Today I am thinking about being a writer of fiction, and how it requires what might be described as a certain benevolent brain dysfunction.

I have been a prolific writer of words all my life, but until I began my first book, I had no understanding at all of what it meant to create actual people in your head.  I mean actual people, because nothing about them seems made up.  That little suspension of reality is what I mean when I say benevolent brain dysfunction.

For Running with Angels, teen main character Haley Jo Bodine sprang forth fully formed.  I knew her completely, loved her deeply, while recognizing her flaws.  She is my fictional daughter, and as her story unfolded, I worried and fretted over her as any mother would.  I put off writing about her for weeks at a time because I knew the pain of her journey and I didn’t want to put her, or myself, through it.  Weird, I know, but entirely true.  Fortunately for both of us, everything ended well.  Haley Jo still lives in my heart and I think of her often, proud of her strength, resiliance, and well-earned maturity.  I think of her like a mother would.

Now another fictional teen-age daughter has taken up residence in my heart and head.  It took me no time at all to completely fall for her.  Her name is Maxie, and she is telling me her story as I sit at the computer and write it all down for her.  Her voice is strong and sometimes she really makes me laugh.  I never know what she’ll say next, and I’m always anxious to find out.

After giving a detailed physical description of herself, thirteen-year-old Maxie has this to say:

I look nothing at all like my pale mother Adaleen, and I know nothing at all about my father.  In my head I call him The Caballero because I think he might be Mexican, or Spanish, or maybe Native American.  My mama won’t talk about him, and it’s possible she might have just forgotten how I came to be her child.  I don’t think about it too much, except sometimes in the middle of the night I know that an egg had to have met up with a sperm and I wonder where the sperm came from.  And what unrealized gifts or horrors it left in me.  On the gift side I count the fact that I am wicked smart and widely read.  I guess the horrors haven’t manifested yet, as far as I can tell.

Later, explaining her mother’s on-going need to have a live-in boyfriend, Maxie says:

. . . I can’t help but notice that if Mama goes manless for too long, she begins to sink.  I am pretty much resigned to the fact that the rhythm of the men coming into and going out of our lives is what keeps my mama on an even keel.  . . . . . However, I DO NOT BUY FOR ONE SECOND my mother’s opinion that a man is necessary for living a good life.  I totally think that you have to depend on yourself for that.

So here I am again, mothering another great girl through what is bound to be a difficult story.  I’ll laugh when she laughs and hurt with her pain, and hope that it will all turn out right in the end.  I love my brain dysfunction.

Think about that.

*figment–of an author’s imagination

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A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits.                       Edith Sitwell

How can I know what I think until I see what I say?   E.M. Forster