Creative Writing, Writing Characters and the Journey of the Self

I've more than likely discussed some of this in an earlier post, but just over two years ago I started writing a fiction novel fairly seriously. Things got in the way of it (mostly work, travelling / moving and relationships), but I managed to write 1/3 of the novel with sketches of how I wanted the rest of it to pan out. Thus, I knew how it was going to end but I was novelly excited by the writing process and just seeing if it went there naturally or went somewhere else. About a year ago, I stopped writing it seriously. 

There are a number of reasons for this. First, my worldview was starting to significantly shift. I had just lived in two countries very different from my own, had become an unpaid carer for a parent due to a pandemic, and was now living in the small town I grew up in. I also made a culmulative but massive change in my career due to, unsurprisingly, not 'fitting in' when I returned after my travels. Buried underneath all this, what really happened was that I had matured. At the ripe old of age 39 (soon to be 40), I was starting to see a spectrum of colours (or monochrome depending on your viewpoint) in the things that I had previously taken for granted. Thus, the foundations I was building this novel on were no longer as stable as I had previously surmised. My novel was in danger of becoming a caricature, with characters who all served a purpose in getting the story to where it should end; but weren't decent representations of the complexity of human nature and how we all struggle in our daily lives. I had a tendency to 'write off' people and see them as cogs in the machine of their own lives. I was underestimating the malaise in all of us that pokes and prods until we become cognizant of the structures in our lives that aren't working and take action to change them.

By changing up my surroundings, I saw 'people' in a very different way. I started to truly understand that, deep down, most people do their best in the situations they find themselves in. There are some people out there who are very damaged due a variety of different factors, including unhealthy societal structures that put excessive pressure on everyone to be in particular ways. But, I do think that most people do their best, however misguided some of their actions and conclusions are about particular situations. As a writer, this is a major pain in the ass, because you have to go back and re-sketch your characters and, in doing so, your plot changes. Then you realise that this may be the shape of things to come - how you feel about particular events in the world and your place in them may be very different in two years time. So, do you change the novel again, or do you just put it out there recognising it is flawed but still relevant to a previous version of you that once existed?

There is an acceptance there that how you think once may not be how you think in the future, but there is also a fear in putting your creativity out there in a way that you yourself may ridicule in years to come. It has eventually dawned on me that this is part of what it means to be human. To be flawed and to make conclusions that best serve you in the cirumstances you are in, but that these may change through time. The key is in accepting that and not become paralysed with it. Which is what happened to me. Yet, I also recognise that, perhaps subconsciously, I have always recognised this which has contributed to my fear of publishing. Of putting my nascent ideas into print. The fear of not only being ridiculed by others, but being ridiculed by my future self. Or I could just not ridicule and accept that this is part of the journey of the self, and commit to that. Openly and without fear.