Undressing My Avatar

One of the biggest challenges and ultimately the greatest satisfaction in writing a story lies in the creation of those characters who inhabit my pages of fiction. It’s the result of trying to grasp those elusive memories of those people, places and events that made a significant impression on me. Encapsulating enough of a memory bubble to help me recreate an avatar or a place in my new fictional setting.

Sometimes the images jump out at me, easily defining themselves as perfect caricatures for the persona I’m trying to create. Other times they’re a combination of several individuals I’ve met or known in my past. It could also be a personality, character or figure from something I read or saw or felt ions ago.

Yet there is always one major obstacle in creating an avatar. The challenge of separating my reality of who I thought they were from the reality of who really were. It’s like playing checkers inside my head, jumping from real to fictional, imagination to reality. The length of years since I’ve seen that person only adds to the challenge of searching through the fog of time to gleam their true identity.

I’m trying to unlock the layers of my memory bank and figure out who they were back then and the role they played in my life. I am trying to undress them, to reveal their soul to my readers.

But since mindset often colors experience, thoughts about that person tend to be less than completely accurate. Usually they are reactions or prejudices based on limited knowledge or smeared into distortion by the passage of time and age and past conditioning.

I don’t know how to divorce my past lives, relationships, experiences, prejudices, incidents, failures and successes from my story telling. That certainly is true when it comes to creating female characters.

The female protagonist, with all of their complexities, is always harder to create than her male counterpart. Who am I really thinking of when I create a female character? My avatars aren’t always women I have known. They could be a movie character or stage persona that struck me with her unique characteristics.

Unfortunately, it’s never a straight forward procedure but rather a rather subliminal process each time I want to create a new female character. I wish it were as easy as: “I knew that person…that person would suit my character… I will imagine that avatar in my character’s role.”

At times, it might be a compilation of several people that I’ve known or met in my past even if I can’t identify with whom and or when or what exactly happened back then. But something did happen that scratched a memory scar on my brain that only now, through the creative process, is being uncovered and its multiple layers peeled away.

It could be someone I never really knew that well but left a strong impression on me nevertheless. Like the dark-haired woman sipping her demitasse in Montmartre. She looked right through me with distain and disregard. Snow White, in her tight turtle neck sweater, pondering her new life in Belgium. Maria from Denmark yearning for her homeland or the amorous Danish student who wanted to take me away for a weekend on the coast.

It could be a moment in time that somehow stuck in my brain like that crinoline under the cathedral dome, my mother’s sofa or singing folk songs at the Newman Center.

I’ve met a lot of people through a lot of living and they’ve left multiple impressions on my mind even if they weren’t readily apparent at the time. Yet by wandering those dark dusty passages of my memory alleys and byways, their personality traits/quirks/ flaws or subtle enounces often come to surface once again.

I want to remember what they felt like, smelt like, the vibes they were giving off even though most of us were oblivious to it at the time. I need to explore the essence of who they really were and then use that to recreate that person/s as my character.

If my avatar is someone I used to know, I have to glean from those scattered memories the most memorable incidents that defined that person. Joyce, Sheila, Marti, Susan, Pat, Sharon; the names define a moment, an incident and ultimately a part of me. But that process is never cut and dry. It took me six chapters before I figured out who Katherine really was in “Follow the Cobbler.”  I was a bit shocked at first but then it really made perfect sense, after the fact, that this woman would bubble up to the surface and burst forth on my written pages.

Some avatars are easy finds, others not so much. Yet all are a part of the wonderful discovery and refinement process that takes place when I finally seduce some fine woman into becoming my heroine, protagonist and, hopefully, memorable character in one of my stories.

Writing fiction is more fluid than real life but just as challenging.

 

I Gave Birth Today

She’s as beautiful as any parent could ever imagine.

Coming into this world at six by nine inches, weighing in at just under three ounces.

I’m a parent for the third time and it feels wonderful. Again.

The gestation period began as rambling discourse inside my head. It was a jumble of disconnected thoughts about women’s equality, class differences, poverty, education, the sexual revolution of the sixties, the war in Vietnam and a dozen other disjointed sometimes fleeting bumps against my brain that somehow stuck there. And wouldn’t fade away.

She began life as an embryo, germinated by fifty-six pages of dialogue, scene descriptions, historical facts, character analysis and reflections on my own experiences during that turbulent period in my life.

Originally, the genesis began as a story that followed a group of college freshmen through four years of school in the Midwest. I wanted to place the time frame in the sixties because that was such a colorful period of social conflict and change. Within its storyline, relevant themes would include Vietnam, class in America, the hippie culture, drugs and alcohol, women’s new-found sexual freedom, the old guard vs.young revolutionaries and finally, the impact of Vietnam on a soldier’s life (even though I never served in the Nam.)

But by the time those disjointed thoughts, ideas, concepts and mental ruminations were scratched across fifty-six pages, those concurrent themes had evolved into a story of just two college freshmen. A man and a woman who were radically different in their upbringing, education, family structure and social mores. It took six rewrites before I figured out that the one common denominator between the two of them was their ambition. He was born hungry. Her desire for success was genetically implanted from her father.

After the fetus had taken shape, I began an arduous journey back in time and memory to a period I had long since forgotten; what I would eventually call my “Lost Years.” There were historical books to peruse, documentaries and movies to watch, yearbooks to browse, letters and pictures to study. All in an effort to build an organic storyline that was true to that time and those characters. And even though the storyline kept straying off course when something noteworthy was found and absorbed, it stayed true to its original intent.

The vernacular journey surprised me at times as it became a cathartic experience that unearthed a plethora of emotions from my past; many of which I was able to transpose on to my characters even as it evoked an emotional chain-reaction within me.

Then began the long and difficult task of editing, rewriting and more painful editing from a first round of 471 pages to a more trim but still eventful 381 Pages.

Some of my characters began life with one name but ended up with a different name. Those name changes began one pleasant evening when I was out to dinner with another couple and my wife. It ended that same evening with a series of verbal fisticuffs that left me bruised, battered and enlightened. Beginning with appetizers through the main entree and into desert, this trio of friends, editors and critics counter-punched every argument I could muster not to change some of the names in the story. They finally wore me down with their logic and reason. And in the end, I had to agree that the core essence of the story wouldn’t change with different names to some of the characters. It was a humbling but necessary exercise to protect my avatars from possible future scrutiny.

Only real friends would rake a novice writer over the logical coals like that, ripping away at the soft warm comfort I felt in my creation, all under the guise of making my baby better and me into a tougher-skinned writer. It hurt like hell but I have a better story for it. I’m grateful for friends like that.

Her original name, through seven rewrites, was “Love and Ashes.” But after numerous Google searches, I found that name had already been taken as a religious book written in the mid-seventies. “Love in the A Shau” became her name shortly afterwards. Now that I own the domain name “Love in the A Shau.com,” I finally feel like a real parent.

Michelle was my mid-wife, helping shepherd the PDF files into electronic bites and bytes. One form took shape under the clan names of Kindle, Nook, Sony e-reader, Kobo, etc. The other was born in POD (print on demand) embodiment.

The deed is done. The book is published.

And all those wonderful characters I cherished and cared so much about are now permanently encapsulated in print or bites and bytes.

So now it’s time to move on and let the real nurturing begin. I have the challenging task of promoting and marketing “Love in the A Shau” as well as branding myself as a writer.

Of course, in addition to shepherding “A Shau” into the real world, there will always be new lives and loves to create, embellish, edit and capture in a new storyline. Creating “A Shau” was great while it lasted but I’m anxious for the next maturation of my imagination to begin.

I want to become a parent all over again.