Creating Alexander - A Writer Vents (Blogging Every Day #9)

[9]   I'm just about midway through my follow-up to "My Life at the Bottom of the Food Chain." If this were only a game of filling up pages with words, I'm be in good shape, but I'm creating the second volume in a series, and that means both maintaining a sense of continuity with the original book and creating a story that isn't simple a rehash of the first book. As I've written in other blogs, that also means maintaining a balance in Alexander's character between his tendency toward obsession, and a vulnerability that (most) people find appealing.

Creating Alexander is walking a tightrope. On one hand, he'd secretly love to hide under his bedcovers all day and never face the world. On the other hand, he's constantly searching for a solution to all his problems. Those solutions rarely lead him down the path he expects, but he keeps trying. He's got good friends, but his quirky nature sometimes makes him a bit hard to take - and, for this author, hard to write. Keeping that precarious balance is an ongoing challenge.

The second book was well outlined, but Alexander, in a sense, took over once I began the writing process itself. He has a tendency to constantly analyze and consider his options - naturally forcing his author to do the same. Choices that seemed reasonable in outline form were the opposite once character and environment are actually put into play. Contrary to my expectations, I'm finding the second volume more difficult than the first.

Sometimes my boy Alexander seems like
a devil child...but I love him anyway.

I like to describe documentary filmmaking as putting together a jigsaw puzzle in which the shapes of the puzzle pieces are constantly changing, and the image is constantly moving...

...I think the same can be applied to writing fiction!