Writing this novel is just free CBT

I think what’s going on is that I’m scared to write my main characters. Even think about them…maybe? I mean, I did a lot of thinking on them when I first ran headlong, maybe foolishly, into this endeavor. And now, honestly, I feel like they’ve turned into these feral little raccoons that I’m keeping at bay with a stick in this little corner of my mind.

And that stick looks like a bunch of secondary characters.

But, spoiler alert, this intense scrutiny will eventually claim my secondary characters and move them decidedly into the main character territory. Is this how writers end up with pages of dramatis personae?

Ok, so, for example. I have a character that doesn’t talk much. Like, his second-most defining trait is his silence. And this fool won’t shut up! In my brain. It doesn’t help that I accidentally gave this side piece a soul-crushing backstory. He was supposed to be chill, simple. But then I gave him some massive trauma, now he’s got feelings, and shit is off the rails.

Truthfully, many of the characters (all?) in my story have massive trauma, and maybe that's the problem. I'm trying to remain true to reality in this fantasy world, and my reality is full of traumatized people. Do I know anyone who doesn't have trauma? Maybe I just have a type. Anyway, back to the side piece.

Me: Background character. Him: I am the plot now.

There are a few secondary characters in this book that I’m purposefully leaving as a blank slate. And here’s why.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m primarily a poet. This is my first foray into novel-writing. And, in my experience and practice, poetry has always been a super-intentional and disciplined space of creation.

Growing up, I was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain Poets, a group associated with Black Mountain College in North Carolina, that was active in the mid-20th century. Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov. To name a few of their luminaries.

Olson is responsible for ushering the prominence of the Black Mountain Poets into poetry’s collective consciousness with his essay Projective Verse, which essentially details the BMP’s ethos—a poetic theory about breath, space, and energy shaping poetic form. Essentially, he describes poetry as an “open field.” The poet’s responsibility is to observe everything that comes into that field. The page becomes a field of composition, where the poet must observe and respond to what appears in the field—sound, shape, energy, memory—as it happens.

Robert Duncan expanded on this theory later by bringing mysticism and mythos into it. He believed the poem is an “open form” that reflects the whole field of the poet’s experience—emotional, political, spiritual. His poetry observed everything equally, from myth to daily life, thus, bringing a holistic approach to the poetic form.

Anyway, this ENORMOUS side tangent is to explain why I’m leaving these weird, blank slate secondary characters lurking about my book. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

The only way I could handle Olson’s poetic theory of the open field was to balance it with almost monomaniacal attention to the actual act of writing. If I had to corral all these different things that came rampaging into my field, my writing was going to be a sturdy-ass fence, a bullwhip, assless chaps—whatever it took—to get them organized. My writing process was rigid. Militaristic, maybe.

I’m trying to get away from that. It’s hard.

These mysterious secondary characters help me. I’m having fun wondering what they’re going to do. How will they react to developments? I thought they were going to say one thing. And then something totally random comes out of their mouth. It’s liberating, really.

I just realized I’m therapizing myself with these characters. Free cognitive behavioral therapy at its finest.

Unexpected side quest of the novel-writing adventure. But I’ll take it!