It's My Character! | Words Count

Recently I had a very EMBARRASSING writer thing happen to me in public!

Mar 7

Recently I had a very EMBARRASSING writer thing happen to me in public!

Part of my writing process is to go for long walks and listen to audiobooks. Often I will listen to craft books and sometimes partake in the writing exercises especially if it is something I want to try out with my students.

On this particular day, I was reading The 90-day Novel by Alan Watt. It has great stream-of-consciousness exercises, so I thought I would use my voice-to-text app and do the exercises while I was walking.

I was cutting through Camosun College which has a narrow paved path with grass on either side. The grassy area was empty, so it felt like I was alone.

The prompt I chose involved writing for five minutes about something no one knew about your character that wouldn’t be apparent by looking at them.

In a particularly uninspired moment, I decided that my character would have low self-esteem even though she seemed confident.

In first person point of view (so I could really get into the character), I said into my notes app, “I hate myself.”

But the app wasn’t dictating correctly, and I had to repeat the phrase again, but it still wasn't correctly dictating. I quickly became annoyed at the app and began yelling into my phone the way I do when I’m mad at Siri, “I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself," I repeated. Each time I said it, I got louder and louder.

I was wearing noise cancelling headphones and couldn’t hear my surroundings, but it suddenly occurred to me that someone might be behind me on the path, so I turned around and sure enough there was a person directly behind me.

They looked away when I caught their eye like some private moment of mine had been invaded. Mortified, I jumped off the path so they could pass and discovered four other people right behind them.

Dying inside, I pretended to busy myself with my phone while the line of people continued along the path.

I wanted to yell, “It’s my character. I'm a writer! I don’t hate myself!”

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