I had brunch with a fellow writer today. We were discussing our respective ordeals, difficulties and experience with writing. By talking about this it really helped me figure out something about myself.

I started writing short stories in 2003. I had written about four different stories. Re-reading the stories, I became annoyed with not only the character(s) but also myself. I didn’t feel particularly empathetic towards the characters even though I was the one who had created and written about them. It’s been somewhat perplexing for me to figure out why. Today, I realized what was going on. I had picked about two or three people in my past that I chose to write about. I picked characteristics of different people and combined them to create certain characters in the short stories. My particular experience with these people were not overwhelmingly positive. I realized that I had written the stories with an objective, therapeutic mind. My goal at the time I was writing was to figure out why they behaved in certain ways. What made them tick? What was it about them that made them behave in negative ways? When I was finished with the story, I realized that I wasn’t reading the story with an objective point of view. I had already had negative experiences and I didn’t necessarily want to get over my anger and approach them with understanding and empathy. Interesting isn’t it? In psychological terms, this would be called countertransference. Usually I have experienced this with certain patients, but I didn’t realize that it could happen in other realms as well.

One piece of good advice my friend gave me was to suggest that an objective party should be reading my stories. Someone who has no emotional attachment to what they are reading. They can then give me an objective view of what they think of the characters, good or bad. He suggested not scrapping the stories that I think are bad and letting someone else tell me if they are worth including.

I started writing again a few months ago. This time around, I decided to take a different approach and write about characters with more positive traits. It’s been more difficult to create characters this way. I realize that by writing about the characters that have more negative traits, it was a cathartic experience for me. I was able to shed my frustrations and annoyances. With the positive characters, I don’t have the need to dissect  and understand them from a different level.

Sigh. At least it’s not writer’s block.