“I hardly know, sir….” begins Alice’s reply to the caterpillar, and I totally understand.  Some days I’m one person, some days I’m completely another.  Today I’m cautious and sensible.  Yesterday, I did something wild on a whim.  Part of this is just being  silly – after all, I’m hardly the girl I was in my twenties.  But part of her still lingers and wants to get out once in a while.

I was a military brat, and we moved constantly.  When I was about 10, I realized that with each move there was opportunity to re-invent myself.  So at every chance, I told people to call me by my middle name, or changed the spelling of the first, or made other changes.  I wore colors I had never worn before.  I tried to break old habits and create new ones.  I lied!   There you have it – the beginnings of a fiction career (or borderline multiple personality disorder.).

In a way, I was acting – at least that sounds like a reasonable explanation.  But unlike an actor, once you create a new personality for yourself, you have to maintain it.   No matter what superficial changes you make - clothes, hairstyles, nicknames - underneath lies the real self.   So I was still me - brassy, feeling out of place, and making the same silly mistakes.  And longing to be someone else.

When we write, that’s much easier.  Sometimes our characters are the people we want to be, or perhaps an exaggerated version of what we don’t like about ourselves.  They learn lessons we wish we had learned, and take actions we regret not taking.  They are talented, brave, and independent, or unscrupulous and despicable.  Of course, opportunity is there to incorporate other people - mothers, fathers, siblings, children, or friends and enemies - and re-invent them, too.

At many conferences, workshops, and other writing discussions, we are warned of the dangers of our characters being versions of ourselves.  We are told to get out of our own heads and explore and learn new personalities so that our readers don’t get bored.  I’ve been doing that for years, so I’m way ahead of the game!   In my home office  (which right now is an expanded version of Fibber McGee’s closet) there is a whole file drawer full of charts, character analysis tables, personality analyses, tricks and tips for creating people, and several books on the subject. 

And that’s the fun of it.  We search our characters minds and learn.  What would she do?  With bright red hair and a temper to match, how would she handle a philandering boyfriend?  Or, that one - dark and brooding.  She’d learn to handle a gun and…   Every time we sit in front of a computer or pick up a pen, we are confronted with endless possibilities.  Places we’ve never been, people we’ve never met and things we’ve never dreamed of doing are all on that blank page, waiting for us.

Let’s see.  Who do I want to be today?