He can Sing! He can Dance! He's...Wolverine??

Well, technically, he's Hugh Jackman.

But, for me, Hugh Jackman = Wolverine. I mean, I've seen him in other movies and enjoyed them. It's just that when I think Hugh Jackman, I think of him as Wolverine. Not as the magician from The Prestige. Not as a theater performer. And certainly not as a singer.

Up until a few weeks ago (yes, I've been planning on blogging about this for weeks. Life got in the way.), this is what came to mind when someone said "Hugh" and "Jackman" together:

And then I watched this theater version of Roger and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! He plays Curly.

I was floored by his performance. The man can act. It's seriously impressive how good he is when all the special effects are taken away. He brought out all the humor that's embedded in the lyrics of the songs and the situations they sing them in. You know the humor's there in the R&H original, but the guy who plays Curly in it just kind of stands there and smiles and sings. Jackman brings so much life and expression to Curly that Oklahoma! moves to a whole different level of entertainment. He can actually dance and he has this incredible voice. Here, jump a few seconds into the video and listen:

Would you expect that from the guy who's famous for playing a mutant with claws? I know I didn't. And it was so neat to discover this entirely different aspect of one of my favorite actors. It also got me thinking. Thinking about how there is so much more to people than we think and assume.

We summarize people all the time. "She's a writer." "He's an actor." We associate individuals with what we see as their primary role. And they are that person. But they're also more than that. They're a particular combination of experiences and history, virtues and vices, hopes and hurts, dreams and hidden talent. It's so easy to attribute traits to someone because those traits are normally associated with that role. And once that attribution is made, that's all we tend to perceive.

We forget how complex people are. We forget how many roles a single individual fills. We forget to wonder or care about people's pasts, even though their histories have made them who they are. We just assume they've always been the way they are, that it's just their personality to be optimistic or aggravating. We never think about the possibility that they have to fight for that optimism or that there's good reason for someone to be begging for attention.

It's so obvious, too. We all know, intellectually, that people are complicated. We all know that there's a wealth of backstory for every single person on the planet. We know that there's more to people than first impressions. And yet we continue to put people into nice, neat little categories and expect their behavior to be consistent with the status we label them with.

I think that's what made discovering Hugh Jackman's musical talent so exciting and fun. He doesn't just fit into the hot-shot-actor/famous-person box any more. Not neatly, anyway. He's now actor, stage performer, and singer. He's so much more interesting now. And I think everyone is like that.

They're more. They're more than we expect or anticipate. They're more than we assume and are capable of more than we assume.

I think, at least in part, the revelation of that more is what makes life interesting. It makes life not just a grand adventure, but an adventure of character proportions. What do you think?

A Word for Wednesday

Jejune - a, [L. jejunus, empty, dry] 1. Wanting; empty; vacant. 2. Hungry; not saturated. 3. Dry; barren; wanting interesting matter.

The noun variation of this word - jejuneness - has a similar definition, as it ought to, but with an added phrase that I think will help in understanding the use of the word. So: "Poverty; barrenness; particularly, want of interesting matter; a deficiency of matter that can engage the attention and gratify the mind."

I like to see examples of how these obscure (or at least obscure to me) words were actually used. I try every time but my searches usually come up dry. This time I found some! Two, to be precise. Both are from The Works of Lord Bacon: Philosophical Works.

I don't know how drinks fit into the grand scheme of Lord Bacon's philosophical ruminations, but the first passage I found is one where he is writing about the maturation of drinks and the spirits congregate. He says, "Wine hath them well united, so as they make the parts somewhat more oily; vinegar hath them congregated, but more jejune, and in smaller quantities, the greatest and finest spirit and part being exhaled: for we see vinegar is made by setting the vessel of wine against the hot sun; and therefore vinegar will not burn; for that much of the finer parts is exhaled."

In the second passage, Bacon seemed to be cataloging some sort of experiment he was conducting on different metals. I got lost in minuscule, scanned-in typeface when I tried to figure out the context so I'm afraid you'll have to do what I did and take it for whatever it is: "Gold is the only substance which hath nothing volatile, and yet melteth without much difficulty. The melting showeth that it is not jejune, nor scare in spirit."

