An Open Letter to my Characters

Dear My Characters,

I wish I could say I had all the answers when I made you, but instead, knowing you always meant more questions than I could answer. Are you real? I wanted to make you as real as I felt you to be, but to be 'real' means my view isn't, or can't be, as omniscient as I claimed. There had to be things I didn't know, mysteries shared so that I could keep you spontaneous and not confuse you with the narration. You were meant to do stupid things, not always act even in your best interests, struggle with morality and generally make an ass out of yourselves to entertain others.

Basically, in some way, I could relate to all of you-- all aspects of things I loathed and loved about myself and the world around me. To say you are precious isn't accurate either. My own ego tends to waver between sewage bacteria and supreme ruler so I've found every aspect of humanity both meaningless and important. I afforded you no privacy and left every sordid detail to the judgement of all who found you left so exposed to my cruel observations.

Did I do you justice? It's hard to say since I found no harbor in making perfect tropes for you. I took my cheerful ones and wrecked their past and my somber ones were sometimes just dull and not at all mysterious. When I wrote you, I played hand of god, neither loving you nor loathing you until I courted you through painful edits and rewrites. No matter how much I criticized the way I wrote you, somehow those ever-shifting moods did not damage the wonder of visiting you again.

Perhaps you expected me to be confident that you were whole, but at some point, I realized I had to relinquish control and let you stumble, broken pieces and all. I also realized that my words were secondary to the view. I had a window into your world and I wanted to share you, but some part of me didn't want total control. If so, I might have insisted on visually designing you (or at least drawing you the same every time). I might have pored through lists of actors to find your likeness, your voice, or the soundtrack that played whenever your scene came up. I gave you to my words, put you into my novels, because whatever people ended up seeing or hearing or smelling or sensing, my words were not the be-all-end-all, simply a guide to persuade the reader.

It takes tremendous ego to be a creator, but its like in humility to let it go. To go out into my world after I leave yours, to be a tolerable person, that ego is something I have to tuck away. Yet when I talk about you, it's like pulling out a wallet with pictures of my children, born of my sweat, blood and tears. It doesn't matter that I am not a bestseller of your story because the fickle affairs of my world are not something that matters there.

That's why you and your world couldn't just exist in my mind. Concepts like deserving, validating, failing-- though influenced by my experiences, exist purely as an escapist haven. A fantasy. People will tell me how I should have made you different or that they don't like you and the wounds, if any, are my burden alone. But 'alone' is a stretch since I can revisit you any time I like and remember why I write.

You keep my secrets. Through one of you, my pain will cripple; through another, it will prevail. Through all of you, I explore what confuses and comforts. I can remember in small pieces or work through a problem so I can peacefully discard it and forget. You're a mask for all that is learned and unlearned. A study in psychology, anthropology, some other fancy -ology or a compilation of the things no science can explain.

There was a time when I clung to this, afraid of bearing the brunt of whatever I failed to make of you. I didn't share my stories, never mentioned I was a writer at all. I fell for the bunk that only the 'successful' have a worthwhile voice. Even the other day, an article I mostly agreed with offered an ugly slap in the face: that the bulk of writing advice and experience comes from the little cretins like me.

But you know me-- I never really asked for permission to dream big. Before my heroes rose to legend, they were cretins like me, those rebel assholes that gave fuck-all to what cretins had to say about other cretins. It's easy to dismiss the little guys (and the big guys too, actually). Heroes sometimes fade back into couch potatoes that yell at their own shadows.

We are what we are, and even though you are what I made you, you're out there and out of my hands, to be loved or loathed for what you are. The words are static and canon. Or are they? I still have my windows and the words to expand. I could very well raise a scandal and alternate you into fanfiction fodder!

So I guess all that's left is to thank you. Being a creator is truly courting insanity, but it's been a pleasure both assuming I have full control over you and being proved completely wrong. 

Don't ever change. (Or do. Really, that was the stupidest high school sentiment that I was happy to break.)

Your Truly,

Krista

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Heyyyyy, it's a fun exercise, writing to... well, all of my characters at once. It's probably more helpful to write to just one of them though. Although, that would probably end up being Tweets to my Fictional Peeps.

Nah. Not y'all. The only place you're going is in the garbage.

@Rienna Heard you hit that Swoonfruit... and a little something-something else. #Regerts

@Korus You're still my favorite. Don't tell the others... #DMgoofs

Except I've never developed a fondness for Twitter (hate it), so my skin crawls just faking it.

One of these days, I will share my favorite LOL quote from my books to date. I kind of have this thing where I hesitate to blog about certain things this early in the game. Things that might spoil or ruin the experience or just give the impression that I think I'm bigger than my britches.

Look, I hand-sew holes in my socks rather than throw them out. Illusions of grandeur, I have not.

Yoda's speech patterns, I do have.

Done here, we are.