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I talk to the characters who dwell within my mind. I see them as if they are standing before me. I hear their voices and, in many cases, their voices sound like mine. I imagine this is true for many other authors. Characters become the echoes of people who either drift through our lives or collide with us.
We plan their life stories in neat little summaries after the first ‘brain vomit’ onto pages, which are eventually filled with scribbles and scratches and arrows and highlighted anecdotes to remind ourselves that we need to fact check the tidbits of information we unwittingly picked up along life’s journey. They’re daubed with our insecurities, fears, prejudices, weaknesses and imbued with all the graces we recognize in ourselves and wish we could find in others.
By the time the last full stop is placed, and the last spell check is run, we, like parents sending their little ones off to school for the first time, also hit “send” releasing our creations into the hands of editors and proofreaders to shape and mold them into people we no longer recognize but are familiar with anyway.
If only there was a way to keep them as we made them.
I suppose this is one of the reasons I chose to publish my own work. Have I given up on ever trying for the book deals with the major publishers? Not really. I haven’t yet finished the book that could break barriers, and large publishers want a sure thing. They want to hear and smell the profits before that manuscript goes to the typesetter.
So, is this a kind of madness? Probably.
Characters jostle for space in my head even as I plough through household chores. Voices of characters I imagined many years ago, remind me that they are still waiting for their time in the light. They have not been forgotten, they just got pushed to the background by the more insistent ones. My muses must be commended for their patience.
Who knows if my thoughts of, “Put in the work! Commit to the work,” come from me? Am I the one scolding myself when I hear, “Candy Crush can wait!” “Tik Tok can wait!” “Stop doom scrolling! Get the work done!” or are they admonishments from my muses or the characters who are desperate to be released into the world?
So many! So many worlds lay forlorn and neglected in the globe that sits atop my neck. Characters who whispered their first words into my mind thirty or forty years ago remain silent in the darkness, longing for a chance to speak with their true voice. When will they get their chance again? Not even I know. How could I?
There is one voice that drowns them out. A voice dripping with mockery and sarcasm. A voice that lists my fears and doubts with such conviction that I often find myself drained of willpower and empty of all the inspiration so generously bestowed upon me by my muses.
It is this voice that keeps me stationary and restless at the same time, and it is this voice against which I am determined to rebel.
Perhaps in time, once it is all quiet and calm again, those characters in abandoned worlds will come forth to tell their stories. Perhaps, I will have enough time to reveal them to the world.
Perhaps. Who knows?
Reshma Mituram 