In TRANSCEND, one of the main issues I deal with is mortality. I spend so much time wanting to kill my characters. No, I mean death, dying, not dying, and never dying, though I do spend a lot of time plotting their deaths. Currently my main issue for TRANSCEND is that I have too many main characters. Seriously, I have eight of them. They all have relationship dramas, life dramas, and all kinds of stupid dramas. They all have other people in their lives, therefore, more characters. Out of these characters, two are dispensable, but I can’t kill them. Why? Cos they’re married to/in a relationship with characters who I’m keeping. Plus, they’re the only two characters who are genuinely 100 per cent nice.
There’s this character that I’m getting bored with. Ironically, she’s the character who four people have said is like me. Ten points to whoever guesses the character.
I can’t kill her because she’s integral to several storylines. Also, if I kill her, I’m killing her husband, too. I don’t want him alive without her. Oh, and my third reason for not killing her is that, against all odds, I’ll actually miss her. She does my head in, but that’s cos she has aspects of me ~ aspects of me which I don’t always like. Also, she’s the kind of character who sits in my head talking at like one a.m. even though she knows I need sleep.
One of the reasons I can’t kill her is cos she’s the glue. She’s the thing which means that all my “main” characters are connected.
Basically TRANSCEND currently sucks. I’ve hardly written in days, and I’m considering pulling a mockingjay and killing half my characters. Well, Shakespeare had a tendency to murder his characters, and he’s been popular for about five centuries, so hey, it’s worth a shot.
It’s ironic that the title of my first book is the problem I’m facing with my third. CONSEQUENCE: who knew that word could be so annoying.
Almost everything in TRANSCEND is a consequence of CONSEQUENCE and AMEND. And those consequences don’t always make it easy to write.
For example, one of my main characters has a baby in TRANSEND. I can not say her name, cos that would give away major plot spoilers. I didn’t think this through in relation to my other storylines. It’s rather tricky to have a main character that’s got a baby. I mean, if she’s holding a kid the whole time, it’s kind of hard for her to get anything done. But it’s the closest thing she’s gonna get to a happy ending for at least another hundred pages, so I guess she deserves it.
I have a love/hate relationship with writing. It often reminds me of my cats. They meow and they hiss at each other and they always need feeding. They’re annoying and they leave fur everywhere. But I love them. I don’t know why, but I do. I couldn’t live without them. It’s the same with writing.
What I hate most is when I get bored with a character. That happened in the first book, and killing off that character was something I greatly regretted. The one thing I love about writing a trilogy is a chance to right the wrongs of the beginning.
I am currently bored with a character who was once my favourite. She’s petty and annoying, and incredibly selfish. I’ve always admired her resolve. I say she’s selfish, but when it matters, she’s not. In the beginning of CONSEQUENCE, she was a year old than me. Now she’s twenty years older than me. Age hasn’t really improved her. I used to like her, and now I don’t. But I like her husband, and he loves her, so I don’t really want to kill her. I may do so yet.
I feel sad that I don’t resonate with this character anymore, but that’s life. It’s like friendship, sometimes you just grow apart and there’s nothing you can do.
I had a dream last night which made no sense. For a start, I was talking to Stephen Fry about buttering bread. If I ever met him, I would talk about something far more interesting. I think that dream was about things not going how I would want them to.
Then I had a dream in which the manuscript of AMEND had gotten out of chronological order, even though the pages are numbered. I kept trying to fix it but it wouldn't go back, no matter how I arranged it. I had no control over my own book. In retrospect I think maybe it symbolizes how my third books going. Not right, and I have no control.
Perhaps the main mortality issue I’m dealing with is that of the trilogy itself. I can’t find an ending. Nothing works. I’m two notebooks into it; I should know the ending by now. I don’t. I feel as though my sub-conscience mind is holding it hostage. It won’t let me find an ending cos it means my trilogy will be over. I’ve been writing this trilogy for less than a year, and I know it won’t last much longer. I regularly complain of how I wish it would just be over. All I want is to write something new. I want to write a secret. By that, I mean, I want to write something only I know about. I want characters who are mine and mine only. I so much want other peoples’ opinions on what I’ve already written, but right now, I also want a book which can just be mine for a while ~ a book which I can hold hostage. That sounds rather silly, but it’s what I want. I want to create a world which will be my world. No one will know of this world until I want them to. People do know about the world in CONSEQUENCE. Not as much as I do, but they do know about it.
I’m not sure if the next thing I write will be a trilogy or a series. In some ways, I hope it’s not. But I know myself too well. I know that when I get characters in my head, they won’t leave. They’ll hang on to the cells of my brain and stay there for as long as they can. I guess that’s the joy of being a writer.
