Finding Characters 8/5/12

We’ve been up at the Red Feather for a couple of days. Had light sail yesterday up to “the cove” for a swim and some relaxing float time. That place will be one of the most memorable of our times up here. We will be moving out shortly after we bring Phloe home at the end of this month. It is a bittersweet thought, as we’ll be saying good bye to  the cabin, the cove, and all the wonderful sailing and hiking up here. Looking back, I can say that my own growth as a writer took a positive turn while under the influences of this place.

The nights here are quiet, dark among the old firs and ferns. Sleep brings dreams that don’t otherwise make themselves so visible, but here spring into consciousness as  soon as I awake. The mornings are slow, unencumbered times, with the light of the day moving into the pine-paneled living room through the sky-lights and mottled through the rangy limbs far above. The dog sleeps again in his bed, and there is time for writing, easy, open time for writing. And this is what I do up here. I write in the mornings and it eases my spirit. 

So I have carved out a semblance of a routine at the Red Feather, and I use that word because in my work-a-day life back home, I do not yet have this routine established. I wake up, hurry through the morning like a chipmunk up a tree, and go to work. I come home, nap, and try some work on the house, yard, etc. Night-time is probably the best time for me to write, but exhaustion takes me over; I am definitely more inspired and motivated in the morning.

So, going forward, leaving the Red Feather, what will my writing practice consist of? I believe the answer lies in what I intend to write. I think that I should be writing my stories, the novels that I have planned, poetry, whatever the hell I want, really. But what I tend to write the most are the ramblings in my journal and these autowrite, involving such naval gazing and self reflection that I wonder how I can imagine the world of my characters. And yet, it is the very intention of these autowrites to guide me toward my characters, let them speak more, let their lives out on to the paper. 

Cynthia Moore is a my protagonist in Teachers Lounge. She is an eager, new teacher, a newly hired “full-time temp” who must discover through the absurdity of a “new progressive” commercial school how to teach. Her husband, Donald, is himself slated to be terminated as a history teacher in one of the crumbling public schools that did not opt for corporate funding. Their child, Melissa, is four-year-old on the brink of entering the school system. These cases will be necessary to show by contrast the state of affairs among schools and teachers, and to show the bigger complexity and implications for parents and students. 

Although the story needs to nail these realties, I think it’s more important for the characters to be carefully fleshed out as human beings. Cynthia and Donald need to have an argument. Perhaps just as his student loans are finally paid off, hers begins. Donald needs to be involved in something desperate, perhaps an undercover movement. Maybe he is arrested. Maybe he resumes drinking after a long hiatus. There needs to be tension in the home that is traceable to the stresses of education, of becoming educated.

I’m alluding here to theme. What theme? Is it upward mobility gone awry? Is it the erosion of the American dream?