I am starting to annoy myself.
Not a rarity, by any means, but I’m annoying myself in a whole new way at the moment.
You know those kids who go on a gap year and for the next decade of their lives start all their conversations with “On my gap year…”
I have a similar problem.
The reason for the current self-annoyance is my new best friend. I love her. We get on SUPER well. And, like those irritating traveller types who bang on about finding a whole new level of inner peace whilst kayaking upstream along the Nile, I am falling into the awful habit of starting the majority of my internal monologues with, “Well, X would do this.” Or “X thinks this about that.” “X would never drink instant crap if fresh filter coffee was available.”
It doesn’t help that X is a figment of my imagination. A really strong, fierce, mega-cool figment of my imagination.
And, if that wasn’t quite neurotic enough, I’m pretty sure she would hate me in real life if she was, in fact, real. And the whole while I would want her to like me so bad. I would be like the lonely girl at school, trying to catch the popular kid’s eye and then waving like a doofus when said eye was eventually caught.
See, neurotic and annoying.
Man alive, I’m a keeper.
But, in the long run, this bout of hyper-aware self-annoyance is all good. I find it far easier to write a character I know an awful lot about. When writing book one I spent most car journeys discussing the items on the news with the fictitious folk from my novel. I’ll do the same with novel two and I know the work will benefit. The fact that this particular woman has infiltrated my mind so thoroughly can only be a good thing when it comes to writing her down.
A good thing from a writers’ POV anyway.
A psychiatrist may have another label for it.
Rebecca Tinnelly 