I FOUND MY CHARACTER'S SOUL

by Heather the Jane.

I was having a bit of a hard time lately trying to get inside the head of a character I'm writing. Oh, I love her already, there is no question there. (I'm the kind of writer who gets really close to her characters. Seriously, I cry over these people. Get chills when they 'get it'. Jump for joy when they succeed. Cringe when they make their inevitable mistakes.) And with my current literary work in progress, though I vaguely grasped my protagonist – felt her feelings, sighed with her heartache, was inside her head – I wasn't yet satiisfied that I was completely inside her soul. So how could I do her/the story, justice?

I gave her a poem. Really, I dug out a poem that I'd written a couple years ago but I'd never given a home. The poem roared up from inside me of course (as do the characters I write), but I never could 'place' it. Never sought to have it published, and never really shared it with very many, because it just didn't feel rightly placed anywhere ... until today. Today I figured out why this poem remained so close to my heart, yet only there. It's not mine. Yes, yes, I wrote it – word for word, and am quite proud of it. But it belongs to my current character.

Perfectly, these lines in rhyme, are all hers! As soon as I made the connection, I flipped it over to the manuscript in progress, jotted her initials at the bottom. Smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Because I knew, I'd found the soul of my character in those few lines. I'd found her. And now I feel I can give her/the story justice as we go along this journey. And the poem ... finally is home.

I love this writing life!