I spent about eight hours on the road driving down to Virginia yesterday. It was a grey day, with brief periods of rains along the way. For the first couple hours, I listened to the news. Then, I switched over to a book on tape. Kim had picked up More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I decided to listen to More Tales of the City. It provided an interesting soundtrack for driving across Pennsylvania and down through Virginia.

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing as I work on my own novel for National Novel Writing Month. What could I learn from More Tales of the City? There were moments of vivid descriptions, a good complex plot and very interesting characters. It was the characters that interested me most, especially those characters that have lived long difficult lives and were masters of reading people. I realize these characters were fictitious but they were very interesting.

The ability to really understand, to fully empathize with the people around you seems like one of those super powers concerned people might long for. Yet at the same time, it might be like Midas’ golden touch, and be a real curse, enough to drive a person mad.

It provides a very interesting contrast to Pickles, one of the heroes of my story who is perhaps tragically narcissistic. I’ve been asking friends to read sections of my novel and one friend, a psychotherapist from Australia did not like the character of Pickles. I tried to find out what she didn’t like about him, and it was this narcissistic characteristic that he had. I was relieved. It wasn’t that I failed to describe him very well. It was that, if anything, I captured his narcissism too well.

All of these thoughts mingled together during my drive to Virginia. At dinner my daughter and swapped stories of how our novels were coming along. She is well ahead of me at this point. I was hoping to get some good writing done last night, but was too tired after the drive. Perhaps I can churn out a few more words this morning before the festivities of the day begin.