Today, one of the brilliant lecturers, a gent from Kent, England, late of the University there ( and who was able to tell me about the imaginative typography of the marshes so I can someday trace the great Great Expectations Literary Tour of Dreams) mentioned how Dickens was so attuned to his characters that he ( among other things) .....
a.) knew far more about them than what made the page--- hence discussions with his illustrators with characteristics and nuances that were never interwoven into their literary lives in print
b.) that he knew that his time with them was tenuous---he was their keeper until they set out into the wide world, were appropriated by many, and he would encounter them in varied, strange and wonderful ways
c.) he could HEAR THEM TALKING TO HIM. He knew his characters so well that he could hear their voices.
Of course, as is the case with an enthusiastic collective of people all milling and mulling serendipitously over a shared concept, there were gasps of appreciation and revelling in our favourite characters and personages from "Dickensland" and his wide canon as well as the depth to which he knew the page-friends that would spring from his pen and into our heads and hearts
... Of course ....
But, it made me cherish my writing ( I'm not Dickens. I am not comparing myself to Dickens. Heck! ) insofar as experience because..... bloggies.... I can hear the voices of my characters.
I know their voices, their inflections. I have that. I have talked before about the physical ache I had when I sent my most recent book into the world and that is borne of the fact that, like Dickens before me, I was so in tune with them, and so invested in them and so close to them mentally and emotionally that I can make out each inflection. They yap at me. They jabber.
It doesn't happen with every book I have written. But the most recent? My lovely female detectives and the men in their adventurous lives? I can hear them.
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| Look! i am in CHICAGO! |
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