Fondling Giant Lumberjacks

Characters have quirks.  It’s what makes them likeable and similar to “real people.”  In fiction, you are supposed to push their quirks as far as you can to make them three dimensional.  This weekend on a twelve hour road trip to pick up my two children from their vacation with grandma, I discovered one of mine.  I have the odd need to fondle, grope, and “man-handle” art.  

It started out innocently enough when we agreed to stop at “The Lumberjack Cafe” for breakfast.  Getting out of the car,  we had the hard hitting conversation about if Hubs would order his usual of biscuits and gravy or branch out to pancakes when I spotted the giant lumberjack near the door.  How I missed it on the drive up to the parking lot, I have no idea.  The large framed rugged man in his airbrushed flannel shirt and bright blue pants called to me as any enlarged Americana art usually does.  I snapped a quick shot with my phone to immediately upload it to Twitter and Facebook.  But it wasn’t enough.  I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my giant lumberjack without having some defiling memento. 

I asked Hubs to hump the leg.  He looked between the busy street of numerous cars stopped at the traffic signal on our left and the large crowd growing in the all-windowed waiting room to our right.  He laughed a “no” like there was insanity behind the thought.  If there was going to be any sexual statue harassment, it was up to me.  I climbed as close as I could to get the “money shot.”  Lumberjack didn’t even flinch when I went for his three foot crotch. 

When I revisited my uploaded memory of the special time I spent with Lumberjack, I realized I have a draw to fondling art in inappropriate ways.  It was only four months ago I was walking the streets of Portland and came across the silhouette of a modern art woman.  She didn’t have a true-to-form female body, but it did have the “lovely lady lumps” stacked on the front.  It was just enough for me to think it would be funny to feel her up for a picture.  To which I did. 

Donald Maass regularly talks about ”quirks” in his books and through tweets.  They are the bits to a character which makes them unique and real.  On July 19th, he tweeted “What’s a foundational attribute of your MC? Create an odd tic or habit that implies the opposite. Add six times. Voilà: a quirk.”   The follow up tweet, ”Start with the first standout quality: quirks. Effective quirks create a contradiction” finished the lesson.  Besides the fact he’s genius for teaching a writing technique in two 146-charactered lines, he makes a great point.  It’s these little things we do that make us the characters we are, like gaping our mouths wide open while we take offensive pictures. 

I’m not sure what it says about my character by having the same humor as a high school freshman.  The fact I cannot leave sculpted genitalia alone might indicate I have a much bigger problem in my life.  But it did give a perfect example about writing quirks.  What can I say?  I do it all for my craft.  What quirks do you have?  What tics make you who you are?

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To Feel Or Not To Feel?

An interesting conversation broke behind the scenes of Breaking Books after my last post about Ethan’s battle.  I went back and forth with a friend who is going through a difficult situation.  True, it’s not cancer of a child, but it’s having a significant impact on her life.  The question was posed, “I always tell myself that I am lucky and that things could be worse.  And I always count my blessings.  So then when is it okay to feel something?”  (This feels very much like a Carrie Bradshaw moment of ending the paragraph on a question.)

Everyone has something to feel grateful for in their life if they look hard enough.  Even the family in the previous post has blessings to count.  They have a lovely home with a perfect lawn, two healthy children, and they’ve had the pleasure of their son for nine years no matter what the future brings.  Does this lessen the sadness?  Of course not because it’s emotion and emotions are illogical.  How events and people affect our psyche make us individuals.  These are our character traits that make us different from the next guy.  This topic is nicely touched on in Delirium by Lauren Oliver when love is eradicated.  It gives the perspective of a world that is supposed to be better off because emotions aren’t driving decisions.  It’s also a cold place where a mother doesn’t comfort a child when they are hurt.  Not a good trade off if you ask me.

