WARNING: If you don't know anything about my writing history (I'm talking pretty old writing history, like two or three years ago) then this post won't make any sense to you. Ergo; read more. I just needed to put my thoughts in order so here are my thoughts.
I've been having problems writing because everything feels like an imitation. I feel like I'm trying to rewrite stories I've read and I'm not getting anywhere. It's been driving me insane. My characters are all the same person/set of people. I keep finding myself writing introversion stories instead of relationship based stories. WHAT IS GOING ON?
I just figured it out. I was sitting in my room, staring across the way at my CTS poster, and I realized that I can't write because I've been running.
The problem with basing characters off of real people is that real people change so much faster than you can write a book. It's not that characters don't change, because they should that's what character development is, it's that you could not write fast enough to cover a person's character change while still having said person's character react correctly in the story.
Also, the character development you have planned kinda gets snubbed by the real life character development.
The point is that CTS was based off of my friends three years ago. I don't even talk to some of these people anymore. I have made friends since then that are very important to me but not at all included in CTS. It's outdated when it comes to real life. But it's also holds my most developed, treasured, and complex characters to date. Not to mention how in love I still am with the original plot.
I ache to continue to write CTS, even though my muses have all grown up and moved away. For a while I have been avoiding it for many personal reasons but it's still the story I am the most in love with.
I wonder if the characters and the people blended together too much for me, more than I admitted to myself. I used to chastise my friends for saying that they were the characters because they were slightly different but I didn't understand that as well as I thought. And the characters were never written quite right but I think that was an immaturity on my part. I don't think I was ready to tackle the kind of story CTS is. The societal issues and the personal loss and the tragedies and even the romance.
I was not ready, but I think I might be. I think, after staring at the outdated characters that Em drew for me, it might be time to re-imagine the characters a little bit and bring them back. Because I miss writing CTS and I think I'm finally ready for it.
