I Can’t Move ~ Maressa Mortimer
Leaning back in my car seat, I thought about characters in books, trying to compare myself to them. I love crime fiction and the main characters usually are overflowing with energy. They get hit over the head, shot at and threatened but they jump out of bed at 4am, ready to dash into the shower, have a coffee, grab their gun and they’re off to catch bad people.
I totally relate. Well, to the need for coffee at least. The rest? No chance. And I wondered, how realistic should I make my characters? Should I make them bash their alarm clocks into snooze mode at least five times? Should I make them ignore cobwebs in corners until a visitor mentions it? The thing that intrigued me about the Famous Five was the fact they could be tied up for hours on end, yet nobody was desperate to go to the toilet.
Then there is the lack of energy. With the world in turmoil and the stress of the last two years, I have days where it’s hard to move or think. Hearing dreadful news about an acquaintance’s husband left me feeling grieved in the back of my mind for days. That’s what made me think about book characters. It’s the lack of low-level dark humming in the back of their minds that I miss. Not the day-stopping grief, the shouting, crying or ranting, but that energy-sucking low-level feeling of loss. There is a lot of grief in novels, but the characters seem to move around their day as normal. They switch the news off and go about cheerfully after that simple hack. I can ignore the news, but my mind is still aware of the turmoil, like a background app slowly draining the battery.
On the other hand, I like to read as a distraction. So to read about private detectives with spare energy is probably more interesting than reading about the detective who was too distracted to realise the stake-out wasn’t needed anymore. Surely, drinking copious amounts of hot tea in a freezing car all night should mean frequent dashes to large bushes, shouldn’t it? My life experience tells me that it’s during one of those natural nature breaks, the suspect will commit another crime or be bumped off by some other baddies.
It’s a fine line between a realistic story and a wonderful distraction, an escape. It would be encouraging to read about great characters struggling with life’s details. To find a character that doesn’t remember which day of the week we’re on. Or who simply sits and stares out the window, knowing full well the dishes don’t wash themselves and that the alarm clock will make a racket all too soon. But maybe not, as it’s nice to pretend it’s a perfect way to start the day by jumping around the house at 4am, ready to rid the world of evildoers. Plus I’m sure I could do all kinds of stuff with three hours of sleep when I was the character’s age.
Maressa Mortimer is Dutch but lives in the beautiful Cotswolds, England with her husband and four (adopted) children. Maressa is a homeschool mum as well as a pastor’s wife, so her writing has to be done in the evening when peace and quiet descend on the house once more. She loves writing Christian fiction, as it’s a great way to explore faith in daily life. Because of her interest in writing, Maressa is part of Creativity Matters: Find Your Passion For Writing, an anthology encouraging people to write.
Her debut novel, Sapphire Beach, was published in December 2019, and her first self published novel, Walled City, came out in December 2020, followed by Viking Ferry, a novella. Beyond the Hills is the second book in the Elabi Chronicles, and was released on June 18th 2021. All of Maressa’s books are available from her website, www.vicarioushome.com, Amazon or local bookshops.
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