasions when their author has other tasks to be accomplished. This leaves the creator to distractedly finish their work while fending off the influx of characters.
Unfortunately there is an equally frustrating reverse situation. The writer has a moment to breathe and they feel inspired, energized, and ready to write, so then the characters decide to play hide and seek. They are deceptively good at hiding despite their typically demanding natures. It is absolutely one of the most irritating things to be so full of creativity and be unable to write at all. That energy just builds without any viable form of release.
Even worse, sometimes the characters choose to take vacations of their own. A group of characters, or even a whole story’s worth of characters just leave. The rest of the characters try to obscure the absence, but eventually it’s all too clear that those characters are missing. Suddenly the writer realizes that they’ve been so distracted by newly emerged stories that they haven’t worked on their main series for a disturbingly long time.
When the characters go on vacation, writers go on hunts. Usually those hunts are unsuccessful, though. Forcing the story when its characters are uncooperative isn’t truly productive in the long run. Character vacations often result in stagnant days for the writer. If the vacation lasts too long, I try to lure my main characters out by giving the attention to other characters in their absence.
How is it that characters manage to both prevent writers from ever having vacations, and still take vacations themselves? That seems really unfair to me. My main characters have been on hiatus for quite awhile, and yet, I still can’t take break. The rest of my possibly innumerable characters are trying to drag me in a myriad of directions, but I can’t go the one direction I’d actually like to. It’s definitely annoying, but it’s just a part of being a writer.
The only reason the pause is irritating is because of the thrills involved with writing. The addition of new characters and plot twists, or the completion of a story, creates a rush, and like junkies, we writers want that high again. We live to move forward, to tell our stories. Any hindrance becomes bothersome, but the wait and fights with our characters are worth it for the thrills. There’s nothing quite like being a writer.
-Hi everyone! Sorry, it’s been a little longer than I’d planned again. I’ve noticed that I haven’t gotten any comments on my posts. It’s nice to see that they’ve been read, but it’s hard for me to get much feedback from the number of readers alone. Please feel free to drop a comment on any of my posts. You can let me know if you liked a post or if there’s a topic you want me to write on in the future. I’m not always sure what topics in writing you guys would be interested in.
I’m also working on a plan for something new to add to the blog. I think it’ll be pretty interesting both for you all and for me, so stay tuned!
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