A Character's Prison is the Writer's Mind

And then it was November. Holy frack, has the year of 2006 really gone this fast? I'm sitting in the office I call my own and lazily staring out the window to the fallen oak leaves that decorate the backyard. There's still some green to be found, nestled in amongst the dying foliage. Funny isn't it that the beauty that is autumn's colors stems from death? A bit morbid, but not my cause for posting today. Just feel like writing.

I don't write enough anymore. There was a point, about a year ago, where I had such plans for aught-six... writing-wise. Plays, teleplays, novels, the list went on. And in some capacity I achieved some of those goals. And in some capacity, I didn't. Honestly couldn't tell you how I feel about those results. I mean to say I'm proud of myself for finishing what I have, but not so much for the creations that sit ever quiet in the recesses of my thoughts. Some have been there, gathering synaptic dust, since I was in college. Unfinished works... forgotten characters frozen, perhaps never to see the inside of a .doc file. Or be drawn out from the pen to the page.

The other night I was talking to Keaton -- it was one of those October nights where it feels more like late Summer than Autumn, except you know it's not because the crickets aren't singing anymore and the fragile leaves dancing about on the breeze are crisp and brittle from the earlier frost; they threaten to shatter as they collide, but instead descend gracefully to their fallen brothers and sister below. It was one of those nights. And we were talking and I randomly quoted some dialogue to make a point and laughed when I realized that I'd quoted one of my own characters and a monologue that's never been performed because the play hasn't been finished. As I was saying it, I was trying to recall who had said it to me when it hit me across the head that the person who said it was of my own invention. It was my line, set down as dialogue in a draft of a scene that has since been scrapped for something else. You can see why I laughed.

And this character now sits, waiting patiently like a devoted friend who's being slighted inadvertantly. She sits along with so many others locked away from the world until I can get to their stories... characters I can picture so clearly that one day should I ever develop any sort of neurological degenerative disorder, I may come to think of them as old friends and speak of them as if I once knew them all... spent time with them... in my everyday life. And I have, kind of. I've been carrying around their tales for years now. And yet they sit. Waiting to be written.

As the sky preps for nightfall, I plan to sit here at the keyboard, but not to blog. To write. And to see where the words lead.