The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

48 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 4 story and its background in isolation as well in order to be better able to understand my characters, and in turn had to peer into the core of my being to identify the ways in which isolation had molded me. Aspects of my own personality found their way into the personalities of the characters; I was artistic and intellectual, therefore so was the protagonist. In this I had to strike a balance between creating my characters in my image and not making them into replicas of myself. They had to have a shadow of who I was within them so that I could associate with them in order to write their story, but at the same time, they needed to be their own unique selves, separate and different from my own nature, in order to truly come to life within the pages. After I had identified the ways in which they corresponded to and diverged from me, I had to look at myself and ask several difficult questions. What really matters to me? What motivates me? How do I feel about this topic? How would I react in this situation? What, in the end, really makes me who I am? Only when I answered these questions and many more like them could I start from the traits I had given my characters and have them answer the same questions through my work. Planning that story was exhausting, time-consuming, and a powerful learning experience for me. Finally, though, I thought I was ready. I was wrong. It turned out that the planning process had just been a pale shadow of what was to come. I had a full plan for the story before I set the first word down; by the end of the first chapter, it had changed to some extent. By the end of the third chapter, I had revised it significantly. By the end of the fifth chapter, I had discarded most of the second half and started over. Sometimes I would write entire chapters at a time, and others I would go for over a month without writing a single word. Even the end result was far from satisfactory. I was continually revising parts and even rewriting them altogether, trying to improve on the inherent flaws that were so obvious once I went back and looked themover. In addition, the story as a whole was rife with problems that couldn’t be easily fixed. By its very nature, it was slow-paced and reflective to an extent that made it difficult for people to enjoy it. As my mother said once after I gave her a part of it to read, “This is good, but there is an awful lot of small talk. Maybe you could try to make it more streamlined?” At the time, reluctant to change something I had already worked so hard on, I responded,