it's not like i like getting rid of characters. really. but there have been several characters that i've brought in since the beginning of pierian springs who, though i love them deeply, haven't worked out for one reason or another. among these are whitney walters (walt whitman), jeff chaucer, james barrie and now dante alighieri and angie hughes (langston hughes). they're people who, while adored, just aren't used as much as i feel like i should be using them. i want to keep them, but i feel like a negligent mommy when i do that. it's odd, because there was nothing in particular that i disliked about any of them. nothing at all, really.

it's quite sad.

i imagine that whitney is probably in new york spouting off poems at poetry slams and sleeping with rock stars and vandalizing eco-unfriendly vehicles. jeff is, i'm sure, living with lucy montgomery, if they aren't married yet. they're probably in a little apartment somewhere close to one of their parents' places, where lucy plants flower boxes and works at a bakery and jeff is taking college classes and works in a comic book shop. james is probably back in his tiny town in scotland, surrounded by nieces and nephews and going to the local pub to tell outlandish stories most every night. dante will find his way to a big city and scrounge out a living and live in a crappy apartment until he gets a break as an editorial columnist for the new yorker, butchering politicians and celebrities and world society as a whole. angie will go back to harlem, where she will raise hell like she always does.

poe is a different story. when poe was created, i was in love with him. i adored him and i wrote him whenever possible. and then i fell out of love in some ways. poe became my whipping boy. i refused to let him be happy and he was involved with too many people to drag them down with him, so he needed to go.

some characters are a bit hollow, a bit distant from us, no matter how much we love them and want them to work. other characters are too close to our hearts, too real, too fleshed-out.

strange how that goes.

either way, things come and things go. maybe someday a new version of one of those characters will come back. or maybe all of the old characters who i started this crazy ride with will be set aside and all new ones will come in. you never know.