I call them “my girls.” And yes, the main characters of my two WIPs are female.
Why?
- I’m a girl
- who likes writing about girls.
Gi and Mila aren’t like me. Not completely. I actively avoid inserting myself in my stories and yet, when I read them, I notice little pieces, brushes of my thoughts and fears embedded in their actions, in their triumphs and mistakes. I don’t know why that happens, or if there is a way to avoid it altogether. Do I even want to prevent it? What am I exploring through them, if anything? I’m not afraid of accidentally showing those shades of myself through my characters anyway —very few people would be able to tell the pieces apart in any case.
Back to the point: these fictional girls have become something close to friends for me. (Side note: with these words, I start a delusional speech. This is your cue to leave, or to stay at your own risk). They don’t know each other (they’ll obviously never “meet,” they exist in different worlds) and they never “talk with me” (not yet, LOL?). But I’m always there when they laugh and cry; when they get hurt, and when they do harm (because trust me, these girls’ fuck-ups are epic).
I miss them when I’m not typing away their lives (when I’m stuck in “reality,” and they are frozen in the awful made-up worlds I threw them in). I wish I had the freedom to write full time and thus spend endless hours with both of them. I wish I could dedicate a decent half-day of work to each of their stories, focusing my mind and my heart on their adventures.
Writing is liberating, but I’ve come to believe there is a price to pay for those of us who don’t have the luxury of devoting ourselves to the craft as much as we wish we could: the long (way too long) hours spent at our day jobs, removed from our stories, become depressing, don’t they?