Having emotions doesn’t make you selfish or spoiled, it’s what makes you human.  Some of us feel them stronger than others and they have an overwhelming impact on our rationalization.  But it’s what we do after the emotions die down that make the person.  Do you gain some perspective or let yourself continue to spiral into a place where you don’t even recognize yourself in the end?  In the past, I’ve allowed the latter to happen.  I’ve worked for years to overcome this adversity in my personality.  But even knowing that, today I had a mini-meltdown when a best friend from years ago friended me on Facebook last night only to BLOCK me today.  I didn’t even get a chance to check out her info since I approved it on my phone.  Where is the fun in that?  I spent an hour trying to figure out what happened which left Hubs staring at me like I’d grown a second head.  I know it’s part of my “crazy,” but it’s what I do with that information that determines the type of person I am.

A problem doesn’t have to be doused in tragedy to make it matter.  It makes it no less of an event because it doesn’t have fatal consequences.  The impact on the person drives its validity.  Feel what you feel.  It’s not up for debate how long it takes you to get past your hurdle.  That’s your choice to make.  Some are bigger than others and may need a running start.  Mine trips me up at unsuspecting times when I think I have a good stride going.  But when I do fall, I try to bounce up in hopes no one was looking, dust the dirt of my ass, and continue down the street like nothing happened at all.

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The Man In My Life

It may be hard to believe, but this blog is not about Mikel Jollett.  I know, it seems lately I can discuss nothing else, but today I’m going to focus on the other male in my life.  The one who stood behind the camera, gathered the signatures from the other band mates, and of course asked Mikel if they were going to sleep together.  He is my Hubs. 

Hubs is an interesting character I’ve known for twenty years, been “together with” for eighteen, and last month celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary.  He is highlighted in many of my blogs, like here.  Lately people keep telling me how funny he is.  This is a fact I’ve known forever.  But the punch line about his humor, which everyone takes so much pleasure, is the fact it’s only funny when you aren’t the subject.  The minute the conversation turns and you are on the hot seat all of a sudden the “funny guy” turns into a huge asshole.  Now, this is where I find it most amusing.  His innocence in turning most conversations into something horribly uncomfortable is one my simplest pleasures.  Without any effort, he keeps a straight face when making someone else squirm, grimace with confusion, or even walk away in disgust.  It’s hilarious.

Hubs has made such an art out of this, I gave him a Facebook page*.  Some of you know about the place where I post his most unflattering pictures, his quirky habits, and the strangest situations he puts us into.  Yes, I say “us” because most of the time I’m the one standing next to him saying “he didn’t really mean it” or “he’s totally kidding.”  Some of my favorites are:

• Insistence on not having more than 10 friends of Facebook.  Even though he’s upped it to 20 recently, there have been many battles and hurt feelings when deleting close friends to make room for others.  Don’t worry, he deleted his own father.
• The time he gave the fake name at Dairy Queen to match the other names before him.  Needless to say, when the orders came out, it was a huge clusterfuck.
• When a friend said she loved another friend, he called her padded answer by putting her on the spot with the question “What do you love about her?”  After five minutes of uncomfortable hemming and hawing, she said “I just do.”  To which he answered, “Doesn’t sound like it.”

His charm was proven once again this weekend when we went camping.  In the breezy Oregon beach air, we shared gin and tonics with friends around a campfire.  Hubs went to make another round.  He flicked his unmelted ice and lime slice into the next campsite.  An occupant of said spot walked over with the lime slice in hand. 

“It looks like you lost something,” she said.  Hubs looked down to the next lime slice he’d cut for the second round.

“Nope, I’ve got mine right here,” he said. 

With a perplexed look, the woman kept the slice in hand and returned back to her site.  Any other guilty party would have apologized for being careless and promised not to throw any more trash in their site.  Not Hubs.  In fact, later she came over to apologize about being accusatory when it was now obvious one of the annoying crows flying around probably picked it up and dropped it on her after realizing it wasn’t food.  Hubs graciously accepted the apology and agreed he too had been hit by crow debris.

