“I write to find out what I think.”
Stephen King.
Sometimes I am envious of my friend, Ed Landry. He has a gray-haired man who helps him focus when he needs to and distracts him when he is overthinking a situation. It’s not like the voice of conscience, more like a thorn in the flesh with a sense of humor. Me? I’ve got Landry.
I’m not complaining, he often knows more about what I truly think than I do. He lets me write ideas, think they’re good, and keep going with the story. Then, when I lie down at night, he points out how wrong they are and how I’m not thinking like me—I’m thinking how I want the story to go.
My characters, good and evil, are a reflection of my thinking. Not those spur of the moment thoughts I get that really threaten to turn me into a rougarou, but those thoughts that have been digested, picked up in the bloodstream, and become part of me.
I’ve heard that a hypnotized person will not do something that violates their conscience or moral sense. Maybe Landry and Kit Mann have mesmerized me. I won’t let them do anything that I wouldn’t do. On the other hand, they are better at resisting some temptations than I am. Landry’s in the Bayou Café quite often, but he’s never ordered a beignet. I can’t say I wouldn’t.
Jesus once told His disciples that from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The same is true of writers and their typing. What we truly think about things comes out, safely engaged in by fictional characters, and delivered to the page for our final review. That’s something to think about if you’re about to put a spell on someone and turn them into a rougarou.
