messy perfect

I’m a little amused that part of my Facebook entertainment today included one of those literary survey things about favorite fictional characters. That was total ecstasy to my vanity because a. I’ve been acting since was two, b. I’ve been making up stories since I understood what a character was, and c. I obviously like watching and reading those creations of other imaginations.

Of course the one character I would have liked to put on that list, but did not, is my current creation. But I haven’t given her a last name yet. Well, I think I’ve given her three. Not one definitively. And… she may or may not be the main character. And this story that I vomited for the NaNoWriMo challenge… isn’t really a plot. It’s, I’m starting to realize, an idea.

Does that make a novel? I’m not sure yet. First drafts are always (for me) an embarrassingly icky yield. I have some brilliant dialogue, but absolutely no connective tissue. And worse yet, I decided to write this story out of sequence. Not quite stream of conscious… but definitely not… logical.

But we are talking the esoteric of ideas. Not… an actual circumstance. Well, there is a circumstance that ignites it all. I stole this from an idea for a play I had five years ago. You know, classic story of an event that brings all sorts of archetypes together? My archetypes are friends – the urban family of my generation. And the event is, to be ridiculously cliché, a funeral. But… well, that’s life. We only reunite for weddings and funerals… so I don’t feel that dumb.

But the story was kind of dumb. I mean… really… I didn’t need to rewrite The Big Chill. So I decided to focus on the relationships. How we connect with people… how we love people… how we hurt people… and why we wait for weddings and funerals to come together. 

And who exactly gets to define these connections? What makes a friendship merely friendship? What pushes it to another level? Once it crosses a line, can it ever go back again? Are people meant to be in your life forever? Or is a transient cameo enough for a lasting, but necessary impression? 

My last novel was a fantasy. A fantasy with a very defined sense of two people predetermined to come together. But it did raise the question in my mind about souls. About the underlying nature of our human bonds and how our physical observations require us to regulate these connections. How life and death create limitations… or opportunities.

Did I mention this is esoteric?

Ah… well… that’s the first draft. Maybe by the third it will make sense enough for a reader. And if any of this made sense to you, well, maybe you’re a contender.