Finding myself through fictional characters.

It is once again the wee hours of the morning... a morning where I should be asleep, dreaming of shit. Not literally, but you know what I mean. However, when I slept yesterday, I remembered a few dreams that I wasn't very fond of. So here I am. Not dreaming. Haha.

I know that my past few blogs haven't been very cheery. But tonight, I don't feel depressed. I feel neutral. I think that because I decided to pull my story up and start writing again, I'm actually going through some therapy right now. My characters are so messed up, and when I write about them, I'm taking all of my frustration out on them. There was also a moment tonight where I looked at the closing sentence for one of my characters, and I thought to myself, six pages doesn't seem very long for a chapter. But the more I read through it, the more I thought, if I add anything else, it'll ruin it. So I settled for a chapter consisting of six pages and thought, what now? I began to really ask myself what was going to happen next, and what should happen next. Then I realized that there was one character I had been completely ignoring all this time. You see, when I made my eight characters, one of them was a cutter. I decided early on that he needed a younger brother who was growing up just as broken as he was, all innocence lost. At that time, he was just a brother, and I asked myself, "How is he going to play out in this story at all?" And then, one day, I realized that I was stuck. There was a huge gap between the beginning and the climax, and so I shoved the story aside. When I finally pulled it out about two weeks ago, I thought, go out of order. Something is bound to hit you. So I started writing what I knew I wanted in the story for sure. Of course, the idea hit me out of the blue, and now I know how this entire thing is going to play out. So tonight, when I was asking myself what the next step would be, I realized that I actually have nine characters. The young brother of this cutter needs a chapter of his own; a focus of his own. Sure, the teenagers in this story are important for our generation, but I think the reason why I decided a young boy needed to be added early on is because I need someone to represent how scary it is for children to grow up, especially when they have to go through tough situations that no child should ever have to go through.

It's really difficult for me to get into the mind of this little boy. Although I had grown up being the weird, awkward, bullied kid, I always had a great home life. And now I have to pity this young boy, and love him, and figure out what in the hell he's going through both mentally and emotionally. Maybe that's why I'm feeling neutral now. I'm trying to figure things out for myself through this character, and I don't seem to have it all together yet. I'm hoping that after I spend some time with him, I can finally get things down the way I'm trying to make sense of them in my head.

I learn a lot about myself through the people I create. I may not always understand their actions, but I understand where they're coming from. It's a constant game of asking, answering, deleting, asking, answering, and moving on. I have to be careful not to allow my characters to run together, because the whole point of this book is to express exactly how different they all are from each other, but to see that the reasons for their differences are ultimately the same. It's not a story that makes complete sense to me right now, and it's not something that's going to be written quickly. I know there are still characters that I have to work on and spend some time with. Once I do that, and once I complete this thing, I'm really hoping that I have a huge audience who can relate to everything these people are going through. I'm trying to make it so that each person who reads this book can attach themselves to a certain character and say, "That's me," while at the same time, loving all the other characters they read about.

I think writing is something I need to be focusing on now. Maybe I'll feel less confused this way and make more sense of who I am and what I'm going through, but through other people. It's a joy all of its own, and I'm surprised my mind is able to handle everything I want to express by giving these characters life and making them who they are.

They will all come out stronger than they expected, just as I do. It's going to be beautiful.