Themed Month June:Characters in my Head

I believe that being an artist—whether with words or other media—is the only socially accepted way of being insane. Some smell colors, others taste sounds, and yet others feel shapes that aren’t there (yet). I hear voices from the characters in my head.

Those voices are insistent to the point of becoming a nuisance. My family is quite annoyed sometimes when I seem to ignore them because the voice that’s loudest in my mind at that point drowns out their words. I have learned to ask my family several times what they wanted from me but sometimes I just don’t notice.

The problem intensifies when I can’t write due to outside circumstances. During the COVID-19 pandemic, my lovely grandson is brightening up my life and throwing it into chaos. He’s also the reason why I can barely write. It’s hard to concentrate when a three year old decides to color your bed’s mattress or to fly a toy helicopter around your desk.

That doesn’t go down well with the characters in my head. They want to be written, and they want it now. To keep them from driving me up the walls, I help myself with flash fiction or short stories that I write in the early mornings when my grandson is still asleep. I’m using the rest of the day for publishing, because that’s something I can do even with my grandson and my characters around.

The good news is (for the characters in my head as well as for my readers) that my grandson will start kindergarten again in a fortnight. I’ll be free do write then and promise to put several of the loudest from my mind onto paper. I just hope the characters I put down will get stuck in your head too. I’ll do my very best.