What's most interesting to me is that the primary use of the word seems to have changed considerably from when Lord Bacon used it to when it appeared in our dictionaries. He uses jejune to describe physical objects or attributes. Now it seems to be used primarily to describe an intellectual deficiency or the hunger of the mind and/or emotions; "pparticularly, want of interesting matter; a deficiency of matter that can engage the attention and gratify the mind." I wonder when the understanding of how to apply the word, or to whom, changed.

Sadly, we'll probably never know. And since speculation won't be the slightest bit productive, onto the narrative :)


"I crested the peak and looked over the valley that spread out before me. It was a jejune sight. Nearly as jejune as my companion, whose labored breaths I could hear behind me.

"Why can you never give us a hand, Ned?" he said, coming up beside me, half bent over to recover himself.

I had given him a hand, two most times, from the first step of our journey. Apparently "they" had very little memory.

"What a frightfully dull place," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Indeed," I said. "But it is here out path lies."

I started down the incline, pebbles and choking dust skipping at my slightest motion.

"Wait. Ned. Where are you going?"

"Onward."

"Please, Ned, give us a rest. Just a wee one. We beg you."

Maybe it scalding heat of the sun. Maybe it was the veritable wasteland before me. Maybe it was the thought of all the days past and all the ones ahead that I would have to spend with him. Maybe it was some combination of all those things. I'm not sure. But I started shouting at him in the two steps it took me to return to the crest.

"Fine. Rest if you must. But only if you swear to me that you will stop calling yourself "us." You are not a plural. You are one man, as I am. You have a name, as I do. If you speak, speak for yourself. Tell me what you need or want or think. Not what "us" needs. Do I make myself clear?"

He shrank away from me. The fear in his eyes doused my anger quicker than water does a fire and I sat down, cursing myself.

"I am sorry, Robert," I said. "You did not deserve that."

"We -" I could almost hear him bite his tongue before he started again. "I forgive."

A Word for Wednesday

Hey there, readers. I'm sure you've noticed that my blog activity has dwindled to a weekly post. I've been spending my non-work time studying. I have three tests left and then I'll be done (!) until I enroll with Thomas Edison State College. It's the last push of a year's worth of intensive study. I'll have earned over over 80 credits in that time. So between that and my continuing inability to comment, I've lost most of the wind in my blogging sails. Thanks for bearing with me in the lull :)

And if anyone knows how to get around the commenting problem, please let me know! I can only comment on pop-up comment window forms.

Onto the word...

Javel - n, a wandering or dirty fellow; a vagabond.

There was a note in my 1828 Webster's that said this word was used by Edmund Spenser. So, I did a search with Google books to see if I could find a passage that used javel. I found one, but the print was so incredibly tiny and the context so totally confusing, that I cannot possibly share it in good conscious. It seems, though, that Spenser used this word to mean a slandering fellow. I'm not sure how he turned a wanderer into a slanderer, but he did. The general consensus on the meaning of the word is the above definition, so we're going to run with it.
We're actually going to run right into the story because the Spenserian note is the only tangent I could find to go off on this word. So:


"Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I wasn't, well, me.

But I am me, obviously. And I've always been this way. My life has always been this way. Just me and Dad wandering from one place to the next. "It's who we are, son. Nomads." That's what he always says, with this gargantuan smile on his face like it's the best identity imaginable. You'd think, after fifteen years of roaming together, that he'd notice how fake my smile is when he says it now. How I don't say anything and just look out the window instead. Maybe he thinks I'm admiring whatever landscape it is we're passing. I've seen them all though - desert, forest, plain, mountain, you name it - so there's isn't exactly anything to admire anymore.

I've tried to tell him that nomads only exist in books about ancient Middle Eastern cultures. They rode on camels, not in cars. They're not supposed to exist in the 21st century. "Nonsense," he'll say. "Nomads have existed since time began and they will continue to exist. You should be proud to be one." Yeah. Proud. Right.

I introduced myself as a vagabond the other day. We had stopped at a gas station and there was a kid my age in the chip isle. We had a ten-second debate on which flavor of Doritos was best (I won) and then he held out his hand. "I'm Chip." (No joke. The dude's name was Chip). So I shook his hand and said, "Hey, I'm Trace. I'm a vagabond." I don't know how Dad heard, last I knew he was on the opposite side of the store, but he was furious. Back in the car, I tried to sell it as nomad pride. That didn't fly so well.

