Read an interesting article today about O Henry. I've always liked O Henry's stories, and remember fondly the compilation of short stories I read in High School. I was so inspired by the Gift of the Magi that I read all of his other works. The article primarily discussed the little known fact that O Henry spent some time in jail before becoming a successful writer. This fact was not even known to his daughter until after his death. Secondly, I suspected this, most of his stories were written quickly and rarely went through a thorough editing. Most of the time he only wrote the stories due to a fast approaching deadline. The Gift of the Magi, apparently, was written in a couple of hours.
But it was this story that caught the lion's share of my attention this morning. It discusses famous literary and movie characters and their psychological diagnoses. This caught my eye due to the fact that I'm having such a hard time writing my next novel. The main character is trying to overcome a case of agoraphobia and it has been exceedingly difficult to write. I'm thinking of giving it up all together. Not the idea of a fatal flaw for my protagonist, mind you, but I'm thinking of finding a different problem altogether. I'm hoping that the article may have spurred my creative juices into doing a better job of fully fleshing out the character, or finding a new problem to focus on.
Sadly, I didn't perform very well on the quiz, took me 23 tries. I have some homework to do.
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