Writing is a nice way of killing parts of yourself.

I don’t mean in the, ahem, small deaths all writers go through, staring at the blank page in a puddle of self-hatred, organs failing one at a time from the stress of voicelessness. No, rather as a means of finding those distasteful personalities that hide beneath your skin and exorcising them onto the page; like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, only without all the bloodshed.

Lately, ugly pieces of myself have been cropping up incarnate in my characters.  I recognize them dancing across the page, a whole person sprung from my insecurities.  I usually recognize them too late, running naked and free with my secrets. I didn’t realize I was outing myself; I only thought I was creating someone distasteful for the world to snicker at, to pity. There’s Mabel and my desire to hide away from the world; George and my self-important attitudes when I flirt with women, Doran and my tendency to sabotage relationships.  I could go on, but they only get worse.

If the character is nasty enough I’ll wash the pages in his blood. Yes it’s perverse.  Yes, it’s horrifying.  Yes, it’s the most gratifying work I can imagine. If there seems hope for this trait, I’ll guide the character to a new way of life, though with a great deal of flogging along the way.  And so I find myself improving with the shed tears or blood-curdling screams of each new character.

I will continue to maim, torture, even kill when necessary, with hope that I am not some person’s character, being prepped for a meaningful sacrifice.

-C

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.