I got my thesaurus out that night and my dictionary that's so old it's flaking all over the insides of my backpack. I found a word that defines me in two syllables. So I asked Dad if I could change my name while I rammed my books back into the pack. I told him I was tired of Trace. He just shrugged. "If you like, son." I guess indifference to anything that supposed to be permanent (like names, and homes) goes with being a nomad. I smiled, probably the first genuine smile I've smiled in a while, and thanked him. Then I put my seat down, closed my eyes, and said my new name to myself.

I'm Javel."

A Word for Wednesday

Jambee - n. A name formerly given to a fashionable cane

Canes are like top hats, coat tails, waistcoats, and pocket watches to me. They immediately bring to mind Victorian Era gentlemen. Like these:

It was a time when both dress and behaviour was much more formal, courtly even. Men, particularly in the upper classes, were expected to be gentlemen in both manner and appearance. Jambees were part of that appearance, a fashion essential, as it were. William Tomicki, in his article "The Good Life" for Hotel Belair Magazine said, "Victorian walking sticks were a part of the "correct" attire of the elegantly dressed gentleman, who would change a cane as often as they changed their clothes." 

The Gentlemen's Emporium says this: "[In the Victorian Era] Unless they were a workman or laborer, every gentleman was expected to wear a coat, vest, and hat.  To walk around in shirtsleeves without vest or coat would be the modern-day equivalent of traipsing about in one’s underwear. Very unseemly, and most ungentlemanly!" Cravats, watches, and walking sticks were used as a means of adding class and style to otherwise ordinary suit outfits.

Leila Nelson of The World of the Walking Stick has some fascinating articles on her site that chronicles the history of the cane. Here's a few snippets: "In ancient Egypt everyone from royalty to peasants used a cane. These ancient sticks and staffs, now displayed in museums worldwide, were often carved and decorated elaborately. Their shape and form dictated whether the owner was a shepherd, soldier, dignitary, priest, Pharaoh, or even a god. These walking sticks were also used to identify the status of the deceased within their society for afterlife identification. King Tutankhamen had no less than 132 sticks buried with him. [...] It was during the 16th century that the walking stick was widely accepted an an accessory of elegance and social prominence among the aristocracy. Special etiquette dictated the use of the cane during this period. In Europe, a king's power came to be symbolized by the scepter carried in the right hand, while a second staff known as the "Hand of Justice" was carried in the left. [...] The 19th century was the hey-day of walking sticks in Europe. They were a status symbol because it was one way you could judge how much money a man had. [...] Some walking sticks performed dual functions, serving as flasks or as a place to hide cameras, swords, guns, or umbrellas. [...] Anyone who called himself a gentleman owned at least three; an evening cane, a country or day cane, and a system cane. System canes hide something inside or convert into other objects like seats, music stands and hammers."

Now all the gadgety canes you see in movies don't seem too far fetched ;) I read an article from a modern-day cane collector. He had one cane with embedded binoculars that he took to the opera. And another, called a friendship cane, that had silver shot glasses in the knob and a glass cylinder for holding liquor that slid inside the body of the cane. Does anyone else want to go buy a cane with hidden compartments and apparatus'? I know I do. But then I love old things and old ways and old times, so it could just be me.

So, now that you know more than you probably ever wanted to know about walking sticks, onto the narrative. I wrote this one in third person. This is odd. I don't write in third person. I always feel so far away from my characters and whatever they're going through if I'm in the third person. But this story demanded the third person point of view. So here goes...

"It was a night much like any other in London. The bells chimed the hour and a lone man walked the cobbled streets, hazy patches of light springing up in his trail where the lamps responded to his work. Two figures disturbed the deserted silence, spilling out of one of the grand buildings in laughter. The one leaned his companion against a lampost and returned to close the door.

"Ah, you worry too much, Carlys," the one on the lampost said.

"And you too little," Carlys said, taking his friend's weight upon himself again.

"The morrow will dawn and all with be right in the world."

"The only thing that will dawn with you, Halton, is the effects of your drink."

Halton pulled himself up and pointed an unsteady finger at the side of Carlys' face. "I've missed you, cousin."

"Indeed. Come, you are in dire need of chambers."

Halton collapsed back onto Carlys' shoulder in laughter. Carlys brought him to one of several carriages waiting outside the building and helped him in. He gave the driver Halton's address and took his own way down the street. 

