Hmmm… whilst the idea of writing a book is a writer’s idea of utopia; the paradox is this writer is an overthinking INFP type who would never sleep again – worrying about whether the choices and plots she made for the characters were the right ones, or whether they were raging in between the lines and lamenting an alternative fictitious reality that they had been denied for all eternity. Nope. My mind is already acing overthinking this life and absolutely could not carry the responsibility of a whole cast of fictitious souls’ too.
Take for example the heroines of our favourite dystopian novels..Katniss, Tris and Bella. Now, I have yet to meet anyone who is satisfied with Katniss’ “Happy Ever After” and I truly believe that she is trying to squeeze her bow and arrow weilding awesomeness from between those pages to escape an infinity with Peeta, whilst Gale is languishing alone in the woods. I can almost hear her lilting lament calling out to Bella, “Oh, why couldn’t I have been born of Mayer’s imagination… she got your ending sewn up to perfection. ”
But spare a thought for Tris Prior, whose ghostly spirit observes from afar; “At least you live Katniss Everdeen; I am doomed to watch my best friend hook up with the love of my mortal life after my creator finished me off.” Nope. The responsibility for characters’ lives is just too big. Novels are a no for now.
Of course, the only other avenue is to draw on my own life, to write a novel based on my own story. But that too is flawed as our story is not a cast of one, and how can you write your own story authentically without hauling in a cast of hundreds whose stories, endlessly intertwined, are not yours to tell?
So, poems it is. Snapshot stepping stones hopping a path through life.
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