I think that being a writer and creating stories mirrors being in the mind of
a child. I watch my daughter play with her toys, watch her make them move and
speak, and watch her create her own world and characters.
She colors her characters, creating their personalities and dialogue through her
imagination. She bestows them with triumphs from capture by evil enemies and
rescues them from mortal peril. Mermaids sing and have under the sea adventures
in the tub, while Lightening McQueen and Mater have racing adventures competing
for the Piston Cup all over the world. At times, her characters are not even a
toy. With a marker in hand, she'll etch in her little pads of paper orders
from patrons at her restaurant. As she serves them pretend food, she asks them if they
would like ketchup on their fries or mustard on their hamburger. Her characters
are just as real to her as I am and she interacts with them in ways that as an
adult I couldn't imagine doing.
I don't act out my characters, but like her, I still color them. I sit down
in my uber comfy office chair and color. I give my characters personalities,
sincerity, flaws, triumphs, and struggles. I bestow them with friends and
enemies, likes and dislikes, and love and heartbreak. I am bonded with my
characters, and I know them inside and out.
But what are characters without a world to play in? As my daughter plays in
the tub with her mermaids, I watch her imagination run wild. She’s not sitting
in a porcelain tub; she’s sitting at the bottom of the ocean with the mermaids
swimming around her. They are talking to her, and she is talking back. She goes
on their adventures with them, meeting their fish friends, swimming with whales,
and running from sharks. When she sits in her room playing with her princess
dolls and castle, she’s not in her very pink bedroom. She’s in the walls of the
castle, cooking and baking with Snow White, changing ball gowns with Cinderella,
dancing in the ballroom with Belle and the Beast, and sliding down Rapunzel's
hair to the grass below. She paints herself an imaginary world for her
characters right down to the last detail. I used to think 'How amazing it must
be to be able to do that', but now I know how amazing it truely is.
When I open my manuscript and focus in on the chapter I’m working on, I dive
into the dark foggy forest, walk the dirt streets of the Indian village, and
ride in a carriage down long dirt pathway lined with giant scarlet oak trees to
the white southern plantation manor. Though my words, readers know if it’s night
or day, if it’s raining or if the sun is shining bright in the sky. Everyone has
their own imagination though; my forest is probably different from the forest a
reader sees. Does that matter? Not at all. As long as I paint a world they
picture in their mind, no matter what it looks like to them. As long as they
bake with Sarah, smuggle slaves with Alexandra, fall in love with William,
unearth the secrets Thomas hides, and rebel against the legacy to which
Alexandra is chained, I am content.
My daughter paints and colors her own pretend world and characters.
And so do I.
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