Getting involved.

Today, I realized that I get very involved in my characters lives. I'm like a nagging mother or something. I don't stop until I find out absolutely everything about them, their lives, their favorite food, the shoes they wear normally, and what they were doing last night, young lady. I also discovered that I can't really help it, they interest me. I've also somehow convinced myself that if I figure out more about my characters, I'll write them better. This might very well be true, but it's mostly caused me to fill my notebook with random notes here and there, interspersed with my school notes: "Luc Tuymans painted his first painting in ...I bet Ari would wear flat black leather boots."

A very good example of this idea came to life today in Ikea. Having just moved into a new apartment, my girlfriend and I have been looking for furniture. We were looking at our new chairs, and realizing that since they're plain wood, we could paint or stain them. My immediate thought, then, was "Oh, what was painted on the chairs of my characters' kitchen?"

On the bright side, one exercise I had myself do was to write vignettes about my characters lives when they were younger, prior to the book. These have been working out so well, I might be able to publish those instead. We'll have to see.

WARNING: LOST SPOILER ALERT! (if you don't want to know, don't read this next paragraph): Now, on a slightly unrelated note: the ending of Lost was so disappointing. I actually almost cried from disappointment. It seem like such a cop out ending, which I never would have gotten published had I proposed it. I did like to see everyone reunited, that was cool. But the everyone being dead thing? Just seems like cheating.

Getting back to the point. Am I the only one who gets so deeply involved in my characters lives? Do you prefer to get involved, or just write 'em and leave 'em?