The hardest thing is Shadow, who is, I would like to go on record as saying, the damnedest protagonist. He doesn�t talk much (which means that other people talk a lot more around him) and he goes along with things, or at least accepts things, which doesn�t leave a lot of room for arguing, and he�s smarter than he shows, but he�s very happy not to show it. And he doesn�t really want anything � even in this story, he�s a drifter and a tourist who starts out trying to earn a little money, and then rapidly needs to stay alive. Beautiful women, and nice women, seem to like him, and mostly he barely notices and even when he does he doesn't do anything about it. All of which is frustrating, from an auctorial point of view.
Some reviewers and readers of American Gods grumbled about Shadow, as if I had a choice. (If I�d had a choice, I�d�ve picked a much more active, chatty and dynamic protagonist. A proper hero. Like Fat Charlie from Anansi Boys . Well, like Fat Charlie from Anansi Boys wishes he was). But Shadow�s, well, Shadow. It was his story and I told it.
The other rule seems to be that writing a story with Shadow in it is a little like walking through a dark place with a flashlight, or a path through over the mountains in the fog: I can see a little way ahead, so I can always keep writing, or mostly, but a lot of the time I don�t know much more about the plot or the other characters than Shadow does. I'm pretty sure I'm writing a real story but I can�t be sure until I got there, and it�s perfectly possible that I�ll go straight over a cliff.
Anyway. I�m slowly becoming sure that the story that isn�t called Cape Wrath is a real story. Shadow�s been driven to the big House, the guests have started arriving by helicopter, and tomorrow I�ll get to write the Saturday night entertainment. I'm really looking forward to finding out what happens next. (I�m pretty sure, incidentally, that two of the people at the party are from the 999 story �Keepsakes and Treasures�.)
.....
Have you ever noticed that your writers have changed? Semi-serious question. You�ll spend six months in a romantic comedy, then you turn around one day and you're in a ghost story or a medical thriller, or you spend a year in a kitchen sink, grittily realistic drama and then, without warning, your life turns into a sitcom...
It�s always sudden. It often happens with a bang. Ah, I think, when that happens to me. New writers...
Which is, I suspect, why I keep pondering http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,867823,00.html Someone's life is completely changed, starting with a bang. Bit of slapstick, some wanton destruction, sad and funny at the same time. New writers, making their mark...