The night was cool and crisp and dark. He breathed it in like a drought of wine. This is where he belonged, on the open road awaiting adventure. Not choking on the stuffy conversation and polite contempt that sullied the very air of his grandfather's gentlemens' club. He gave his cane a few artful spins in the air and lengthened his stride. He kept on, going nowhere in particular, following his whims whenever he came upon a crossroad. At one corner, he turned directly into a party of five men lounging in the shadows.

"Well, well, what have we here?" the tallest of them stepped toward Carlys while the rest fell in behind him. "A proper little gentleman, I see. Complete with top hat and jambee."

"The name is Carlys."

"Carlys." The man smiled, a wide dirty smile. "And what is a fine gentleman like yourself doing alone on these streets at this unholy hour?"

"I, sir, am enoying the simple pleasures of an evening stroll." He stepped back into the open space where the roads crossed and stood in a manner of perfect casualty, resting lightly on his cane.

Five mouths opened at once in raucous laughter.

"An evening stroll?" The mirth hardened on the man's face. "I say you came looking for trouble."

Carlys said nothing, only watched the men whip out knives and surround him. He took off his hat and laid it on the cobbles. The men edged closer as he continued simply to stand there, both hands resting on his cane now, never taking his eyes off the leader. They didn't see him twist the knob of his jambee, or hear the click of a latch unlocking as he did.

"For a thousand pounds, I'll leave you alive," the man said.

"A generous offer," Carlys said. "Unfortunately, I cannot accept."

He seemed to rip his cane in two then. Now he held a slender blade in his right hand, and the body of a cane in his left. "Perhaps it is you I will leave alive."

The man snarled and rushed at Carlys. So did the other four.

Carlys smiled. This, this is what he lived for. To dance with danger.

A Word for Wednesday

Micher - n, One who skulks, or creeps out of sight; a truant; an idler; a thief, etc.

I love finding fresh words to describe age-old things. It would be easier, of course, to just call a thief a thief and a truant a truant. But we're writers and easy is not our business. Not only that, but easy descriptions also quickly become boring, predictable ones. And that simply will not do. Fortunately for us, three-inch-thick wonders called dictionaries exist. Scanning the pages for unfamiliar words has to be one of my favorite things about Wednesdays.

I really like this word. Micher. I could hear it in dialogue the minute after I read the definition. I restrained myself from skipping right to the narrative and did some searching as to the history of the word. I found this passage from Nottinghamshire History:

"If [a boy's] companion is loitering in the street, he will tell you he is miching, and in so doing he uses one of the oldest words in the language, taking its derivation from the Old Norse mak, leisure—a term which even Shakespeare does not disdain to use:

‘Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher?’ I Henry IV., ii. 4.

Spenser writes, ‘To straggle up and down the country, or miche in corners amongst their friends idly’; and in a pamphlet written in 1493 we find, ‘At such fayrs and markets there be many theyvs, mychers and cut-purses."

I think it's safe to say that we're in good company whenever we use this word, don't you? Oh, and the fact that it's derived from Old Norse only makes it better as far as I'm concerned. (I've mentioned that I have a fondness for the Vikings, haven't I?)

I've been itching to get to the narrative for this word so that's all you get as far as interesting factoids surrounding the word. The fact that the above passage is all I could find regarding "micher" is merely a happy coincidence ;)


"I was crouched in the shadow that hung beneath a window-opening of the building. The tread of the two men was coming closer. I tried to make my frame smaller than it was, desperately hoping the hair atop my head would not betray my presence. I could hear them searching for me - kicking at wineskins and rattling barrels - while the scent of fermenting grapes assaulted my nose. It began to itch, a sneeze building, just as voices sounded directly behind me. I pinched my nostrils together.

"Where is he?" one voice growled. "That micher will be the end of us. You know how the Signor is about his wine."

I curled the laden skin closer to my chest.

"We won't find him tonight," the second man said. "He'll be off in the vines by now. There'll be no finding him out there."

The man with the stony voice muttered something I couldn't make out. Their steps retreated into silence and still I dared not move. Not with my heart thrumming so loud that all of Italia could hear its noise. It was as loud as the first time I'd stolen from the Signor - proof that I was no micher by nature. I was only a boy who continued in this wrong because I needed to - not for pleasure or for gain. Those men didn't understand what drove me to the vineyard at an hour when decent folk slumber. They didn't know why I flirted with discovery for a single wineskin. They had no idea how much more precious the liquid was to me than to the Signor.

