The Moody Blues

As in, I'm moody and I kind of have the blues.

I'm doing better. I haven't cried today, so things aren't as bad as they've been, I guess. I was even in a pretty good mood for most of the day. Now, stupid little things have set me back and so I'm sad again. But that's not what I want to write about. I want, instead, to write about writing.

In order to become a better writer, a writer has to recognize his or her weaknesses and learn to overcome them, and today, I discovered a major weakness of mine. It isn't something I would have noticed while writing poetry or non fiction. It is a problem I have, almost exclusively, with writing large works of fiction.

I sat down to write tonight and found myself writing my character, who should have been, by all rights, overflowing with excitement, as if she were slightly depressed and borderline angry. Another character, a friend of my main character, was even more depressed and far beyond borderline angry. My characters ended up taking on my mood, in other words, and having the fight that I would like to have to clean the air.

I am wildly jealous at the moment, jealous of someone who has what I want. That's not news. I'm jealous of just about everyone, because it seems like just about everyone can have what is out of reach to me. The trouble is that the person who can have what I want is the person I want to have what I want with. I know, I know. That wasn't very clear. So here, my situation is this.

There is a person I like. A lot. And while the only person available to me is that person, he has many, many choices. Therefore, our relationship will always be unequal and he will always have power over me. He will always be able to hurt me by deciding not to see my anymore and I will never be able to hurt him.

And in my story, I have a character (Jany) who firmly believes that she does not have the ability to attract a decent man. (Can't imagine who that might be based on.) She is wildly insecure and has settled for many men who are not good for her, none of them for more than one date or outing because they never want her attention enough to strive for it. The other character, Selena's, role is to sort of balance her out. Selena is more confident and bolder and much more positive than Jany is. However, Selena seems to be in a bit of a slump. She is currently in a very Jany-esque mood. That might work, a sort of role reversal, except that Jany is not any more positive than Selena is, even though she has just been kissed by a wonderful man who very much seems to want to see her again. And even though Selena wants her. Like WANT wants her, which is part of Selena's problem.

Jany is jealous of Selena, because Selena has never had a problem attracting men, or women either, for that matter. Selena is jealous of Jany because this one man has been kissing Jany when Selena wishes it was her. And the only reason either of these ficttitional characters cares is that I am filled with jealousy in real life. I guess a fiction writer's job is to channel all his or her emotions through his or her characters without letting those emotions control his or her characters. And at the moment, I am a failure.

I have a few options here. I can resolve my issues, which will be difficult if not impossible. Someday soon, I will have to, but at the moment, I can't, and at the moment, I have to write. So, I can either write my jealous rage into my characters and make it make sense or I can get over it and move on. It would take far more revising than I have time for to make this overly jealous mood make sense, so all that's left is to get over it.

Which leaves me exactly where I started. Sigh.

But that's okay. The first step toward solving a problem is recognizing it, so far as I figure, I'm on the right track. Now find the rest of the solution.