Do you remember that movie "Drop Dead Fred"? A little girl has an imaginary friend who gets her into all kinds of trouble. Her mother gets mad and pretends to tape him inside a jack-in-the-box. Then when the little girl grows up, she lets him out of the box and he's still the crazy imaginary friend she thought she made up. But now she's an adult and doesn't think it's funny anymore. Plus, Fred is a a perv.
Yeah, that movie was weird. But it's one of those '90s movies that I watched and would probably watch again on a lazy Sunday. [Spoiler alert - sorry, I'm sure you were dying to see this movie.] Can you believe they kiss at the end? Totally creeps me out.
Anyway.
I never had an imaginary friend as a kid. Probably because I had an older brother and sister to play with. (OK, so my friend David and I pretended in sixth grade that we had miniature dragons that we carried around on our shoulders. But that's beside the point. And actually, we got the idea out of a book about a kid with a pet dragon. So you see, it was cool. Totally.) The strange thing is, I feel like I have imaginary friends now.
I was writing on Saturday morning and I'm at the point in my WiP when the tension is really starting to build. I found myself getting all excited and anxious about what I'm planning to have happen to these people. These people who don't exist except in my own head. Kind of like imaginary friends.
I think this is an amazing thing that we do when we write fiction. People and places can come to life just by imagining their world and giving them a story. They become real to us. We bring them to life and can evoke real emotion in us. I truly care about them.
Right now, my imaginary friends are getting into a bit of trouble. I THINK I know how things are going to turn out, but not exactly. They've taken on a life of their own. Again, that's why pantsing is so fun :).
What's going on with your imaginary friends?
What's going on with your imaginary friends?
