As a writer I experience lots of ups and downs with the projects I have swirling around my head. I meet characters in my mind, fall in love with them and make coffee dates with them just to see them walk out of my lives two weeks later because I haven’t made enough time for them. Such is the life of a writer: Our best stories come to us at 4 in the morning when we’re too tired to write and they disappear in the morning when we’ve had a fresh pot of coffee and enough energy to run a marathon.
My love for putting pen to paper came when I was little, primarily because I loved to read and I was often convinced that I could tell a story better than the great American authors (still true by the way–except for JK Rowling…I don’t think I can spin a tale like JK Rowling). I’ve been reading this great book, Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr. I initially picked it up as part of the Modern Day Mrs. Darcy reading challenge. I had heard of Doerr’s novels and I admit the reference to “The biggest funeral in the history of the world” attracted my eye as it was in reference to the funeral of Pope St. John Paul II. Having spent three days in Rome (in the summertime), I was interested to see a writer’s take on the Eternal City. What I found was that the book was less about Rome as a location and more about the city as the main character in a great book. The architecture was more than just buildings; the architecture was Rome’s physical characteristics just as much as the lightning bolt belongs to Harry Potter. The pasta and chocolate weren’t just Roman culinary delights; the food was what welcomed the Doerr family with Mrs. Weasley’s warm embrace.
As I grew more and more (re)acquainted with the great city of Rome, I realized that Anthony Doerr wasn’t just recording his day to day life in journals. He was introducing the reader to a great character in the story of his life. He put it best with this passage:
I journal all the time, almost daily. And I do it for me. But I think about the characters I’ve created and what I hope they will do for my readers. And this is it – I want them to help the reader “refine, perceive and process the world.” I want them to pull the reader into a dream that wouldn’t have existed of those characters didn’t exist.
I feel like doing that requires that I not be afraid of my characters, that I be the one who empowers them rather than feeling like they’ll disappear when I leave them on their own. I want to be the one who manufactures a dream. I want to remember that I’m the boss of the stories I write. In short, I want to claim my AUTHORity.
It’s not something you have to earn. It’s something you have as soon as you pick up an pen and say, “I am a writer.”
Roamin' Catholic 