Landladies

2004-07-17 - 9:18 a.m.

Oo...more on writing. I think I'm going through a "land lady" phase, where suddenly I have a matriarchal character who seems to show up in a lot of what I'm writing these days. She either owns the building that the protagonist lives in, or is simply a motherly figure who fusses and complains and is a well-meaning antagonist to varying degrees.

In the short story I'm writing, about a man who lives in an apartment with a black hole, the landlady is the villian. She's a predator, but I haven't figured out how, yet. She gives me the creeps. It's because I made her have a narrow face and wrinkled, puckered lips, maybe.

The landlady phase will probably end - my "large, gentle father-figure" phase worked itself out pretty well. I wonder if somehow these archetypes reflect how I feel about my parents. A surprising number of my characters have no parents (or, more often, their parents never show up in my stories). A lot of my protagonists are only-children. Odd.

Okay, I'm just rambling to stall on the writing. Back to work again.

Cheers,

The Magus

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