I recently went to a writers’ open mic in Birmingham. I listened to a wonderful writer with long, thick red hair and a short-sleeved dress (I was distraught about her chilly arms) read a section from her work-in-progress. She wanted to ‘write as if no one I know is going to read this,’ she said, and it seemed to unlock something for her. The section was about her experience of aphantasia.
Aphantasia, she explained – just as well, I had no idea – is the name of a condition where you cannot picture things in your mind. You can think about things as concepts and ideas, but you can’t ‘see,’ say, a house, you can’t count its windows, decide and cast into being, say, steps leading to the front door, an iron railing, trailing hanging baskets and long sash windows. It’s an absence of visual imagination.
Damn. That must be hard for a writer.
I thought of my characters. The little people I have set free in my mind to move about and do their mischief and decided (rather dramatically) that I must have aphantasia, too. Because my sulky attitude to my failing characters is obviously entirely on a par with genuine neurodivergence.
But I do have real trouble with these imaginary people. I feel a sort of heavy dread at having to ‘think up’ stuff for them to do – and heavy is the word; it feels like a sort of dragging climb. My characters can seem real enough, but it comes in flashes. The sly smirk of the Cunning Man as he hints to Clara about her mother’s past, the impatient sneer of Margot – I know exactly what they all look like. I watch wonderful Carmella flap her arms so wildly that her heavy upper arms swing like washing, and listen to her tell me where I’m going wrong in life; listen to the clear voice of an old man with estuary vowels, drinking half pints of beer and talking about being a pirate.
But then it goes. I can’t see them anymore, there is the absence of the visual. I build them out of snatches of voices, lips and eyes from people I know, then sit them down and they just … lay there. Inert. That heavy weight comes again in those questions that come so easily to other writers; if this happens, what does she do, what if she met this person, where will she go after that talk, what does she pick up off the ground, a table, a bench? The vividness of seeing it never comes. My characters are not like the ones I read, who leap out of other books with their afros or laddered tights, with their bitterness and longings, and punch you in the face.
Perhaps I’m not very good at people.
But I had a bit of a revelation this week. I finished a piece that I started in a workshop; the premise was: your character is taking something back to a shop. Create the voice. It was my voice, of course, the description was of … well, a ridiculous middle-aged short woman in a purple anorak – the memories she had were mine. And I was struggling because I was trying to justify the grumpiness, the prejudice, of this character. I was trying to show the moment of revelation, the ‘she’s not an arsehole really!’ moment. Because the character was me. And it was getting didactic.
After chatting ‘Karen redemptions’ with my writing partner, I had the idea to just … you know … not make the character myself. I could … make her up. Crazy idea for a writer. Then if she is a dick, it’s not on me. At first it did take quite an emotional effort. There was a wrench, a metallic and squeaky uncoupling of me from her. But then leaning her meanness became addictive. Punishing and embarrassing my ridiculous short woman in the purple anorak became enormous fun; it was easier to write; it was a satisfying ending. I did it!
So by all means, draw from life. Use bits of yourself, your friends, your family, what happened when you were twelve, to get you started. But then: depart. Turn left at the memory and cross over the road. It will set you free.