This week, I received an e-mail from one of my readers who had just completed the third book of the fictional trilogy that I wrote. She typed: “I finished "Where the Muses Gather"....thank you. It was a great trilogy! Felt in many instances that I was there with Clarisse, David, Guy and all the others.”
Her last sentence summarizes the goal I unconsciously achieved in the writing of the story that I consciously wrote. However, this is exactly what we, as readers, want in the books that we read and we, as writers, hope to achieve in our creative offerings.
Allow me to clarify: The goal is conscious; how we achieve that goal in our own writing may well stem from the unconscious as we, the writer, identify with our own characters no less than actors playing a role on stage. However, unlike actors in charted and scripted waters, the writer opens new ground, new pathways creating what may one day be played out on stage. The writer creates the essence and being of the characters, their scenarios, and their settings.
People ask me often if I am Clarisse in my books. Clarisse is a writer and intuitive so therein may be the only real identity this character has with me. However, on a subliminal level, Clarisse took on aspects of my personality without any conscious effort on my part to cloak her in my garments. Her characteristics and reactions to problems in her life somewhat reflect me. With the passing of time, I can now reflect on many characters in my books and see bits of myself in their style, their expressions, their emotions, their reactions to life.
Is this the meaning Dr. Carl Jung taught us when he shared that the journey to the collective unconscious required us to go through our Shadow into creativity? Yes, I can identify with one of the characters who is addicted; I too have an addictive personality and both of us paid a price for our addictions, his being gambling, mine being smoking. Mary, the joy of all who knew her, life of the party goes through failing health into a transport chair and ultimately death. Yes, I can identify with Mary. One character found dead on the kitchen floor…oh yes, I can identify with that experience also!
My point is that as writers we may utilize personal experiences and even our own traits while in the process of developing a character who may take on a life of its own. Several of my characters qualify. It is an amazing process both to see bits of oneself in the creation, and to meet new aspects unplanned that simply reveal dimensions undreamed.
So reading the few words of my reader being drawn into the midst of the characters in the trilogy obviously has given me pause for thought and reflection as to what brought this about. While I strive to live by my own motto of being true to myself, this carries over to every character in my writings! Believable characters with virtues and vices provide us identifiers as do their mini-dramas of everyday lives.
Isabelle, the prequel to the trilogy is being written after-the-fact! She is unfolding a very strange wrinkle to the total, the setting being Marblehead , Salem , Boston and Cambridge , Massachusetts and her move to Walden , New Hampshire
I wonder how many novels we’ve read that like my reader’s experience, drew us into them, allowing us to live their lives page after page until we closed the covers for the last time.
Writers of fiction such as Diana Gabaldan, Susan Howatch, Anne Siddens, Richard Paul Evans come to mind as those who kept me up many nights well past bedtime, unable to close the covers of their books that held my attention and gripped my emotions!
In my opinion, these are the true storytellers! These are role models to emulate! Meanwhile, back to my keyboard! Wait, do you have authors or fiction titles you wish to recommend?
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