Some may think he does these things to be a jerk.  I can vouch he really doesn’t.  It’s just him.  He’s completely honest almost to a fault.  He’s black and white when it comes to right and wrong.  He’s devoutly loyal and loves his children.  He watches bad television like Ice Road Truckers and makes up the porn name replacements like “Ice Road Fuckers.”  He won’t eat anything “white and creamy” like sour cream or mayonnaise.  He loves his motorcycle, believes in Bigfoot, and can’t wait for the day he can leave society all together for a Unibomber cabin in the woods.  (I think five minutes after my funeral.)

Hubs is the most interesting character I know.  In my writings, you will find pieces him here and there.  We’ve been together too long for him not to have a huge impact on my characters, thought processes, and writing all together.  But hopefully when you do catch that glimpse of him it has the humor everyone loves.  Because they’re right…he is a helluva funny guy.

*If you want the page, let me know.

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Writers Do It With Their Words

Some may wonder how my lusting admiration of Mr. Jollett started and worked it’s way into the monster it is today.  (You obviously don’t work with me because I drone on and on about it on a daily basis.)  With any great crush, there is a building of the process.  It didn’t involve Mikel walking in slow motion down the street with his short locks blowing in the wind, a dazzling smile across his face, and Dreamweaver playing in the background.  Although I’m pretty sure this happens when he walks…Well, at least in my head he does.  But I digress. 

“Missy” was the first TATE song to grab my attention.  There was something in the prose of how Mikel described her that was different.  Was it the literary skill behind his lyrics?  “Skin as thin as paper drapes.”  That was the line.  It was beyond descriptive.  It was something to get me back on track in my own writing of putting a visual in someone’s head.  The image of Missy with pale skin and an innocence of being from somewhere different was crystal clear because of that line.  It didn’t matter if I was waaay off on the intention of the song.  That line put an image of the girl in my head and that’s pretty powerful stuff for a writer.

Then I learned he was a writer.  He wasn’t only a musician, which is pretty damn cool in my book, but an author; a published one who had a dream of writing a novel.  At the time, I’d begun querying my first book and writing the second.  Not only were we bonding over music, but he could understand how hard it was to go back to the writing process day in and day out.  Even though he’d had success in his musical career, he still had to face some frustrations of finishing a novel and getting it published.  You know, perfect fodder for that conversation over beers we are supposed to have.    I wanted to know more about his style.  When I searched out and read some of his articles, I liked them…a lot.  The same imagery captured in the songs was worked into his stories.  For example, in this article of a band review of Azure Ray, the first four paragraphs are about his junior high crush.  Sure, that could be a little ego-centric to focus a review about your own experience.  But the way he crafts the scene, describing the way he looked at the girl and felt about her, you easily understand what he’s telling you about the record.  BTW, with each line I raised my hand with “I liked The Cure and The Smiths.  I still do” hoping this would somehow find him in the universe and draw him closer.   Then I thought about it a little more and realize I’m still in this Alterna-girl status and I’m twenty-five years older.  This might revert back to yesterday’s thought about how sad it is when old people try to do young people stuff.

I find this article more interesting with a simple lyric from “Strange Girl” off the new album.  Once again, a simple line replays in my head several times a day.  “It was an old song from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me that she sang.”  Is this the same girl from Junior High who loved The Cure?  Is he paying tribute to the girl who made such an impression she’s worked her way into two pieces of his art?  I have no idea, but the line does tell me about the girl.  She’s somewhere in the world of the Alterna-girl status because this song lyric defines her. 

These are the small details which have drawn me to my obsession appreciation of Mikel.  With few words, he creates an image of a character who sticks with the reader or listener.  For a person in the depths of trying to make this connection on a nightly basis through my own work, it’s quite an attractive quality.  In combination with music I enjoy it’s pretty much a done deal.  How could I do anything else besides love him? 

Oh, and did I mention I think he’s smokin’ hot?  Of course not, because I’m not shallow.  Alterna-girls never are.

