On Characters and Nature

I love the times when your character finally opens up and has a nice long talk with you, especially after a year. I was almost about to send Clare into "retirement", but I guess I won't be doing that for a while...if she helps me get everything on paper.

You might think I'm crazy, but I'm a writer. I think that, though characters are not real physically, they are still a part of you and can be very real mentally. They may not be tangible, but it seems that, when you create little things about a character they become real and alive in your mind. I suppose this is a good thing for writers, because then we can make our characters deep and real. In order for someone to become better aquainted with another person, you have to talk to them and let them become real to you, not just another person you see whose life you know nothing about.

It's not like our characters will be real in the next world, or that we may run into them in the street, but they still become a part of us, just as much as any other person we come to know.

"We are the product of lives which have touched ours." --President Gordon B. Hinckley

It is a beautiful warm night outside, with a gentle breeze and a few faint last calls of the birds. I love this time of night. It is when the world becomes mostly still for once, remaining so into the early hours of the morning. It is my inspiration. I go outside and listen to the breeze in my own little world...the world of my backyard. It is peaceful.

Sometimes I even get little pleasant surprises that make me smile. For example, just tonight I was sitting down, listening to the birds when, swoop! A massive bird soared low over my yard just in front of me, it's wings spread out to catch the wind. It was dark, so I didn't see what kind of bird it was, but it's wing span was probably between three to four feet wide. Oh how glorious it was! I felt a surge of joy for this bird who could fly, and imagined my spirit flying after it and soaring on the wind. What a beautiful world we live in!

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bears her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers:

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not-- Great God! I'd rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn:

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

--William Wordsworth

(one of my favorite poets)