Living a Thousand Lives...

every character is different. ever single one has a story. every single one has different feelings, emotions, talents, thoughts, everything. though sometimes characters seem the same, they are all complex beings that in books we, sometimes, hardly ever even get into.

I've started thousands of books. Ask my friend. She looks at my writing computer and her mouth about drops. ("Those are all books? You finished all those books?!") She's a fellow writer (an awesome one) but she often doesn't have that much time. As you can imagine, I find myself with a lot of time on my hands. For all of those thousands of books, there's going to be millions of characters. Most of you have read some of my work. If you've read a lot of my work, you've probably seen that most of my main characters are pretty alike. They have their sarcastic moments, they have the moments when they just want to fade away, they have their embarrassed moments, and usually I get their "getting the best of the annoying kid" moment in there. But even though they seem so alike, they really are all different.

All of my characters, if they are at all main, are a part of me. Man, probably even most of my villains have some part of me. (though, thankfully, I have never turned evil and brainwashed a girl named Sonya) And then there are the parts that aren't like me. You've probably guessed that I'm a pretty sarcastic person. That's one thing that goes with almost all my characters. Though, strangely, my favorite characters are the ones that aren't that sarcastic. One thing that I always, usually, add on to all of my characters is that they're either beautiful, really athletic and good at everything that goes like that, or something along those lines. I don't think I'm beautiful, as you might have guessed. And I'm not really that athletic. I'm pretty good, around average. I'm towards the "picked first" end. But I'm not the best. I don't think I would ever be picked first. I'm not the fastest. Sometimes I mess up and drop the ball. That's just who I am.

Every time I go and read one of my books, I find myself kind of molding into the character. Not in a creepy way. Just every time I read it, I find myself in their mind, like I'm actually them or something. I imagine everything as if it happened to me. I imagine looking in the mirror and seeing them instead. I rather morph into the character for the time of the book. It's nice, until it's over. Then I realize it's done. I'm not them. I'm myself.

Between every story I go, and I'm them. That's the beauty of creating a character. While I'm writing them, I can become them, if only for a little while. That's why I love making likable characters. Because then it's like I'm them. I can create my own little world, where everything goes as I wish it would go in my own life. Everything goes perfectly, and I can make "myself" react as I would want to react, though I know I really wouldn't. I make my own little world. I suppose that's why I love writing so much.

In that way, I have many selves. I have lived a thousand lives and have had a million adventures. It's rather a glorious thought, though all of it is fiction. Ah, the beauty of books. But at some time, we've got to come back to reality, and reality, though we sometimes rather put it down, is better then we really think.

"When you become a writer, your heart and mind become divided between your many selves." ~Unknown

Be a hero,
Anna

P.S. I just found out I didn't have a "writing" label. That's strange...