love...love...love 

Hi everyone.  I have been fecking around for a month unable to focus on anything.  I have written words in my novel, but I doubt they are very good words, and they will probably have to be replaced at some time in the near future.  
August is never a good month for me (I'm sorry to all those wonderful Leo and Virgos out there who find this time of year very important to yourselves) It's the time where impending Spring gives Winter a damn good slap and breaks its back.  Its a time of change and a time when I get a really bad dose of the "Yuks" and can't concentrate on anything, I just sort of mentally limp through the days before collapsing into a state of "blah" and "can't be fecked-ness" (my friend Carole calls it Ennui which is wonderful)
So I am trying to draw words for my Novel out of my veins (that's what it felt like) So I have to stop, and just do stuff, lots of stuff so I've been filling my time with drawing silly things and writing poetry.   




Characters

A lot of people want to know where I get my characters from.  Especially the villains - people want to know who I base them on.  Well, the answer is everybody and nobody.  
I think humans are a complex mish-mash of Whakapapa (Genealogy), environment, parents (or lack of), physiology, spirituality, and psychology; which are all driven by a brain - which is essentially three brains squashed together inside one small skull - which squirts off a cocktail of  hormones that governs how we think, act and feel.  
So, most people, especially the ones I know, can be good or bad depending on the circumstances.  Some do terrible things, but can justify it all inside their heads.  Some are lovely, at all times, then have the occasional breakdown when all that lovely just gets a bit too much for them.  
What I really believe is that people should just be who they are, and most people try to do that,  but the best characters are the people who try to shoehorn their personality into something else that they believe will please others and then come completely unstuck when they can't keep up the charade anymore.  

I believe you should write what you know and believe me, we know a hell of a lot more than we think we do.  
When I want to create a real character the best way to do it is put their characteristics, hangups, mentalities and mindset onto myself, and then write what I would do in that situation.  After a while, you can create people without having to do that, but then, if that character gets into trouble, jump into their shoes (or jandals) and act it out, even if they are psycho baddies.  
Fiction is about truth, not facts.  

My characters always start with a look, then a voice, then an action.  I have to know what they look like even if I don't describe them fully to the reader, and this is because I am a visual person.  I have storyboards where I have images either drawn or photos of a close approximation of what I think each character looks or dresses like.  
I have never lifted a real person and shoved them into a character ( a lot of people won't believe that but it's true) however there are things that I admire in people because of the people who surround me.  I admire humour, humbleness, shyness, quietness but also brashness, confidence and especially intelligence.
 I love Red hair and green eyes, but I can't have every character looking like that, (I'm not Catherine Cookson and this isn't the Mallen Streak)  But I do give those attributions to people I feel are special and otherworldly.  I also love feisty young woman who won't take shit from anyone, probably because I am surrounded by them. 
My antagonists are usually people who are flawed but not irredeemable...that is because I have the Pollyanna approach to life that everyone can be redeemed...I am possibly pissing in the wind (as my late husband David used to say with great frequency) but that is what I truly believe.  

Along with all that true love is when someone can accept everything about you, even the disgusting stuff and come on...we all have disgusting stuff.


I have done some dreadful things in my lifetime, stuff worthy of horror stories, truly, and my husbands, my sweet lovely darling of a husband -  Scotty too hotty - thinks those things are endearing.  
If you get one of those, don't for god sake let the bugger go. 

Oliviaxxxxxxxxxx