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The Backstory of Mikel

No matter who the person, I love the backstory.  Getting to know new friends or catching up with old ones from my past always includes the fun of learning about what’s gone on.  It’s no different when I stalk a band.  How did they come together?  Were they BFFs since first grade when they traded their PB&J for turkey?  Or did two male members meet after loving the same girl?  Did they ditch the chick and write songs about their shared heartbreak?  With a little digging, there’s always a fascinating story behind the person.

An interesting thing was noticed when I dove into my research of how TATE came to be.  It was consistently the same story.  Article after article highlighted Mikel’s terrible week which left him on the path to creating a band.  It’s a week where he claimed to have broken up with his girlfriend, found out his mom had cancer, and received his own diagnosis of illness.  That’s a pretty shitty week (even shittier the girlfriend still broke up with him after the other two things.)  Do I really believe this all happened in the specific span of seven days?  No.  Does it make a great backstory which has evolved into a more fabulous brand?  Absolutely.

Mikel’s a writer; not only of songs, but an author of stories and novels.  He understands the importance of being concise with thought and drawing the reader in with relatable emotion.  Damn, have you listened to his songs?  Case in point.  Would it have played as well with “My girlfriend left me after she found out I’d been cheating for months”?  I’m not saying this is what happened, but the choice to be vague in certain parts and descriptive in others proves beneficial in the story of TATE. 

His backstory also calls to his age group.  Mikel was in his thirties when he formed the band.  A prime age for others in the same demographic to hear the battle cry of “live the life you dream before it passes you by.”  If he were in his early 20’s, his message could have been “I started the band to get laid after my bitch girlfriend dumped me” and people would understand.  But thirty-somethings are supposed to be more mature, settling down, and have a depth to their personality.  (I’m guessing being a rockstar always comes with the hope of getting lots of tail.)

The only time the backstory of the band does not revolve around him is when the focus shifts to the violinist Anna being classically trained.  This is another well-crafted brand to focus on their different sound because it contains the strings.  Why does it matter if she’s classically trained?  Does it sound any different from learning in your garage to impress a boy?  Never the less, it’s the start of every question of her in most interviews.  It’s that subtle hint that perks up the ears of the potential fan to give them a go.

But with my need to know in-depth details of everyone in my life, I was disappointed with the same backstory told in every single interview.  There was no more knowledge gained with Googling new articles, following them on Twitter, or regularly checking their site.  It was the same canned answers every time.    

“It must be boring to say the same thing over and over again in interviews,” I said.  Hubs shrugged not giving me a second thought.  I wondered if he even heard me.  “When I do all my interviews about my backstory, I’m going to mix it up.  Tell wild stories to spice it up.  Maybe it will involve a musician.  Won’t that be funny?”

“No,” he said, “people will think you’re a liar.” 

At first I scoffed at the fact he was jealous of the musician, but then I realized he was right.  The power of a brand is to get an audience to identify and be loyal.  Your backstory needs to be as relatable as the product you are selling.  This doesn’t mean you have to fabricate it to fit what you think your audience wants, but it does mean you have to tell the same story over and over again.  If you trail from it or become something else midway, they will lose their trust in you and the product you are hawking.  Same is true when creating a character in a book.  The minute you say something untrue to their backstory, the reader pulls aways and says “Whatch you talkin’  ‘bout, Willis?”

Maybe this analysis of Mikel’s backstory tells more about his character than he intended.  He could be a shrewd business man who knew what it took to create a relatable character to propel his product into a successful line.  Or maybe he’s a good author who peppers in the right details at the right moment.  Or maybe he’s just a guy who had a shitty week, wanted to play music, and snag a bunch of ass in the process.

Also feel free to tell me your backstory in the comment section.

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Is That MY Girl?

Jaime Reed wrote an interesting blog about teen female protagonists.  The letter filled with stereotypes found in lead characters was like a check list of “what not to do” in writing YA fiction.  Reed discussed how they are catty, self-centered, and have one dimensional friends.  She dissects the first person’s inner monologue for being hypocritical in her judgment of gal pals and the stereotypical description of the token gay BFF.  While I nodded my head with her pointed observation and rolled my eyes at the obvious flaws of those characters, I started to question where this left my WIP.  Is the lead character I love about to be filleted “Kill Bill style” because she is just like everyone else and I didn’t even know it?

