Why Do I Make Such a Fuzz About the Hair?

I am thinking about things I'm writing in my novel, and the reasons for writing the way that I do.

I've got this story about Stella and Marianne. Stella loves Marianne and talks a lot about her beauty. I'm using phrases and words from my poetry to let Stella talk, think, dream. In doing so I create fiction, and I transcend my own feelings, but I also let my self surrender and give in to my feelings. I muse upon the mixture of fiction and fact.

But sometimes I feel uncertain. Maybe this is nonsense. There is too much of the poetry... a long love letter disguised as a novel, and totally uninteresting.

Marianne has long hair and Stella wants to see it hang loose, freely, but Marianne always has it in a plait (so I speak British English, do I? or does she has a braid, perhaps? I have a feeling that I often don't know the difference between the words in this respect and therefor my writing becomes a little inconsistent...) or in a very neat coiffure. Only once she let it fall down in Stella's presence, and that is breathtaking for her.

I make a big deal of Marianne's hair. But I'm thinking, maybe that draws to the attention that her hair is something I fantasize about - in contrast to other details of her looks. Marianne has long hair. The woman she resembles has shorter hair. Marianne's long hair becomes a detail that proves her to be a creation of my imagination and not modelled after an actual person.

Of course she is both. But she is not meant to be this person (and Stella isn't me), only she resembles someone... I wonder if this resemblance is a bad thing, if it could make this "someone" to - I don't know, feel, see... understand... But anyway, most circumstances in this novel is obviously "untrue". And the few "facts" that I use - well, they aren't really pure facts. Or maybe they are, but the point is, that there is so little I know. There is, for a fact, a woman with dark hair and green eyes who sings very beautifully. But most other facts are unknown to me, or not fitting in this novel. The rest of the "fact" is actually me and my perception, my feelings and my way of seeing things. And so it turns to fiction. (Maybe like they say to Clarissa in "The Hours": "It's meant to be you, isnt't it? In Richard's novel!" and she says no, because she knows that fact has become fiction and the fiction is a fact that maybe is about her in a way, but somewhere along the way it also became something else -) I take this woman and I add X and Y and Z, and out comes Marianne, a piece of fiction.

So then... it really doesn't matter if she has long hair as a contrast or not. It wouldn't matter (it almost wouldn't matter) if I called her by any other name. Marianne, or... someone I know. Because it could never, even if I wanted, be a portrait; I know too little. I don't have the facts. (Which is interesting also in regard to my poetry. Even if it's about this woman, it's still also about me and my perception. Because of my lack of facts, it becomes Her + X = fiction. Even if it's poetry and it is meant to be about her! If I write a sentence like: "When you see the light in the water...", then I think about what I know: she spends some of her time on a sailing boat. That is a fact. But! I know nothing about that boat. I have never seen it and I have most certainly never been there with her; I know nothing of what she sees. I still write as if I did know something. And that's much more presumptuous than writing a novel about someone who resembles her a little!)

But back to the hair. Yes, maybe it doesn't matter. But then I conclude that the thing about the hair isn't only a proof of Marianne's state of fiction. It is really about her, Marianne. In the world I have created, she exists in her own right and everything she is and does has a meaning for her. And the only fact I need is to know that Marianne likes her hair and feels that it's a sign of intimacy to let someone see it hanging freely.

Ah, but then - if I'm meant to really tell the truth - there is a glimpse of something else, too. Something which is also a mixture of fact and fiction. A person who hasn't dark or very long hair but she does have this plait, always, always. Why not ever change the hair style, this I do not know. It has probably nothing at all to do with Marianne's reasons - I have never and will never ask. Why - that's not important, but yes; there is something of her in Marianne, too, and not only the plait.

So - there are two. But there are also X and Y and Z which I add to the character of Marianne. And the fact that there are two women who leaves glimpses of them selves in my imagination, that adds to the facts, but also very much to the sum of the fiction.

The imagination, the creation! It is such a funny way of living.

And what about the "love letter"? Who is it for? It is for Marianne, only. It is between Marianne and Stella, their feelings for eachother. My feelings (in addition to my love for my characters) can maybe be found by those who know where to look, but even then only in glimpses, in fragments of thoughts, words and phrases.