North of Normal

Dispatches

I’m big on the context of things. Historical context, political context, whatever, people and events don’t pop in and out like quantum foam. They form and evolve and are affected by every other thing forming and evolving around them. I always want to know that stuff, that background that made the here and the now. I go back and forth on why this is so important to me. Sometimes I think it’s just because I’m nosy. A lot of the time, I think it’s because I’m a writer.

I’ve got these characters in my head, and they are alive. They go from place to place and talk to people and do things, and sometimes they are interesting enough to write down. And sometimes they are not. Sometimes Captain Flint is polishing his boots while Miss Rackham reads eight-month-old bad serialized romances. Jonas washes his socks. Wendy and Claire call each other between loads of laundry. It’s nothing I’ll ever tell you about, because it’s nothing, really. Except that it’s everything. It’s the context, and it’s vital that I know, as a writer, how boring life can be on the Red Quay when nobody’s shooting at you, and how small and sad Jonas’ life is getting, and that in between delicates and darks Wendy became the person Claire can call when something earth shattering happens.

Because without knowing that, I can’t make you see why the whole crew needs a night in Tortuga in the worst way and why Jonas finally comes to the asylum after five years and why Wendy picks up on the second ring at ten o’clock on a Tuesday. The story isn’t made up of just the interesting parts, it’s got to be the sum total of every small unseen thing in every character’s life. You don’t need to see it, but I do.

And so I’ve got these characters, remember? These people that wash socks and call each other? I’ve got to know how they think, and what they think, and why they think it. I’ve got to know what they will say out loud and what they never, ever will. I’ve got to know who their parents were, and their best friend in fourth grade, what they do when no one’s looking and what they dream about. They are whole, real, live people in there, and I just watch them unfold. It’s not like I . . . make this stuff up, exactly. I see it, I watch it, and I think I’m more a reporter than anything else, sending back dispatches from my own imagination. They tell me the story, whatever it is, and I tell you. They do things I can’t control, sometimes, things I can’t change when I want to.

I watch them when it’s quiet. Before I fall asleep or as I’m waking up; when I’m stuck in traffic; when there’s nothing on TV or while playing freecell. I tune in for a few minutes, see what they are up to. Sometimes I say: what does it look like when this happens? And I watch them advance the plot. Sometimes they creep up on me, in the middle of a sentence over dinner I get the start of a conversation, a movement, a twist. And sometimes I just drop in while waiting for the light to change, to see what’s happening in their world today. I did that this morning on my way to work, and something terribly sad happened. It’s had me near to tears all day, so if you find me a bit melancholy, this is why.

Today’s dispatch from inside my head reads:

Strange McPhee died this morning, quietly and without regret. He saw it coming, of course. He saw everything. Surrounded by something like family, people who gave him comfort and companionship, in the end they even gave him the one thing he hadn’t seen in near his whole life: a surprise. He was somewhere in age between sixty and one hundred and ten, lived what could be called a full life by people who like cliches, and is survived by one monkey and a daughter no one knows about. He will be mourned and missed.