It is common for artists to feel insecure.  Anytime you create something with your heart that other people can have an opinion, you are vulnerable.  While I have discussed my growing thick skin, I haven’t had the comfort of a professional acknowledging my work to put some of those fears to rest…yet.  So of course I assume, even though Ms. Reed and I have never met, she is talking about me.  My lead has girlfriends she isn’t close with.  She struggles with boyfriends.  She can even be called “snarky” at times.  But have I created a cliché?  Isn’t this common in teenagers?  Correction, isn’t this common for all women?  I’ve had conversations with friends in their thirties with all of these traits in one interaction.  Does that make us all cliché?  Don’t we all make poor choices in relationships at certain times and isn’t that the part that makes us human?  Relatable?  Real?

We all have our pet peeves in novels.  I know of a very successful novel where I promised to throw up if I read the sentence “he was an Adonis” one more time.  I hope my work has something different to it and hasn’t fallen into this trap of “typical teen.”  I took deep thought in trying to make the character realistic with strengths and flaws.  They were built on my own successes and short comings from back then and in my adulthood.

The irony is when I was a teenager, my mother would shake her head and tell me how no matter how hard I tried, whatever mischief I created, I was a normal teenager.  “This is just what teenagers do,” she said.  I screamed she didn’t understand, told her she was outdated while I wore a homemade shirt with the words “Fuck You” written across the chest in splatter paints (oh, the 90’s.)  I look back and laugh for how cliché of a teen I actually was.

Is Ms. Reed right about authors relying too heavily on stereotypes?  Or are they writing in fact and it’s people in general who are cliché?  It’s easy to make arguments for both (depending if I spent the day standing in the line at the DMV.)  It comes down to the reader.  Maybe they want something familiar or reminiscent of their youth.  Maybe they want to be surprised, but then discount it with being unbelievable.  In the end, it’s up to the skill and experience of the author to find the delicate thin line in between.  (I hope I have.)

To make this blog funny, I’ve added a photo from my teen years.  (Please remember it’s the 90′s before you judge.)  Here I am with purple-ish hair, a Pink Floyd tee-shirt, and best of all–long john’s under my shorts.  Too bad the camera doesn’t show the Doc Martin boots on my feet.  You can see grunge was in full effect.  Go ahead…judge and laugh.  Please, laugh your ass off.

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Do You Remember That One Time?

Memories are an interesting thing.  Everyone has them.  People refer to them on a regular basis.  Some people go farther back than others when pulling out an old story.  Hubs finds it crazy I would ever think about something that happened more than five minutes ago.  Luckily, he has me to remind him of what he did five, ten, fifteen, heck even twenty years ago!  But, what all memories have in common is they are how we remember a certain situation.  It’s the teller’s interpretation of what happened in that moment and what was taken away from it.

Regularly, I replay concerts I’ve attended in my head.  This shouldn’t be a surprise with how much music affects my thoughts as noted before.  Lately, it’s been the Vampire Weekend concert from last September.  The weird part is what I remember from it.  Of course, there was the enjoyment of having a kid-free date night with Hubs.  There was also the excitement of running into Ezra the lead singer at the hotel and missing my photo opportunity because I was trying to respect his privacy.  (Won’t fall for that again.)  Or I could even relive the great show which left me in a honeymoon phase for the past 6 months.  But what I remember most is when I missed a step walking out of the ladies’ bathroom and fell face first.  I mean, this was an epic fall.  Maybe it was the gin and tonics or the suddenness of the small step, but I didn’t even attempt to brace myself before my cheek mashed against the very thin carpet on the cement floor.  I’m sure some psychologist reading is seeing some sort of deep insecurity being replayed, but I just laugh at the ridiculousness of it.  I popped right back up like nothing happened and walked out without a second thought.  (Until I ate it twenty minutes later when I missed another step.  Seriously…what’s wrong with me?)

