A Look Around Hannah's Brain

I had dinner with my friend Jori last night and she said something that I took to be a huge compliment. We were talking about how much she enjoys reading her friends' writing and she commented on the fact that she felt she could probably, if she chose to, write some sort of nonfiction book. She could, too! Jori is wicked smart and her vocabulary is excellent and she puts her words together in ways that make me laugh. Once, while suffering through a cold, she explained her muddled thoughts as existing in "a snot fog." I still use this expression every time I have a cold; I love it!

Anyway, last night Jori said she could likely put together some sort of nonfiction work, but that she doesn't have characters living in her head like I do... with all the intricacies of their lives. And then she mentioned how it's so fun to read my stuff because she gets a glimpse of what's going on in my head all the time. "You can't turn it off," she pointed out, "and I can't imagine that."

But I can't imagine not having all these lives in my head. I mean, what would I think about if there weren't clusters of characters occupying my thoughts?

Admittedly, Sebastian is the ultimate character, and in January, you guys are finally going to really get to know him. Fair warning: you probably won't love him as much as I do. No one ever seems to. Bas is so incredibly real to me that I'm almost incapable of putting him into words... ALMOST. Because, I mean, putting Sebastian Porter into words is pretty much my favorite pastime.

Last night, while driving home from Jori's house, I was thinking about Bas. This is nothing new as I'm thinking about him constantly, but I thought it might be interesting to those of you who don't have characters living in your head to know what a typical 35-minute drive home is like for me.

I run through dialogue all the time. Bas is nearly always the star of this dialogue, and the people who he interacts with are usually Lucy, Bert, and Nol. The timeline varies constantly. I mean, Bas has been with me since I was in the fourth grade, and while he appears as a child in flashbacks, the book that truly tells his story is Kick It One More Time. You don't have access to this quite yet, but someday you will. He's in his early twenties in Kick It, as are Lucy and Bert.

Uptempo, Down, which is what I'm working on now, is set about ten years after Kick It, making the Lake Caywood gang thirty-five years old. In Running Through the Words (you'll get to experience this in January), everyone's forty-five, and Come and Go So Quickly takes place two years after that, so... forty-seven years old.

Last night, while driving home, I imagined an exchange with Bas as he stood at the refrigerator, looking for something to satisfy his hunger. He wore a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a flannel that hung open to expose his bare chest. Lucy walked in and wondered what he was doing, and when he said he was hungry, she suggested he eat a piece of fruit... there were oranges in the fridge. He wanted something crunchy, though, so then she recommended chips. Bas didn't want to be unhealthy, however, so Lucy, feeling frustrated at this point, told him to eat some nuts... "Which are not kept in the refrigerator," she added, annoyed that he was standing there with the door hanging open. They were in their thirties in that scene and it's a scene that's never been used in a book. It likely never will be.

After that, I flashed back to his twenties, when he was on crutches after a car accident, and envisioned him hobbling around Lake Caywood with his best pal Bert. Dialogue accompanied that too, of course, as Bas-and-Bert dialogue is my favorite dialogue to write, period.

Then I flashed forward to Uptempo, Down and considered a scene I'm currently writing that involves a sleepless night, a major headache, and an unexpected visitor. I don't want to say more than that because I'm still working on it don't want to give stuff away since you'll get to read it at some point... but I bring it up because until I started writing this scene, I -- like Sebastian -- was having sleepless nights. Weird, right? Once I got his experiences down on paper, though, I was able to sleep again. It took me about a week to figure out what needed to be done.

Back to last night's car ride... From there, I zipped ahead a decade or so and remembered this date night Lucy and Bas had where they were talking about heavy issues. This is a scene you will probably never be able to remember because I've never written it and likely never will. There are so many plotlines that never make it onto the pages because to put everything that Bas, Lucy, and Bert do into a book would be like putting every miniscule detail of your day (or mine!) into a book. And who wants to read that? It'd be boring.

The thing is, I have all the nitty-gritty details of Sebastian in my head. I love that guy. Granted, I love all of my characters, but I love him the most and know him the most. I think, as a whole, I'm pretty good at taking constructive criticism... but I will admit that it's hard when a reader tells me she doesn't think Bas would behave that way. If another character wouldn't behave that way...? Okay. But not Sebastian. I know him soooooo well. And he is complicated! He's artistic and moody and not always easy to like; he sometimes struggles to put his thoughts into words and this can be maddening. He's a phenomenal friend, though, and he's with me constantly. I mean, it's not even so much that I think about him as I live with him... if that makes sense.

Alright. Now that you think I'm sufficiently crazy, I'm gonna end this. I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into my brain!