Okay, let me wrestle the spotlight away from all these jokesters—and king jokester himself, Dervish—to say something for a minute. I know Dervish believes he could exist without me, and it’s hard for him to realize I created him.
Which brings me to how stories and characters come to life in the first place. I never set out to do this—it just happens. A small snippet of a possible story will pop into my head while I’m walking, driving, or even doing the dishes. Then I have to figure out how to shape it: What kind of vehicle will carry the idea? How do I resolve it, twist it, make it funny, or make it real?
Sometimes, you have to leap into the abyss and see what comes out. You shut off the logical part of your brain and just surf the wave, letting go of the usual locked gates that hold you back. I think they call it flow. You can’t force it. That’s why my first stabs at writing are messy—I don’t worry about grammar, just the thoughts.
As for characters, they come from a place called “ation”—exaggeration, extrapolation, imagination, amalgamation. They’re tiny pieces of things you’ve heard, things you’ve felt, people you’ve known, something someone once said. But they’re never just one thing. It’s like making a stew—if you get it right, it tastes good. And if you get characters right, they feel real.
Writers, artists, musicians—we do what we do even if no one ever sees, hears, or reads it. It’s a force that feels like magic, and that’s why I keep doing it. Maybe it’s like a runner’s high, but I’m too lazy to find that out. I’ll just walk and look at the trees, thanks.
All those years in the corporate world, dreaming of getting home to do the things I actually wanted to do—only to be too tired to do them. And yet, somehow, I still did them. Because of that force.
