Writing is caring

By CherryX (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Something prompted me to start writing my novel* again.  Actually, a lot of somethings, including some personal experience.  But the tip of the iceberg was reading the first chapters in Notes on Life and Letters by one of my favorite authors (Joseph Conrad).  Interwoven in his discourse are two interrelated, simple points for writers:

1. Don't be pretentious.  Stay on the same level as your characters and avoid reigning over them.
2. Care about your characters.

This made me realize I am very good at liking my characters and very bad at caring about them.  Because writing is caring, and I had stopped writing.  One asks, "Why should I care?  Why should anybody care?"  That is where humility - intellectual humility, as Conrad puts it - comes in.  Be humble, and write for the sake of writing.  Don't be too lofty to immerse yourselves in your characters' world.

Putting it in a different perspective - let's say I don't care about my book that much.  But don't I care about my characters very much?  For me - who am drawn to character-driven books - this is the deciding point.  I love my characters.  Therefore, I will write their stories.

*Quasi-steampunk/alternative universe, with hints of dystopian/futuristic.  My sister has also been asking for the next installment of my Dracula retelling, so I'm going to be returning to that project, too.