I find it so easy to write stereotypical characters because I see things in such extremes, but a regular, everyday person you can relate to is harder for me. I’ve never been an everyday person, I’ve never been good friends with an everyday person. My own aunt told me I was extreme, she was referring to my political views (which I thought were fairly liberal but moderate) but it goes further than that. Everything Seems polarised nowadays and I am a product of that, to see past that can be difficult.
I remember when I was in my late teens I wrote a poem about an eighty year old man dying, from his point of view. I remember being on the tube and the words just started running in order so fast I struggled to write them down quickly enough (thank goodness I used to bring my diary everywhere with me.) and there it was on the paper, as if an elderly man had reached out on his deathbed straight into my mind and made me write it.
So why, just over a decade later am I now incapable of getting into the head of anyone I don’t know? I guess it’s not that I can’t but maybe more that I’m less assured of myself now. I used to think I knew a lot, even enough to “know I knew nothing”, but I didn’t really understand what nothing means. There are so many different facets of human history, so many different stories, so much scope of human emotion and reaction and creation. It can be overwhelming, so you write what you know. You write about the people you know and you try to meet lots of different people. I definitely need to get out of my own head a bit more and speak to people I wouldn’t usually speak to because that’s the real way to further your knowledge, you’ve got to burst your bubble.