When night had reigned undisturbed for several long minutes, I darted off into the sprawling field of vines, dreading my inevitable return."

A Day in Someone Else's Shoes

This week's Friday Five from Paper Hangover is just too good to pass up. So, even though I've already posted today, I'm still going to participate.

Which five (book) characters would you trade places with for a day?

1. Vin, from the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. From street rat to one of the most powerful allomancers? Yes, please. And if that's not enough, there's the crazy cool stunt-like abilities of the Mistborn. Oh, and saving the world.

2. Lucy, from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Need I say more?

3. Nat, from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham. This book is probably one of the most inspiring stories I have ever read. I read it again at least once a year. If spending one day in his shoes gave me even a fraction of his determination and diligence, it would be a day well spent. I'd love to learn how to "sail by ash breeze."

4. Beric, from Beric the Briton by G.A. Henty. He is one of the most incredible characters I've ever met between the pages of a book. He fights a lion with nothing but his cloak and wins (yes, he is that impressive). So many things happen to him and his response is never less than honorable. Actually, I think I'd rather be the girl he marries, but I don't remember her name. So, Beric it is ;)

5. Tally, from the Ugly Series by Scott Westerfeld. Here's a girl who is tireless in fighting for what's right, even when it seems impossible both internally and externally. Also, she's awesome on a hoverboard.

What about you?

Badar Basim

"It's like that name...the name with two D's or two B's. When you forget a name like that you don't really forget it, because when you hear it again you know it instantly." - Shahrazad

 (as portrayed in Shadow Spinner, by Susan Fletcher)

Some stories are like that too.

The Iron Peacock, by Mary Stetson Clarke, is one of them.

I first read it years ago when I lived in this tiny little town that quite literally had more cows than people. A little town with lots of cows, friendly down-to-earth farming folks, and a quaint old library. And in this library was this book. I read it. I loved it. And then I forgot about it.

For years, I never thought of it, not even in passing when talking about favorite books. At some point, and I don't remember what prompted it, my sister and I both remembered this great book we had read when we lived in Lisbon. About a girl...and a guy...and an iron thing for a fireplace. That's all we could remember - not the title, not the author, not the characters' names. Nothing.

It was the tiniest smidgen of a memory, the kind that normally fade from mind as quickly as they arrive, but it stayed with me. It kept popping up every time I was looking at my Wish-To-Read and Wish-To-Buy list. What was that story? I don't know how but I finally recalled the title one day. I immediately typed it into Amazon, really hoping that I had remembered rightly, and there it was. There were only two left in stock. I bought both. They arrived, I ripped open the box, picked one up, and just held it thinking, Oh, no.

I didn't recognize the cover. I didn't recognize the blurb on the back. Absolutely nothing about it seemed familiar. So I start leafing through it thinking, Please, please be the right story. There was one scene I remembered vaguely - it involved dancing and a red petticoat. I couldn't find it. I started skimming over the dialogue, trying to find the main male character somewhere so I could find his name. It wasn't working. So I flipped to the last page (even though I never do that), hoping for something, anything familiar. And that's where I found these lines:

"'Tis the way I first saw ye, as pretty as a peacock in your velvet cloak, with your head held high. I thought then ye were as proud as one, but I've learned different since. 'Tis not pride, but courage ye have, lass. Ye've the strength of iron."

Oh, yes. Yes, this is it. Ross, that was his name! The moment I knew I had the right story, I flipped back to page one and started reading. And with every page turn, I remembered more and more - what happened next, the supporting characters, the way it all worked out. I was so happy. This was the story, the characters, I had loved and forgotten. 

Re-reading it, and seeing it now on my bookshelf, it's like having a childhood friend back. A friend you liked so well that you can't imagine how you ever managed to forget them. A friend who you know instantly when you see them again. 

   

Because, sometimes, it's like the name with two D's or two B's. You never really forget it. It just gets covered with the dust of days gone by.

Words that Dance

Yes, dance.

And sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - words that live.