Another memory I regularly think about is someone else’s.  A girlfriend had a crummy boyfriend years ago.  He wasn’t a total dick, but he was a jerk.  They dated, he was him, and they broke up.  That’s how life goes, right?  Well, after some time had passed, he found her again and apologized for being “so horrible.”  He went on to explain how he carried this guilt around and was compelled to reach out to apologize.  Seems like a nice gesture, but that wasn’t how she remembered it.  “I didn’t think it was that bad,” she said.  She started to second guess her whole memory of the situation based on his remembrance. 

The point to all this is when our characters are telling their story in the past tense, they are remembering their version.  They are telling how they saw it then, even if it’s jaded with who they are now.  I have to remind myself that past tense isn’t only putting “ed” on the end of every verb, it’s a way of thinking.  It’s getting into the mind of who the character is now and imagining what they remember when the story happened.  It doesn’t mean it has to be the truth; it’s only an interpretation of what they remember.

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Urban Girl

I have been to Portland three times in the last four weeks.  This last trip lasted five days.  This is a big deal considering there were only two trips made in the previous ten years I’ve lived in Oregon.  Each of these business trips were sans children, which means I left the titles of “mother,” “caregiver,” “middle-aged,” “home keeper,” etc. back in my home city limits.  Having shed the responsibilities of these titles, I was re-invented into my alternative persona of “Urban Girl.”

When I was seventeen and prepping for college, I bought a bit book titled “Jobs in the Music Industry.”  I decided I wanted to be an A&R Director.  If you are not familiar with this job, it’s like proclaiming “I’m going to be a princess” or “astronaut” or “President.”  Sure some people hold the title, but it requires a lot of work and persistence.  Two things I didn’t have when I was seventeen.   But when I imagine myself as Urban Girl, this is her job.  In the last couple years, it’s morphed into writer, but you get the gist.  She has a cool career that takes her to awesome places.

Portland brought out Urban Girl.  She walks across the street before the red hands turns to a green guy.  Each night, she enjoys expensive dinners without regard to the total at the bottom of the check.  With the dinner there is a glamorous cocktail (no Cosmos, but I did have a Frozen Blood Orange Drop) and sometimes followed up by a glass of wine.  Her hair doesn’t fear Portland rain because she’s tamed her naturally curly hair with high-end product.  Urban Girl wanders the streets of downtown without any place to go and enjoys looking at the buildings’ architecture in an inspiring way.  She doesn’t shy away from adventurous foods and even tried a prune.  And of course, Urban Girl speaks Twitter-ese with witty 140-character sayings rumbling around her head.

On my last day, I was confronted with a real Urban Girl.  She walked out of her high-rise apartment building in a designer jumpsuit with a sweater wearing small dog at the end of a leash.  She looked past me without any regard on her way to the Starbucks at the end of the block.  I smiled at her, which she didn’t return, and continued on to the last of my meetings.  I sighed with jealously and relief simultaneously.  She had her city and I have my real life.

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Dialogue Dumping

After getting up at 2:45am, waiting in my front yard for a cab that didn’t show at 3:30am, and finally flying into PDX by 6:00am, I sat through a nine hour meeting.  This is the first meeting of a series that will consume the entire week and be attended by the same fifteen people.  Out of the fifteen who attended, ten regularly tried to say the same thing.  Some talked louder, others raised their hands, but one kept piping up and rolling right over the others.  What they all had in common was they didn’t say a damn thing.

In a meeting, my M.O. is to clam up unless I have something “good” to say.  My desire to beat someone’s head in with a heavy rock because they are talking for the sake of talking doesn’t mean I might not be that person.  This meeting had important people in it; a flame for these “talkie” moths to be drawn.  They can’t help themselves in professing their importance with “Pay attention to me” dialogue.

What I found staring at each person with their mouth partially opening waiting to get in their two cents was how  frustrating non valuable dialogue can be.  Of course, I daydream about how this torturous experience needs to teach me something about writing fiction.  How many times are you reading a story or watching a show and want to scream, “Just say it!”

