I’m not going to say what came first, the voices in my head or my desire to write?
Possibly I turned to writing as a way of justifying those voices in my head, because if you can’t, they tend to want to lock you away. In that same vein, I am hoping to become independently wealthy one day, as if you’re poor and insane they lock you up; if you’re rich and insane you’re merely eccentric and everyone puts up with you.
I’ve been writing for a long time, and it should be known, it was a slow start. If I go back and revisit some of those early scribbling, aside from eliciting a cringe or two, I can clearly see I was easily influenced by the latest films I saw or books I read. There was a sprinkling of originality to aspects of the idea, but overall, I’d yet to find my voice or my imagination.
Interested in writing, I did spend a lot of time reading interviews by writers; curious to see how they approached their work (I still do, finding it inspirational, even if I don’t take the same approach). Writers are individuals, so I knew there was no copying their process, but I was walking down dark corridors trying to find my way. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d yet to develop my writer’s mind.
During those early stages, I could write, reasonably well (although not well enough at the time to be published) and I could think, but that was what my writing was – thinking. I was too aware of what I was doing and why I was doing it. In one sense, I was exploring, which was good, but I was also in some cases forcing it, and had yet to realize, especially for me, that that wasn’t the approach that was going to work.
I took the advice of some writers I read interviews with and planned out one novel from start to finish but found I couldn’t finish writing it. Actually, I didn’t even get through half of it. I didn’t know it at the time, but because it was all mapped out and I knew how the story was going to end, I lost interest in writing it (or maybe the idea just wasn’t worth writing in the first place).
I then read an interview with Stephen King in which he stated he didn’t know he was going to kill a particular character in one of his books (name withheld in case you’re going to read the book in the future) that he didn’t think was going to die. Apparently the story just took him in that direction. I decided to approach writing without a road map, and somehow it worked for me, although each time I sit down to write, I live in fear that this will be the one time in which it won’t work. I believe that fear helps drive me forward.
I’d found my method of writing, but still my writer’s imagination hadn’t kicked in quite yet. I know that now, but I didn’t know that at the time. The truth is I don’t know when my writer’s imagination kicked in. At the time I was specializing in writing screenplays, which I became very good at, due to time, effort and listening to others more experienced than me and not being offended when they told me it needed a re-write, it just wasn’t up to snuff at the moment. In time, I became that person telling that to others and trying to help. At some point in my writing career, I was no longer thinking about what I needed to write in the way I had previously been; at some point the stories I was writing and the characters that inhabited them started to come to life and speak to me; no, nothing like, “Hey, Dave, seeing as you’re writing me, could you give me a little more hair and maybe not kill me off in chapter ten? Thanks, bro.” They didn’t talk directly to me, but they came to life in my imagination and in my dreams, and seemed to know where their story was going and what needed to be done next. Even now when I write, if I’m stuck, I know all I need to do is wait it out, give the characters of my latest story time to find their way and when they’re ready they’ll let me know. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when I’m stuck and they finally to talk to me, it is an “Aha!” moment.
I remember a New Year’s Eve with friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. Everyone had embraced their lives and were happy; I’d been writing for a time, doing the starving artist routine on and off for years, and while there was a sense that they didn’t know what I was doing with my life and why I bothered, I walked away from that party wondering how they could go about their daily lives without some story and characters lurking in their mind leading them on what would become a wondrous journey – a journey that could only be captured with words.
Along with finding my writer’s imagination, I also discovered my voice and my own originality as a writer (or, at least, as original as we can be considering the long history of the literary world). Over that time in screenplays, I’ve lived the life of a 20-year-old South Asian woman who longs to go back to India and develop a career as a Bollywood star in the screenplay, Sharma’s Karma. As a 40-plus English-Irish white dude, that was a wonderful character to become lost in. That was also an eye-opener because I realized my imagination had developed to the point where I could inhabit specific characters and realize them on the page effectively. I’ve become both a Plantation owners son who has fallen in love with a Slave in The Slave Girl, a 16-year-old witch dealing with the fallout of the Salem Witch Trials a year after they’ve finished in the fantasy script, Salem, and so much more.
Along the way, I’ve come to care about some of these characters. I guess I’m not revealing anything when I mention that Safia is murdered in my novel Tripping on Tears, as the book is about an honor killing. The story came easily to me and flowed, but at one point I seemed to hit a brick wall. I was stuck, and I didn’t know why. This lasted for a week, and I finally figured it out. I’d been enjoying writing about the romance between Safia and the Narrator, so much that I didn’t want it to end. I was at the point where Safia had to die and I wasn’t ready for her to die and I didn’t want to type the words killing off this character to whom I’d come to love. I pushed forward and did it, but like with other writings, I also realized the price I’d pay for this imagination and this gift of having these characters inhabit my mind; sometimes it didn’t always work out for them.
Presently I’m working on another thriller, The Marquis Mark. Presently I’m living with a character who I don’t particularly like. There are other characters in the novel that help balance this out, but this one particular character keeps challenging me, prompting me to write scenes that make me uncomfortable, some that make me cringe. I hate him, but his story has decided to be told, his story coming to life in my mind, and any attempts to ignore it, will be useless. My imagination never promised me that it would always be a bed of roses.
Over the years, I have learned a lot about writing, and I find myself blessed that these stories come to me and dominate me as they do. Good or bad, I’m glad these characters bless me with their presence and compel me to tell their stories. They’ve brought me joy and they’ve made me question their actions; whether I like them or not, they’re there and I wouldn’t have it any other way. They live with me for quite some time, and then, eventually, I have to write “The End” and they must leave, leaving me with a feeling of having lost a friend, or in most cases a group of friends. Luckily, following behind them are other characters that have something to say, and as long as I’m open to hear their tale, we form a partnership and go about the task of bringing them to life on the printed page.
Now I welcome the voices and it really doesn’t matter which came first, the writing or the voices; I just hope neither of them decide to leave me – ever.
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