When I wrote AMEND, I suffered from this horrible little
thing known as Second Novel Syndrome. Basically, it means that you’ve written a
book, you’re happy with it, and you think you can do it again.
AMEND was the second second novel I had written, so I should
have remembered all the terrible writer's block that Second Novel Syndrome creates.
But no, I was blissfully oblivious as I started to write.
But the problem with AMEND perhaps wasn’t the book itself,
but the characters in it. In CONSEQUENCE I could always relate to at least one
of the protagonists. But AMEND was completely different.
For as start, it didn’t have two main characters, it had
Melinoe, who was what would be considered as the main character. Then there was
Irina, who was still a main character, but was only really in the first half of
the book. And then there were characters like Phoenix and Kai and Haden who were still main
characters, but not as much as Melinoe and Irina.
Out of these characters, Phoenix was really the only one I could
relate to. Except she was thirty-two years old, she had three children, she was
married. So I couldn’t really relate to her as much as I could in CONSEQUENCE.
Well, except in the scene where she turns Abynechka into a warthog. I could totally relate to her in that bit. It
was really awesome writing it, because I was just sitting in bed with a
notebook on my lap, laughing, and thinking “revenge is sweet”.
But back to the characters I couldn’t relate to. Melinoe and Irina. My protagonists. From the
moment I started writing, I found Melinoe challenging. She was, basically, a
bitch. She loved other people’s pain, and she used her own pain as a
distraction from the fact that she was completely empty inside, that she was
devoid of humanity.
Can you see why I never liked her much? Strangely enough, I
do like her now that I don’t have to write about her, because the trilogy is
finished, I can see where she came from, and where she ended up, and that gives
me a much stronger understanding of her.
But when I was writing it, I just wanted to strangle her.
She probably would have liked that, actually. Unless I actually killed her,
which would make her rather annoyed. Melinoe doesn’t like it when people try to
kill her.
I thought that she was the one character I had ever written
who I couldn’t relate to in the slightest, but it turned out, we actually had a
couple of things in common. They were small, stupid, inconsequential things,
but they were still things. For example, there’s a scene where Melinoe’s on a
train, and she’s thinking about all the same people breathing the same air for
an extended period of time. If there is one thing I hate, it’s a lack of fresh
air. I also hate it when people yawn. It’s one of my weird quirks.
And then there’s the fact that Melinoe and I are both
fifteen years old, 5’10”, with curly hair. And we both hate abbreviations. So
that means we have, altogether, five things in common. Not very much compared
to the many, many similarities between me and Phoenix.
My other main character, Irina, didn’t have that much in
common with me either, though I found her easier to relate to, because she was
more human, and not just metaphorically, seeing as Melinoe is half robot.
Irina has OCD, and I can’t stand it when things aren’t in
the order I like them in. Irina is the youngest sibling, as am I. Irina is extremely tall, ditto me. But the things that
make her who she is were nothing like me.
For a start, her whole existence was based on this belief
that she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t deserve respect, that she didn’t
deserve to be treated like an equal. I always found it hard to get into that
mindset, because my world-view is so completely opposite.
Where she thinks she’s not good enough for anybody, I think
not everybody is good enough for me. I don’t mean that as in “Oh, I’m better
than everybody” I don’t mean that at all. It’s more like, if someone treated me
like crap, I would put them in their place, shout some horrible, yet
grammatically correct, things at them, name a character after them, and be done
with it. Yet if someone treated Irina like crap, she’d just let them.
And while we’re talking about how different people would
react to such situations, I think I’ll just mention that Melinoe would totally
try out execution by elephant on anyone who didn’t treat her with the utmost
respect.
It’s strange though, Melinoe doesn’t take crap from anybody
else, yet she isn’t very nice to herself. Not just in terms of self-harm, but
also in the way she relates to other people. She deliberately keeps people at
arms length, and ends up making herself miserable in the process. Because deep
down, Melinoe shares Irina’s thing of “I am not good enough”.
Both of them are like that because of events that occurred
in early childhood. Irina was basically shown that her father would have her
die to save himself. And Melinoe…she had two people who fought so hard for her,
yet ended up leaving her feeling like they had given up on her. In Melinoe’s
eyes, Persephone chose Drew over her, and Haden only wanted her because he
needed an heir to the throne.
And because of a lifetime of living with such beliefs, both
Melinoe and Irina enter the book with not very good self esteem. The difference
is: Melinoe thinks she has a right to be adored, and won’t be happy until she
is, whereas Irina doesn’t think she deserves even the slightest bit of
attention.
Personally, I’m closer to Melinoe’s way of thinking on this
one. The difference is: if I wanted to be worshipped, I would work pretty damn
hard to make myself someone that people could look up to. Whereas Melinoe
thinks it’s her god-given right to be better than everybody else. Well, she is
a Tsarevna, so I guess it goes with the territory.
But the main reason I struggled with AMEND was that I had to
get into Melinoe’s head, I had to dig down to the very core of her being and
find out what was there. And let me tell you this: Melinoe’s mind isn’t a very
good place to be; it’s pretty dark inside. Whereas Irina’s just this faded kind
of greyish colour, as though she’s been in the washing machine too many times,
as though the same thing’s happened over and over again, and it’s worn her down
into a blurry nothingness.
I’m not sure which is worse, Melinoe’s darkness, or Irina’s…blankness.
Even in the worst parts of CONSEQUENCE, Phoenix
and Persephone still had a light burning within them. I could always relate to
that so much more, because all I’ve ever wanted to do was shine.
But lately, my inner Melinoe and my inner Irina have taken a
trip to the surface. Because the fact is: when you don’t shine, your light
begins to fade. Melinoe isn’t very fun to live with; I see why the Tsar kept
her underground, away from the world.
But in a way, Irina’s worse. Melinoe would never give up,
but Irina always gives up. Whilst my inner Melinoe was making me treat everyone
like crap, avoid the world, and develop a passionate hatred for humanity*, my
inner Irina was causing even more trouble, because of the lack of self-worth.
The one thing I can say to my credit is that I have always
believed in myself, I have always thought I could do anything I wanted. And
then all of a sudden, I no longer believed that. I thought I was worthless,
that I wasn’t good enough for anybody. The lovely little rejection letter I got
from Scholastic yesterday didn’t exactly do anything to counteract that belief.
When you’ve lost faith in humanity, and lost faith in
yourself, what’s left? What is there to stop you thinking that everything is
pointless? Yesterday I felt pretty low, to put it mildly.
I was the worst combination of Melinoe and Irina that could
ever come about. Okay, given Melinoe’s nature, it wasn’t the worst combination. I wasn’t torturing
anyone or anything. But it was the most hopeless one.
But the strange thing was that it was my need to shine that
finally got me to stop crying over how crap I felt. Because no matter how black
and grey I appear to feel, or truly do feel, there’s always going to be a
little bit of light working its way to the surface.
That’s one of the ways I’m most like Phoenix: no matter what’s happening, I’ll
always have a need to be noticed, to be seen, to shine. And as messed up a
character as she is, she’s the one I am happiest to be like, because her
brightness is what will stop her from ever giving up.
She may be annoying, and self-centred, and too smart, and
she may have a habit of alienating herself from other people because she thinks
they’re not good enough for her, but she has self worth. Why? Because she’s not
happy to be invisible. And in order to want to be seen by somebody else,
somebody has to believe in themself. It’s the self-belief that makes Phoenix one of my
strongest characters. She always puts herself first, because she truly values
herself.
* By the way, I no longer have a passionate hatred for
humanity. It only lasted a couple of hours.
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