Thursday, September 06, 2007

Rubber Duckie, You're The One... (But Do You Sometimes Hate Water?)

I realized this weekend that my wife has made me a little girly.

Which bugged me and my testosterone a little.

But then I thanked her for making me a better writer.

Now, I’ve never been mister macho, grunting my way through conversations unless they’re about sports or porn, slapping waitresses on the ass, wanting to beat up people to amuse my friends. But I am a fairly normal guy.

And recently, I’ve become a little more girly.

To wit:

A) I sometimes like to take a bath instead of a shower. Actually, this is when I realized this whole thing this weekend -– as I was taking a bath. I’ve always been a shower guy. Seems more practical. I always wondered how you can really rinse off when you’re in the bath. But my wife comes from a long line of bath-takers. So I tried it. Now I kinda like baths. Maybe I should try to save manly face by saying it makes me feel like I’m in Unforgiven, soaking my weary bones after riding with the other cowboys all day. Wait, that still sounds girly. How about I feel like I’m in Deadwood. With whores all around. Relaxing after killing a Pinkerton who looked at me sideways. Another whiskey Dan, you cocksucker!

B) I sometimes refer to things as being cute. Been doing that more and more, actually, with the arrival of the baby girl. Who is cute, after all. And all the little clothes and blankets that come with her. Also cute. So far I haven’t pulled out the, “Awwwww” that a lot of women preface “cute” with, but I’m on that road. So don’t be surprised if, when you show me a photo of your new hybrid car, I turn my head to the side, furrow my brow and exclaim, “Awwww, it’s so cuuute!”

Why do I bring this up in a blog about writing?

I’m getting to that.

A couple days ago Bob Edwards interviewed Joyce Johnson, one of Jack Kerouac’s girlfriends, about her new book Minor Characters. (I read her Door Wide Open, which is a collection of letters between the two of them, with commentary by her –- very nice.) Anyway, she read an excerpt about watching Jack watch a cat eat its food. He crouched at a distance, taking in every move of the cat as it ate.

Simple enough -- a lot of people might not have noticed him doing this. But she did -- she knew the importance.

He did this, I’m thinking, because he wanted to be able to write right about cats when it was time to write about cats. Or that cat in particular, maybe. But he was studying it. Carefully. How does a cat eat, really?

So in the bath I was thinking about character. And how, if I wrote me, I might not think to write me taking a bath. Because I’m big man tough growl. But I like a bath now and again.

I think about the characters in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In The Sopranos. Even in The Last Kiss (one that surprised me).

Those writers made good, solid, consistent characters, like you’re supposed to –- but they made them real by making them realistic. Not too predictable. Varied. Rich. Screwed up.

My guess is those writers have spent a lot of time watching the real characters all around them. And remembering that when they wrote.

It’s a good reminder, as I go through these next revisions on D Line –- to, yes, make the characters distinct from one another and consistent within themselves… but also a little inconsistent.

MLK was a model of love… and had fidelity issues. Johnny Cash was a genius… and an asshole of a drug addict. Hell, I bet George Bush even loves his kids.

No one is always one thing. So let’s not write them so.

7 comments:

ASA said...

I always like Antagonists that don't realize they're evil and/or Protagonists that don't consider themselves heroes.

Makes your characters less one-dimensional when you look at them this way.

149films said...

I like bad-guys who's bad is only bad in relation to the good guy. Just opposition, not necessarily BAD. True post.

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