I understand their dialogue defines their character.  For example, the one person who regularly pipes up with her unsolicited opinion demonstrates how obnoxious she is.  She’s assuming her audience cares about what she has to say.  Yes, a writer could “tell” you she is arrogant or “show” you through a long drawn out dialogue about something no one else cares about.  (Side note:  Tell her to get a blog.)  But it is important to remember it’s a fine line.  Having her character drone on for five minutes in a rant about nothing might be better described with the other participants shifting in their seats, rolling their eyes, or whispering giggles to each other.  The actions of others might tell a world more than the words falling out of your characters mouth.

The lesson was never more evident than it was today.  My outburst of “What is your point?” might not have been the best reaction in my professional meeting.  But it would be worse to have a reader throw my book to the ground, stomp on it, douse it in lighter fluid, and spit on it to put out the fire after all that remained was ash.  Too much?  Then you haven’t met this character yet.

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Color Me Surprised

My weekend was filled with a chore I never thought I would do.  I painted my daughter’s room…pink.  First off, the excitement of painting a room quickly wears off when you are on your hands and knees cutting in from the carpet.  My five year-old daughter eagerly awaited this day after being the bottom bunk in her brother’s room since she escaped the crib.  After committing to the move with some convincing, she’s ready for her own space. 

We’ve been asking her for a year if she wanted her own room and she’s always declined because she didn’t like the thought of having one bed while her brother had two.  Reason finally broke through when I told her she could pick the color of her new room.  She eagerly agreed to move as soon as possible and practically pulled out a swatch book to start thumbing through potential color schemes.  Surprised when my son was visibly upset about losing this bedtime buddy, we reminded him he would finally get to have one of those things called a “sleepover” if he had his own space.  Sold.

I assumed my daughter would pick blue.  She picks blue game pieces, blue candies, and blue clothes.  It’s is her favorite color.  Maybe she’d mix it up with a shade of teal since she’s lived in a sea of light blue for the past three years.  But my mouth dropped open and chin smacked against the ground when she declared she would have a pink room.  My daughter doesn’t play with dolls, has a bin of still-boxed Barbies and only identifies Cinderella as “the blue princess.”  Pink never entered my mind when offering up the choice to pick a color.  But there she was at Lowe’s looking through Rose Sorbet, Bubble Gum, Cherry Jubilee, Sweet Taffy, and Strawberry Rose.  I started to question if the paint designers were hungry when they named the damn things. 

To entice her into another paint choice direction, I took her shopping for bedding.  During the first trip to a furniture store, she declared her love for the ugliest comforter on this planet. 

“No,” I said without a hint of hesitation. 

Hubs shrugged his shoulders, “If that’s what she wants.” 

Death glare encouraged him to keep moving to another section of the store. 

I explained she needed to look at more to be sure.  After many department stores, on-line searches, and constantly hearing about the one she loved at the furniture store, we tried the last place.  She walked up to the bedroom set at the end of the aisle and found a new love, a flower pillow.  It didn’t really matter what the rest of the set looked like; she was committed to the pillow…the pink pillow.

Counting my blessings I wasn’t stuck with the horrible set first chosen, we selected a pink paint to go with the bedding; a light shade for three walls and a bright accent for the fourth.  What does this have to do with writing?  It’s a solid example of creating a believable character.  A writing professor in college taught your character should have a characteristic that most wouldn’t have guessed.  It’s that quirk which makes them flawed, interesting, understandable, real.

Her choice in pink, completely out of character at the time (because now it’s been stated to be the new favorite color) is a reminder about the things my characters need to have.  They can’t be everything I think they should or want them to be.  They need to have things we hate or can’t believe.  It’s those things that we love about them.  

It’s like a little girl who takes a fall like a champ, jumps off ledges her older brother doesn’t dare, and elbow’s her dad in the balls every chance she gets.  After all her adventures, she returns safely and snuggly into her Pink Stork and Cherry Pink room.

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