Somewhere, on the deep dark fragments of my mac disk, I have a story. It is still there in a word document. I was hoping for a novel. It printed out at 38 pages. It sucks. I use stumble at nights to see what is out there on the Internet. I found a creative writing site that suggested writing character studies. Describe a character’s attributes via his conversation, or his actions. Don’t describe him, use the character to describe himself. 

I look at the characters around me in the world. At work, we have the true geek astronomers with the pocket protectors and the Sheldon Coopers here. We have the pony tailed, socks and Birkenstock astronomers. We all try to fit in somehow. None of us are the extroverts we wish to be. We pretend the best we can to fit in the society around us.

I look at the women in town that I meet through our children. They are very concerned in the local politics, the cost of the best supermarkets and the latest American Idol contestant. They don’t understand how I raise my kids, and I don’t understand how they raise theirs. I hear of girls wanting to go to the malls and mother and daughter shopping trips. These are the things I eschew.

I see the people in my book club. Again, we are drawn together through our children. Our group turns out to contain a large number of children with autism or Asperger’s disease. I can not relate. My girls are on the gifted scale (yea, I still hate that term), but have other emotional issues that are shoved under the carpet because they are so bright the teachers figure the kids will sort it out themselves.

I see characters all around me, but I am not sure I could ever wright a character that I could understand. How to create the character you want when you don’t fit into the world yourself?