Einin Decides To Work With Me For Once.

Einin Andraste Shrathshire.

While she mostly exists on the papers sitting behind me and in the windmills of my mind, I can say with certainty she is a fighter. Oh, Andraste, yes.

For example, not three years ago now, I was on a bus in Durham, North Carolina, trying to tone down Einin's image so that she didn't look like Xena: Warrior Princess while kicking her boyfriend's wimpy arse around the training field (hilarious scene, really.)

And Einin, being herself entirely, stood there in my mind and shook her head at me. I could see her crossing her arms. No. I won't. Forget it.

Three lines crossed out later, I said FINE. You win for the moment.

In the last three years, there have been a half dozen thinking out pages written to try and get me out of the pit I and Einin seem to have dug for ourselves, hoping I could break through and fix what I apparently broke.

And so here we are, three years later, with fifty scenarios for getting rid of her/finding something to do with her/throwing her into a vortex and having her come out on the secret island that time goes faster on (Yep, that was one of my options that I gave myself.)

This little snag has actually held up progress on the story, seeing as I'm trying to rewrite the beginning of part 2 and if she sucks, it sucks.

I've been attacking the problem for the last three days, attempting to give Einin some personality and substance so that I could sort of see her for what she really was. After an hour of toil tonight and another paragraph of complaint, I hit paydirt. Finally.

All of a sudden, there's this person emerging, a person who is more of an extension of me than anything (aren't they all?) She bites her nails to the quick. She plays harp and sings for her father when he's upset. She's left-handed.

These things may seem insignificant, but when you're building a person out of thin air (and after three years of trying to "see" her and make her believable), it is more than a step forward. It's a damn big leap.

I'm going to start writing her and Tiernan's scenes tomorrow and see if these two can get their act together (because at the moment, I'M not even convinced they should hook up; they are that unconnected to each other.) God knows Tiernan has tried (kudos to my little character for giving a damn about Ms. Fighting Irish Paper Doll over there when she was crossing her arms and glaring at me) and hopefully now Einin has something to work with and she can try, too. Maybe with them both trying, we can make a relationship that's believable and real.

Otherwise I'm throwing the book at her (mentally, anyway) and getting someone else for Tiernan to hook up with later.

I have to get to bed so I can think tomorrow so that I can write Einin so that she doesn't cross her damn arms again and shake her head no at me.

Ta,
Bec