Loose Laces

My most profound accomplishment this day was to print paychecks.
----
Started a new short story for the first time in nearly a year. It felt good to write some hillbilly dialogue and begin forming new characters to take on old rolls. Making characters come to life is a major challenge for most fiction writers. The best way to do it is do it everyday. Soon, the writer will see the nuances that differentiate the players. He will feel the swagger of the antagonistic bully and he will feel the angst of the protagonist when his girl takes up with another guy. A writer must be able to live each role in his mind. I was never good at it, because I can't leave the characters alone; I am constantly changing them and small changes can lead to big consequences. If I was smart, I would follow Ernest Hemingway's advice and that is to get the players in character early on, and then spend the rest of the story writing the story. If I was smart.

Others say build the characters slowly; allow the reader to get to know them and either hate or love them. I've done it both ways, but I just am not a good character maker. I am at my best writing the story.

To finish the story, I will have to take some time off from Flickr. God, how they'll miss me! Not too likely to miss me much, I'm glad to say.

This story is one of my rare ones not built upon something that happened in my life years ago. I will be making it up entirely as I write, and it will require heavy editing from the get-go. I won't have any old acquaintances to build on, so each character will be new to me, but I have to convince the reader (wishful thinking) that I and each of the players are part of one another.

The following is one of my favorite quotes from what I've written so far. This is from the main player as he and his buddy come upon some RR tracks while walking a lonely country road:

"There's a perfect world somewhere down them tracks, but you and me Buster; we just don't fit nowhere in perfect. We best git a walkin'."

I have to convince you to read it like Bogart would say it if Bogart were a hillbilly, and as if you never heard of Bogart.