There was something inherently wrong about writing oneself, she thought grimly, tapping away at the keyboard. It was self-indulgent; narcissistic (not, she conceded, that she wasn’t narcissistic)… and it made one incredibly vulnerable. Once one was on paper, one became someone else—someone to be judged and assessed as other, ‘actual’ characters, were. Is she funny enough? Should she be funnier? And idiosyncrasy! Bane of her life! They said she had idiosyncratic tendencies! What if they were not so idiosyncratic when pinned on paper? (Words, as much as she loved them, tended to flatten things unless the right ones were chosen.)
Of course, she just had to write. She would write, and ‘she’, mildly fictional she, would come spiralling from the page. A bit Blyton-esque, perhaps (her one fear!) and definitely as wet as Beatrix Potter (on tea and scones laced with crack, perhaps) and overladen with parenthetical remarks, but that was how she thought. And wrote. And she was trying to capture the essence of N-thoughts, was she not? She was trying to capture herself as a character, was she not? But where would she start? It was not as though she could, like she had previously, start off by describing an eccentric trait or other—she could not differentiate between those that were ‘normal’ and those that were ‘peculiar’; they were one and the same; stones that made up the wall of her being.
Walls. She could start with description. (She stopped, a mildly amused smile playing on her lips, for this constituted planning, again; analysing the best system, again; considering all contingencies and the best plan of attack, again. She was even—and here, she grinned—overanalysing, not only her story, but herself. What a ridiculous exercise this was!)
Description of what, though? Her surrounds were… chaotic. One of her friends would no doubt collapse in shock. There were no fewer than seven tissues scattered on her desk, one—and here, she lifted one tentatively—with eggshells still nestled inside. (She had good reason for the eggshells: she had been eating hard-boiled eggs in the wee hours of the morning and her bin was overflowing. A quiet voice in her head reminded her that the eggshells were also for her tiny dwellers, her imagination’s little indulgence.)
Her imagination was what worried her, she realised, fixing her eyes upon the ceiling. (There were cobwebs in the corner, spiralling outwards and reaching towards the windowsill, vying for escape. Poor cobwebs; poor dears; spun only to capture; manipulated, twisted, never free. She reached up, set them outside and the wind’s long fingers grasped them and tumbled them over the trees, perhaps—so she would like to think—setting them upon a little cobweb-quest.) Her imagination. Her persistence in anthropomorphising everything and creating tiny dweller communities for every corner. It was such a part of her—such a part of her as a character—that it couldn’t simply be omitted. It would be akin to omitting a tendency for planning, scheming, counting lamp-posts on the road. She scanned her environment with a suspicious eye; she planned her actions with the precision of a field marshal… and she had a little soft, cloudlike core in which tiny people cavorted and capered. She couldn’t deny her character that.
But she, boiled down into a character—or, even, a character ‘like’ her—would have to… share it. Sharing baffled her; her inner world was rich, far too rich, to truly share with anyone. Far too rich for her to capture on paper; ‘twas nigh impossible to describe sunsets so saturated that one could swipe at the sky and flick droplets of colour on the road. She could say they were so vivid, but to capture that vibrancy? To invoke that sense of intensity through description rather than prescriptively ascribing such adjectives (like vivid and vibrant! She spat. Horrible writing) was… impossible. Her world was perfect; such perfection demanded that she select the perfect words to capture it. But such a world had no people with whom to speak—with whom to create such perfect words—and so such signifiers were non-existent.
Worse yet, the settings of her games were the easiest to describe. She could, after all, water it down; make it understandable on reality’s terms rather than her own. But how to describe what she does in such settings? How to describe the little fancies and daydreams in which she indulges? Could she actually share (sharing truly made one feel vulnerable) them, truthfully, completely, without masking parts that she felt were too… special?
No, she decided. She would speak of some little fancies; not share all. And not share one, in particular. She realised that this would no doubt spark some curiosity on the part of what few readers she had (indeed, it sparked questions in herself: why does she not want to share that one in particular? —She refused to answer.) but… it would be a lie, of sorts, to fail to mention it. And so here it was, mentioned and, just as any good character skirts around sensitive topics, she will deflect and consider something else.
She would not, she decided, try to make the character funny. She was not inherently predisposed to humour; she enjoyed it immensely but she was not good at writing it. Trying to make herself funny in text would ultimately fail. Let them laugh at her overdramatics and flippancy but by God, she will not consciously try to be a rapier of wit. Determined attempts at wordplay, for instance, tended to fall flat when she delivered them; she felt that merely thinking of the puns in her head was its own reword.
Her reverie was interrupted by a flutter of family obligations. Of course. That was the story of her life: she’d settle down; decide to start something… and just as she had summoned the nerve to start, someone would ask her to do something trite.
She forced a smile; ducked her head with a courteous nod. She responded briefly, unreadably: ‘all right.’ She could hear the unintended aloofness in her words streaming behind her like a scarf and she mildly regretted that—that selfishness, that disregard for other people’s wants—but only mildly. Let them roll their eyes at her selfishness! It kept her warm; it let her write. Was it selfishness or merely focus and single-mindedness?
She went into her room to dress (surely being sociable was all about dressing; donning different masks and clothes to suit the occasion? How sad. —Even so! All the world’s a stage; she was determined to play her part); grumbled; typed some reflective statement on her laptop. A knock on her door sounded. Yes, she was ready; let her just finish this last paragraph!
She decided, stalking out of her room, that she would contemplate the opening chapter over lunch. Where would she set her character? Perhaps in one of her imaginary worlds. No, a café. Yes. A café would be apt. She smiled to herself as she sat down at the table.
'What's up?' her mother asked.
'Hm?' she replied absent-mindedly, reaching for the jug of water. 'Nothing. Just thinking.'
Thinking was blissful. She scanned over her work in her head, readjusting paragraphs and editing phrases. ('Syntax', she thought, but syntax struck her as such an ugly word.) And she paused, her hand hovering over the platter of cheese. She had left a sentence unfinished. It was a simile; she had left it blank because she couldn't think of anything.
The conversation buzzing around her became muffled. Her smile became fixed and her nods mechanic as her mind rifled through possible comparisons. She didn't mean to be rude; she didn't intend any insult behind her lack of attention. She was simply trying to solve a problem; problems had to have solutions. And an unfinished simile was such a problem—it had to be completed, else it would consume her.
An unfinished simile was as annoying as…
Precisely.
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