{"id":1016,"date":"2011-07-05T12:16:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2011-07-05T12:16:25","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:16:25","slug":"head-people-and-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/head-people-and-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"Head People and Pie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately, a fellow writer friend* asked me enviously if I\u2019m one of those writers who has characters in my head demanding attention.\u00a0 He said his characters were more likely to tell him to go watch TV and leave them alone.\u00a0 It was the envy that surprised me.\u00a0 It implied that writing is easier when you\u2019re possessed by voices, like you\u2019re just a crazy person getting paid for yielding to your psychosis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like that.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what it\u2019s like for me.\u00a0 I have a character who just had a hand injury and lost a digit of his finger.\u00a0 He needed medical attention but he was in a primitive situation, so I pictured a cauterization with the heated surface of an old-fashioned, cast-iron iron.\u00a0 Clumsy.\u00a0 Painful.\u00a0 Not quite right.\u00a0 I did some internet research about cauterizing wounds and went to bed.\u00a0 The next morning, I\u2019m awakened by pain in my left hand, vicarious, empathetic pain that runs as tension all the way up my arm, and I stir enough to realize my character can\u2019t be left as he is.\u00a0 He\u2019s hurting.<\/p>\n

So I get up and keep revising to fix his finger.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Blueberry Pie<\/p><\/div>\n

I don\u2019t understand where characters come from, or how they can become so distinct and real to me.\u00a0 While I\u2019m writing, I\u2019m surprised by what they say and do, of course, but it doesn\u2019t end there.\u00a0 When I\u2019m not writing, when, say, I\u2019m washing dishes at the sink, I feel them in me, like I can feel my dad in me even though he\u2019s been dead these three years now, or like I can summon the affection I had for my sixth grade teacher even without resurrecting a specific memory of her.\u00a0 I especially feel my characters in me when they\u2019re in an unresolved situation.\u00a0 It bothers me, the way it bothers me when I have a misunderstanding with a friend, or when a stranger yells something crude at me from a passing car and I have no idea why.<\/p>\n

The nice thing about characters is that I can fix their problems.\u00a0 I can take them to resolution or deliberately decide not to.\u00a0 The people in my real life are beyond my control.\u00a0 I can\u2019t erase the injustices they face, or force them to rethink their flaws.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why I value having my head people, too, for the fictional closure they provide, for the way I can encapsulate them and keep them forever just as I like them.<\/p>\n

Yesterday for a perfect holiday, I wrote to windchimes on the back porch, hung out with my family, walked in the forest, and baked pie.<\/p>\n

* Okay, it was Tommy Greenwald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately, a fellow writer friend* asked me enviously if I\u2019m one of those writers who has characters in my head demanding attention.\u00a0 He said his characters were more likely to tell him to go watch TV and leave them alone.\u00a0 It was the envy that surprised me.\u00a0 It implied that writing is easier when you\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}