There was a fourth story written in my Writing Class in spring, but I never managed to figure out what my problem was with it, why I lost interest and why every revision was a chore. It was an interesting idea that I had a lot of fun brainstorming, but something never clicked, until now.
After reading this article about Dan Harmon's (Community) writing process and a bit of his life story, I realized the commonality between all my other characters, and where I diverged with the protagonist of "Orpheus Pharmaceuticals." Like Harmon, the characters I have the easiest time writing share my deeper personality traits, but the ones I struggle with are the ones where I haphazardly inserted shallower elements of my personality.
See, the characters I enjoyed enough to keep writing and revising (Ebony, the Preacher, the kid from "Meatbag", and the characters I'm brainstorming right now, heck, even the D&D characters that have been kicking around my head waiting for me to find a game to join...) are really extensions of my tendency to talk to myself. All the time. They're distanced from "normal" people, and they've all got an unusual companion to fill that void. They have someone they can talk to who won't judge them like the "normal" people they're outcast from.
The elements of myself that I invested in the protagonist of "Orpheus" were much more superficial than that. He was a bit of a cynic with low self-esteem, creative, but certain he'd blow the execution. All of this is stuff I can relate to, but there was never anything deeper to his character. He never really tried to relate to anyone, but also never had any alternative to other people. He had never turned a fraction of his psyche into a friend like I have, which is odd considering how surreal and subconscious-focused as that story and world were.
I've been missing writing, and I definitely plan to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year and Script Frenzy next spring. Of course, I'd like to get back into writing in a shorter term in the near future, so I hope to get into using this blog more soon. Perhaps some world-building will be in order. Between the board game, other less fleshed-out stuff, and the early notes for the fantasy novel, I've got a lot of ideas that could benefit from being committed to actual text. I may even take a stab at a revision of "Orpheus" now that I think I know why it wasn't working...
