Sleepy Shadows

By Thursday, I'm really hating the 4am routine. I sit here at my desk and drift toward the edge of sleep, pull myself back, and keep my fingers dancing over the keyboard in the hope of getting some actual work done. I mean the job I get paid for, not the writing. Unusual things happen when I get into that state of mind, though. Thoughts and images that you'd normally keep safely tucked away peek out around the edge of the door. You see things differently when you can barely see at all.

Today I started thinking (passive verb alert) about the moon. I know, writers have written everything about the moon there is to write. But I did, and I thought about the dark half of the moon that you can still see if you look hard enough. I went on with this image, found an analogy somewhere, and jotted it into my notebook. I'm always worried I'll never be able to find those little tidbits when I want them, and I'm probably right. But I know, that for everyone I catch, there's a few more behind it in the closet, waiting for their turn to peek out before I slam the door again, returning to the "respectable" side of society.

It's a writer's job, isn't it? We keep watching, listening, thinking about things for a different angle. An engineer knows that there are far more than 360 degrees on a compass. There's an infinite number of angles from which to gain a vantage point. And that's only on the x/y plane. Throw z in there, and you'll go crazy thinking about it. And there we go, crazy I mean. Insanity might be just a deeper discovery of what's true, things we're not supposed to talk about. But it's my job to talk about it.

What an odd bunch I've joined. We find ourselves thinking up unintelligible dribble (like this) then spend hours finding a way to make it intelligible, and often fail. See what happens when you don't get enough sleep? I'm sure drugs would have the same effect and I'd get more sleep, but this is cheaper.

My Favorite Protag

Sometimes I get a brilliant thought. Then my crit group points out that it's not all that brilliant and I start over again. This time, though, I think I'm on to something. Okay, it wasn't really my thought, it's been written about time and time again, but at least I'm starting to get it.

My favorite protag is me. Everything I've written has a protag who leads a dull life as an engineer and suddenly finds himself in unusual circumstances. Problem is, he's still a boring engineer. I told Dineen this, that we have a tendancy to write auto-bios into our fiction. Lets face it, writers in general aren't terribly exciting people. We just have overactive imaginations. Other than that, we spend countless hours sitting in front of computers, drinkning too much coffee, and complaining about the weather. If you have an engineer/writer...well, I think we all understand why there are no TV series with engineers as the main characters. Drool city.

So I think I've made a major discovery about my writing. Normally, my secondary characters are the ones that spring to life. That's because they're nothing like me. I won't ditch my protag for Soul Searcher, though he's an engineer. I've added some characteristics that help him out. But I know I'll only get away with that once. No reader will ever believe there are two interesting engineers in the same universe.

I have been tossing around the idea of changing protags in Soul Searcher from Kevin James (the engineer) to his aunt, Jean Fitzgerald, retired country-wester superstar and night club owner (and a total babe, of course). She's got attitude. Unfortunately, I need her where she's at, major secondary character. She'll get promoted in future best-sellers.

So the moral of the blog is: if your protag is a lot like you, get over yourself and find someone with a life!