No, I don't write. Not as I believe a writer writes. All my life I was told that writing must be a barely-concealed story of the writer's life with the writer as a barely-concealed hero. Those who read my stuff see me as Matthew Stokes in The Machine and Chuck Tallin in Pig Jump and, with a real stretch, Peter in Lazarus!
        That's scary, the thought that I really did put myself there on purpose. What I did, folks, is try to adopt a character who would remain consistent over the hundreds of pages and years of writing of the damned novels. I know pretty well how I would react in disparate situations, so I used my reactions, NOT MYSELF, as a model. That's all.
        And, if you look deeply into those (and other) writings of mine, you see that the character is more capable, more honest, more heroic, than ever I was in my whole life. But just as a sculptor uses a metal armature to support his clay studies so that the arms don't droop in the wrong directions or the feet wander out of believable positions, I have used myself, a common, colorless human as an armature for my heroes. A crash-test dummy for plots.
        People who are wrong about my building myself into my stories as a hero are wrong about other things, too. They seem to forget (or haven't read) the stories in which I used my armature as a stiffener for some really non-heroic, narsty and despicable characters. But it is a handy tool, having a "cutout" like the old paper dolls little girls used to play with, on which to drape the clothing of the actual character. It is not hard to write, but it is hard to drag a story along for months and months without losing one's focus, and I didn't have the luxury of being able to write uninterrupted. Then, if I noodle around enough with the plot, eventually I have to make my character do something. If he always reacts consistent with how he has reacted before in the story, the writer is saved that frightening crisis of wondering if good, old Father Mackee would do this if he spent a life doing that.
        Okay, back there, stop waving your hand in the air. I know what you're going to say. Yes, but . . .
        Yes, but. There is another perquisite of writing fiction. One can insert oneself in a story well enough to enjoy, vicariously, pleasures that are withheld from him in real life because he is cowardly or dull or just plain unattractive to the opposite gender. I can say,
  

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        "Sheila was lying on the soft grass . . . . Her hair was sprawled all over her shoulders like a welcome mat and her little springy tush was pointing to the heavens that created it. My world started to rotate, slowly, while the Great Calliope of Lust swung into a lively tune. Then she had to spoil it by rolling over and sitting up."
   
        Hey, I never even knew a girl like that. Or when Helen in Pig Jump climbed the mast, looking for signs of other life where they had landed,  
   
        "Now, Helen, you go up first. The media always like that." I yanked down the deboarding ladder and held it steady for her. She smiled, even! Then up the ladder. I enjoyed the legs going by. And back down."  
   
        Yup, Helen was another leggy redhead. And so was her daughter,  
   
        "Sneaking around, giggling, fussing. Then they came to me and paraded around. Oh, my word! Elanor had red hair, too! Long auburn hair, fixed like her mom's, in a braid and decorated with little bone bows."
   
        A gentle insanity? Well, they are my stories. Even when I'm a louse. Two people recently have expressed their frustration in not being able to "find" me in my stories. See, many people think that a person can write only within the envelope of his experience and his moral values. That's just not so.  
        Well, look, let me explain something. Writing for me, and many others, I suspect, is a place to hide. There is only so much control one can exert over his world and the people in it. But he can make a world where he has complete control. Oh, not in the fine structure, now. A character properly developed will not suddenly act inconsistent with that character if the story is to be believable.
        But, for the most part, the story is the writer's world. And there may be more than one. (I have many.) In my stories I can warp the world and everyone in it to please myself, if I want, or to displease myself, even to the point of allowing me to squeeze out a few tears when that is desired.
         And it is, sometimes.
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