Writing is like Controlled Schizophrenia

Someone asked me why I write fiction. I think I tried to say something cool like, “It connects people” or “I like to create worlds” or “Chicks dig it”. But really, I think it’s because I've been crazy lonely.

           

           When I was taught how to write short stories, I was told to know the characters so intimately, you can carry on a conversation with them. To me, this sounded like controlled schizophrenia, complete with a permanent residency at the Bates’ Motel. 

However, the more I got into the lives of the characters I created, the more fun I had with it. My first character was a womanizing, smokin’, black party guy from the Bronx. Coming from me who was (at the time) a goodie-two-shoes white boy from Texas who greatly respected women (and still do), it shocked me. I got an A on the assignment and my teacher wrote: “I don’t want Sean [my character] to live on my street, but I do want to go bowling with him!”

  I remember staring at the assignment in shock afterwards thinking:

Where the heck did that come from?

For some reason, being able to write/think/speak new ideas from another person's perspective gave me permission to feel thing that I once thought was my “weird”. Don’t get me wrong: I still feel insecure at times. Even though I have many friends that are girls, I still silently freak out when I have feelings for them. And while I don’t claim to understand all the things in my life, sometimes life is just easier to understand when it happens to other people (even if some of those people are made up in your head).

When I create characters to write about, I am free to discover and confront pockets of emotions that I’m uncomfortable with: like the fact that I don’t have a working plan with my life right now, that I don’t really have a place to call “home” yet, and even though I genuinely endorse my beliefs, there are times where I am tempted to say “@#$% it” and go live in a trailer with all of my imaginary friends.

Well, they said we could have it...

But by some miracle, writing this way makes me appreciate the quirks of the people around me. People in my life usually morph their way into the characters of my writing and I am forced to see where they fit in the story of my life. I have to see where there good and dark spots are, and empathize with their stories as well.

In short, writing fiction allows me to appreciate people for all that they are, and therefore allows me to love my neighbor. 

What do you think? Why do you write?