Dissociative Identity Disorder
(Or Developing New and Interesting Characters)
By Andy Washburn
(Some personal thoughts)
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the technical name
for what we laymen refer to as a “split personality”. It is a controversial diagnosis with some
experts believing it is not real, or maybe even therapist induced. (Isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?) I bring this up, because I sometimes believe
I may have a form of DID, though I have never seen a therapist. (I was going to say, “Where is the fun of
having a mental disorder if you get it fixed?” but then I worried that someone
with a real mental disorder would be offended, and yes, I think that people
with mental disorders are the most likely to be reading my stuff. Whatever.)
When I’m writing, I sometimes believe that I
have multiple personalities within me, all battling to get out, or at least
take control of the writing process.
And, most of these personalities, wait, no, all of these personalities
are younger than me; healthier than me; and without a doubt, thinner and better
looking than me. The sixteen year old
personality is especially keen to take over.
He must not have caught a look of me in the mirror yet.
It is from these disparate and distinct
personalities that I form the characters that I write about in my novels. To some extent or another, everyone I write
about, or maybe I should say, everyone I write for is deep down inside my id
somewhere. (Damn, I am esoteric!) So,
when I write about different people I am really just writing about some part of
myself. I am the young, good looking,
high school football star Cal; and I am also the middle aged, overweight,
balding, mean and obnoxious Mr. Samuel. (Both characters from Pitch Green.)
In real life, I am not young or good looking,
but neither am I mean or balding. I’m
only a little obnoxious. But both of
these characters are inside of me, and I only need to bring them out and put
them in the story to write about them. I
am not writing about people I observe, though I love to observe other
people. I am writing about myself. No matter how different or unique each character
is from the others, I’m there.
Of course, this begs the question: “What about
the female characters you write about?” (My
sons will all stop reading this right exactly at this point.) If I were really cool, and politically
correct, I would claim to have female personalities along with the male
personalities. But I am only cool, not
politically correct, and no matter how deep you look inside of me, you will not
find a woman, or even any woman-type being.
My wife will confirm this.
This does not mean I cannot write for the women
I write about. Women are people, (that
sounds so patronizing) and we overlap enough as people that I don’t have a
problem writing from a woman’s perspective.
That is, as long as I have women, like my wife and daughters, who read
what I write and tell me when I have it wrong.
This means, analogous with the way I write for
the guys, when I write for women, I am looking out of their eyes at the world
that is being created for them. So, if
I’m not part woman, (and there are a few bullies from my high school days who
would claim that I am), the women that I write about are part me. (I told you I was esoteric.)
The way this works, evidently, is that the guys
I write for are all looking out my eyes as I write for them, but as I write for
the women, I am the one looking out of their eyes. Weird, huh?
But, that is the way it works, and for me, it works pretty well.
Whether or not this means I have DID, I don’t
know, though it is probably indicative of a need to at least go to therapy. Yea, well, I’m still
not going. Why mess with all those extra
personalities? I need them when I’m
developing new characters. After all,
that’s how I write.
Brief Joint Bio of the Brothers Washburn:
We are two of 9 sons (16 children
total) who grew up in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley. Our father was a dentist, who built up a
practice in Trona, California, a small mining town. While we were growing up, he was the only
dentist in town. As the good citizens of
Trona mined the minerals of Searles Valley, Dad mined their teeth.
When, in turn, Andy and I went off
to college, we left the desert and never looked backed. We thought we were done with Trona forever,
but couldn’t have been more wrong. For
about 35 years, I was a business lawyer working for international commercial
finance companies in the mid-west. For
about 25 years, Andy was a trial practice lawyer working in Southern
California. We both have many years of formal
writing experience. While we have kept
our law licenses current, we are now having fun writing fiction full time.
After we each moved to Colorado for
different reasons, we talked for some time about starting a business together. We have always been story tellers, first to
our siblings, then to our own children, and now to our grandkids. Scary stories are a family specialty. A few years ago, I started writing a young
adult science fiction series, so when Andy also tried his hand at writing
fiction, it didn’t take long for us to come together as The Brothers Washburn
on a young adult horror series. The tale
is of course set in Trona, California, the perfect setting for a horror series.
The general outline for Pitch
Green, the first book in our Dimensions in Death series, came together in
November of 2010. We were attending a
writer’s seminar in Manhattan, listening to panel discussions by top literary
agents during the day. One night, as we
rode the subway from one end-of-the-line stop across town to the opposite
end-of-the-line stop, and then back again, we mapped out the basic elements we
would need to expand a favorite childhood scary story into a full-length novel.
Andy wrote the first rough draft, and
then, in our typical tag-team effort, I took that draft over to edit and expand
the tale. In the writing of the first
book, the ground work was laid for both the sequels and prequels in that
series.
