The novel had gotten out of hand. Although he’d been trying for day, he couldn’t finish it: he couldn’t find a fitting end. It had all started with a simple anecdote that seemed like it would make a good story. From the first lines, however, the characters were coming to life and demanding to act on their own. He let them at it and, when he wanted to call them back to order, it was already impossible. They’d outrun the limits of the story and had gotten embroiled in a long history, where they were influencing each other.
Dominated by them, he continued writing: simply relating, as a chronicler, what they did. It was all developing normally until one of the characters started to quarrel with the others about his importance in the work. They all wanted to be the main character. One night when he managed to get them together, he explained the need to have one be the major character while the others would be secondary. Although they gave in, before his threat to stop writing, they weren’t convinced and, from that moment the gossip, tripping each other up, all the other vices of human vanity, flourished in his pages.
He tried to mask them with baroque prose, but one or another line lifted their ears. With perseverance, page by page, he was putting together his stores and he felt equally pleased with all the characters. So he came to the end and here came the catastrophe: all the characters wanted a happy ending and they wanted to be a part of it. He asked for help, retraining, but they were unable to shed their miseries. He was still unable to finish the novel. How can there be a happy ending when there are thirteen characters involved?
October 13, 2010
