Does this happen to you? And what do you do about it?
If I've been writing TOS fan fiction several days in a row, I sometimes find myself talking in a more Spocklike way than usual, even when I'm NOT writing. Half of me thinks this is scary, and half of me thinks it's neat. :-) But I understand a little better how Mr. Nimoy could have found Spock so sticky while he was playing him*. Maybe it's because he's a telepath, but once Spock gets in your head, he makes himself at home. :-)
My husband is not so happy to have me talking like Spock, and he often asks pointedly if he can please have his wife back. I've been trying harder to take Spock off at the end of my writing day, but that's had an unpleasant side effect: I find it a lot harder to get in character as Spock than I used to. It used to be more or less effortless, but now I have to try to put on Spock's character.
So I can keep Spock in my head most of the time and make ME happy, or I can have Spock not in my head and make my husband happy. Unfortunately, I seem not to have the flexibility to put him on and take him off at a moment's notice.
So, do you ever have trouble taking a character's voice off after you've been writing them for awhile? What things do you do that enable you to get into and out of character easily?
And do you get pushback from the people in your life, who want YOU and not the characters you love? What accomodations have you reached with them?
An example, just because I think it's cute:
My husband usually goes to bed before I do and gets up before I do, and he likes it if I leave him a note before I go to bed, so he has a greeting from me when he wakes up in the morning. We live in Boston, and last winter the pipes to our washer were frozen for much of the winter. One winter day when it was supposed to get up above freezing, I was hoping the pipes would unfreeze, and I'd be able to use the washer again. In the previous night's note, I told my husband that I was hoping to "regain washer functionality," so he should make sure to put anything he wanted washed into the hamper. It wasn't until I'd left the note and gone to bed that I realized that this isn't how most people talk. :-)
Oh, dear. I used to NOTICE when Spock's voice was sticking to me, but I'd gotten so used to it that I didn't catch it. Well, maybe my husband wouldn't notice.
The next day when I opened the lid of the washer to check if it was working, I saw that my husband had taped a sign to the inside of the lid. It read, "Washer Functionality Regained, Captain!"
I guess he noticed. :-)
*You've probably read Mr. Nimoy's autobiographies, so you probably remember that in those autobiographies, Leonard Nimoy talks about how difficult he found it, when making the TV series, to take Spock OFF at the end of the day. He thought it was important to stay in character all day, even during breaks, so that he wouldn't have to fumble around to find the character when the cameras were rolling. And since he reported for work at 6 a.m. (because the ears and eyebrows took a long time to put on), and they filmed until 6 p.m., that meant that he was in character for 12 hours a day. Given that he slept for 8 hours a day and spent much of the remaining four hours learning his lines for the next day, he was in character pretty much every hour that he was awake during the workweek. On Saturdays, he would find Spock gradually fading over the course of the day, and it was only on Sunday that he felt like himself. But then on Sunday night, he'd have to learn Monday's lines, so he had very little time as his own self during the filming of the TV show. I've always been amazed at how much it cost Mr. Nimoy to give us the stunning performances that he gave.
My husband is not so happy to have me talking like Spock, and he often asks pointedly if he can please have his wife back. I've been trying harder to take Spock off at the end of my writing day, but that's had an unpleasant side effect: I find it a lot harder to get in character as Spock than I used to. It used to be more or less effortless, but now I have to try to put on Spock's character.
So I can keep Spock in my head most of the time and make ME happy, or I can have Spock not in my head and make my husband happy. Unfortunately, I seem not to have the flexibility to put him on and take him off at a moment's notice.
So, do you ever have trouble taking a character's voice off after you've been writing them for awhile? What things do you do that enable you to get into and out of character easily?
And do you get pushback from the people in your life, who want YOU and not the characters you love? What accomodations have you reached with them?
An example, just because I think it's cute:
My husband usually goes to bed before I do and gets up before I do, and he likes it if I leave him a note before I go to bed, so he has a greeting from me when he wakes up in the morning. We live in Boston, and last winter the pipes to our washer were frozen for much of the winter. One winter day when it was supposed to get up above freezing, I was hoping the pipes would unfreeze, and I'd be able to use the washer again. In the previous night's note, I told my husband that I was hoping to "regain washer functionality," so he should make sure to put anything he wanted washed into the hamper. It wasn't until I'd left the note and gone to bed that I realized that this isn't how most people talk. :-)
Oh, dear. I used to NOTICE when Spock's voice was sticking to me, but I'd gotten so used to it that I didn't catch it. Well, maybe my husband wouldn't notice.
The next day when I opened the lid of the washer to check if it was working, I saw that my husband had taped a sign to the inside of the lid. It read, "Washer Functionality Regained, Captain!"
I guess he noticed. :-)
*You've probably read Mr. Nimoy's autobiographies, so you probably remember that in those autobiographies, Leonard Nimoy talks about how difficult he found it, when making the TV series, to take Spock OFF at the end of the day. He thought it was important to stay in character all day, even during breaks, so that he wouldn't have to fumble around to find the character when the cameras were rolling. And since he reported for work at 6 a.m. (because the ears and eyebrows took a long time to put on), and they filmed until 6 p.m., that meant that he was in character for 12 hours a day. Given that he slept for 8 hours a day and spent much of the remaining four hours learning his lines for the next day, he was in character pretty much every hour that he was awake during the workweek. On Saturdays, he would find Spock gradually fading over the course of the day, and it was only on Sunday that he felt like himself. But then on Sunday night, he'd have to learn Monday's lines, so he had very little time as his own self during the filming of the TV show. I've always been amazed at how much it cost Mr. Nimoy to give us the stunning performances that he gave.