I was back with Philea in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. Her part in the novel and her situation are complicated and unique, and I struggled to write the most recent chapter featuring her. I tracked the problem back to several causes.
- Philea is a woman. I’m not.
- She resides several hundred years in the future.
- She’s been time-traveling.
- Her intelligence is higher than mine, and she’s educated. She’s the only Human (on the Earth side of the split) that has the grayware to dismiss needs for external augmented memory.
Contributing to my problem is that, complicated as the story’s part is for her, I’d not written about her and her parts recently. The situation straddled my strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: imagination and analyzing abilities. Weaknesses: inability to recall what I’ve written and over-thinking matters. The last paralyzes me.
The complications inherent in her story arc forced me to re-acquaint myself with those arcs for continuity. That took some time to do. Then, once caught up, I thought, now what happens with her? What does she do?
Fortunately, the character knew what to do. No doubt she resides in some sub-conscious cubicle in me. My strengths and weaknesses were constraining her. She couldn’t get out of the cubicle and onto the page. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to write, wondering, what’s going on?
She finally made it to the page yesterday afternoon. Boom, once she was there, she carried the scenes forward. Out of her cube, she kept going later in the day, pointing out changes needed to progress.
So, yea, rollin’ again. Once again, I’ve concluded I need to get out my way and let it happen. As the writer, I’m the least important part of this process. I hesitate to confess this realization, but I’m…just a tool.
Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 