Those kinds of words are the reason I love to read and why books are such marvelous companions. They are so much more than organized sequences of lines and dots filling up the numbered pages with figments of the author's imagination. They're...well, they can be so many things: exciting, full of adventure and fascination; wonderful, opening your eyes to new people and places and things; challenging, presenting a different vantage point and thereby making your scrutinize your own; delightful, filled with that which is good and lovely and inspiring.

They can also be boring. Depressing. Horrible, to the point where you want to throw the book across the room, or rip out the ending and paste your own in.

It takes several things working in combination to make any book, great or awful. There's the basic grammar and language component. Then there's style. And any number of other things I won't bother to enumerate. But the heart of the book is the story. The heart of the story is its characters. And the heart of characters is that they live.

Yes, I know, they're imaginary. In a very real sense, though, characters are alive. Or, at least they should be. Need to be, really. We identify with characters because some part of them translates into our world as real. The more of them that translates, the more we love them, the more we learn from them, the more we tell all our friends to go buy this book because it's just that good.

That realness has to exist in the characters before it can translate off the page. And for that realness to exist, the characters have to be alive within their own story. (This is why people think writers are crazy)

That's what I mean by words that dance. At some point along the storytelling timeline, something inexplicable happens. The words stop being mere words. The become people. Places. A whole new world (or our own world at a different time). A world full of people who dance, and sing, and fight, and love, and laugh, and hate, and struggle - people who live.

The trouble, for a writer (as a reader, you just get to enjoy it), is that once your characters are alive, you can't exactly control them. And that can be slightly problematic. They hate the wrong person, or love the wrong one. They rebel when you try to fit them into the story arc you had so carefully constructed. Or they up and die on you (and that's really, really annoying when you like said character). Oh, and if your story world is alive, guess what? Random characters appear and throw all sorts of wrenches into "your" story. Ask me how I know.

But when words come alive, they dance right through all the pages, through THE END, and into our hearts and minds.

I think that's worth a few complications.

On Voice

I've discovered something: blogging isn't a nightmare. Or a chore. It's actually very natural and easy.

That probably sounds like a laughable discovery, I know. But I have put off entering the blog sphere (even though everything and everyone in the publishing/writing industry says that it's essential for writers - published or not - to have a web presence and, preferably, a sizable following) for so long because I thought that blogging would be as hard for me as journaling.

I am horrific at journaling. I like the look of journals. I like the idea of journaling. But I find myself utterly incapable of keeping a journal. I thought blogging would essentially be a online journal and so I avoided it, avoided it, and avoided it some more. It turns out, though, that (for me at least) blogging is nothing like journaling. I've been thinking about why that is, and I think I figured it out. Well, I have a working theory at any rate. 

It has to do with the concept of voice. 

Every single one of my journaling endeavors ended with me ripping out the pages, crumpling them into messy little balls, and throwing them in the trash. I couldn't stand to read what I had written because it sounded so fake. I wasn't on the pages. Some high-toned and fancy-to-do version of me was. But when I clicked the publish button of my first blog post, I was completely comfortable with what I had written. It sounded like me. My voice was right. (Don't ask me why I can get my voice through on a blog and not in a journal  because I have absolutely no idea)

The more I think about voice, the more I start to understand what my instructor was talking about when she critiqued the early versions of my manuscript: that my characters were two-dimensional. At the time, the comment was hardly helpful. Not because she was wrong (she was right), but because I didn't know what she meant or how to fix it. Now I do.

The key to living, breathing characters is that they have their own voice. I know I probably sound like a crazy person, talking about imaginary people having unique voices, but it's true. The primary difference between the first two drafts of my manuscript and the final one is that I knew how my characters would say the things they say. I knew their voices. That's when they came alive. I was revising a scene, read a line of dialogue, and thought, "He would never say it like that."


That's when I knew I had a story. The plot line hadn't changed. The setting was exactly the same. The conflicts and resolutions were as they always had been. But now I was working with characters that were alive instead of cardboard cutouts. Once I knew their voices, everything else fell into place and the story improved tremendously. 

The only trouble with voice is that its not something you can create. Not really. And I know that sounds ridiculous. I mean, I'm the author, I should be able to make my characters be and do and say anything I want. Here's a secret: it doesn't work that way. To a degree, yes, it does. But if my characters are so static that they don't give me problems, I have a bigger problem - I don't have a story. I just have a bunch of words strung together on a piece of paper. And those kind of words aren't worth much at all.