Writing my thoughts down

Unusual post this one – I’ve just written it and it’s really what would appear in my writing notebook – a discussion with myself – I have them regularly. This time I decided to put it down here…most of the time I can’t actually think properly, or articulate properly any thoughts I have unless I write them down…or at the very least talk about them, but talking isn’t as satisfying as writing….as much as I love talking to people, I can’t really think things through properly unless I write them down… So here’s what I’m thinking about this morning….


Sometimes sitting here alone while I write I feel like I’m going around in circles – never talking about anything new, the same old problems, desires, wants and needs just echoing around the empty space inside my head. Particularly when I’m working on the novel – which coincidently has to be finished (or pretty damn near it) by September – I do tend to go into an almost “method acting” mind set… The novel is a stalker story, a thriller if you like, but also a love story…The stalker is a woman – she falls in love with a man she sees each day on the tube on the way to work and the story is told entirely from her point of view. That feeling of desperate infatuation, an extreme crush, on someone you will never really know, someone you can never have, but you watch them each day, you hope each day for some small scrap of information, something that lets you into their life a little more….Most of us experience this at some time in our lives and generally it’s when you’re young – a crush on a popstar or actor, or even a teacher, maybe a fellow pupil….It’s something that I believe we tend to leave behind when we grow up and start experiencing “real” relationships…Or do we leave it behind? I’m beginning to think that we simply shove those obsessive feelings into a metaphorical box in the back of our mental wardrobes…And perhaps we get them out again when something major happens in our lives: perhaps what used to be called A Mid-Life Crisis….Certainly from my own experience I’ve seen and heard about men and women – but mostly men, actually – who become obsessed with a woman they can’t have or don’t even know…I wonder sometimes if it’s a safe way of experiencing the excitement of a new relationship without screwing up the existing relationship they already have with their wives…

And I guess that’s the thing – we all want a little excitement, something new and adventurous in our lives at some time or another…And if we begin to think that there is someone out there who will understand us better, find us more attractive, be better in bed, make us feel special, more loved, more desirable….well, sometimes that may seem worth turning your life upside down for….

In my novel this isn’t the case – her life is empty and he brings some colour into it, so she doesn’t have to give everything, or anything up for him. She's a far more dangerous proposition than someone wanting a fling which is why essentially I’m writing a thriller, albeit a slow-burning one dressed up as a love story…and yes, I do know how it’s going to end – that came first – there would be no novel if I hadn’t had the idea of the ending.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking, how do you let someone know that you’re infatuated with them? The reason I’m asking this is because in my novel she is unhinged and has a very skewed view of the world so it’s good to think how people achieve their ends with normal means – I can then consider how she would go about such matters….
And on this one I’m stumped – it’s such a long time since I had a crush on someone and to be honest I did nothing about it – well Robbie Williams was never going to ask me out, was he? And if I had a crush on someone today then I’d maybe do something practical about it – like talk to them, flirt with them and become friends until they could no longer resist my charms! But she’s not in this position – she’s still stuck emotionally as a teenager despite holding down a responsible job and generally appearing to be an adult.
If she ignores him and tries to play hard to get he might just forget her, move on and she’ll be lost, utterly crushed. So how should she get him to notice her? Or should she just wait until fate takes a hand and events take an unexpected turn…