Another First Time

Tonight, talking with E (because he's the person who gets this stuff out of my brain), I was laughing, writerly-ly, about the way characters behave. It's a weird thing, let's face it, for some random middle-aged white suburban hausfrau to go around writing novels about ancient Frankish kings.

I mean, oh sure - as E points out, from the perspective of someone who knows MY interests and oddnesses, it does make sense. But looking at it from the king's standpoint ... who the heck am I to go around presuming to recount the life of the first king of France ... ? Seriously. And yet, here I am, the American weirdo - all up in bed with an ancient barbarian. He and I did something, we made something - I don't think there is any sort of direct line, but I do think that if we have souls, his is not unaware of my activities in his relation. I think, if he hasn't CHOSEN me: he hasn't objected. And I'm mystified I have gotten away with what I have.



It's impossible to write about my relationship to this character without skewing all Frowsy Nutbar Middle-School Art Teacher (not that there is a dadgum thing wrong with middle school art teachers, whom frankly I should be so lucky as to resemble - particularly Miss H, who was in fact not frowsy, and a stone cold fox actually) ... But the fact is that I have always felt some manner of consent issue, since I'm touching HISTORY. Fiction, to be sure. But about actual people.

For the most part, I have felt myself nothing more than a framework, a doorway through which some sort of traffic has emanated - onto my 530-plus pages of manuscript. I know I put in a lot of work, and I remember some of the oldest parts of it. But the extent to which the product is unrecognizeable to me, even un-encompassable, I would probably do best, actually, not to disclose. It's amazing, and I marvel at it all the time. "I *did* that" is not an expression strictly of wonder, that I took on a project and completed it. It is wonder at the "that" itself, which seems well beyond me. It's almost confusion, not at the process, but at the simple fact of creation at all.



There is a definite remoteness between me and my character, and actual barriers - of many kinds - between me and the man my character means to speak for. Never mind time itself, and gender, experience, understanding, and intellect. I know some writers are a little in love, or even in lust, with their creations. This is not me. I know some writers long to know some "real" avatar (if such a phrase can even be invented) of their character. I would probably hate him, and vice versa. I think most of us write, and exorcise parts of ourselves within the pages - the people - we try to create. This may be possible, but what I would work out through the lips and acts of ... this person ... I cannot imagine. I've never even thought to try, and I'm one heck of a navel-inspector. ("I know, you're saying, 'Howie! Can't BE!' ... "). It is beyond me to understand my own relationship, my own bond, to my creation OR the real man behind it. I started off going, "neat, my middle name means 'famed warrior' - cool!" and ended up a novelist.

That is pretty amazing.

And I like that it is so.

I like not understanding, not even particularly wondering. It is the closest I can come to thinking of the thing I have experienced, and the thing I have done with that experience, the work that's come out of it, as being artistic. It's ineffable, inexplicable. I don't get it, I don't want to. I am simultaneously honored and proud to have been the instrument by which this novel came into being. Pretty humbled, and only occasionally coherent enough to be confused.

I sit here typing, seeing more of the screen than the peripheral image of my pale, big hands. I can see the veins reaching upward toward my wrists; like my father's hands. I can see the deft motion of my fingers, the speed of my typing. But I can never truly break down what it is traveling between my cramped and shadowy hypothalamus and this white, grey, orange, blue and black page, and on out into the world. I would be disappointed if it were knowable.

I made a book. I feel like I made it with consent of its character. It wasn't given, but what I took wasn't theft either. And I have honored the king.



Strange bedfellows, we.

I wonder how the offspring will do now.