Virtuous Flaws by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

During this lockdown I have found myself seeking comfort and peace in very ordinary things, as well as in God. One thing I’m doing regularly is online jigsaw puzzles. I find them quite relaxing and I can shut my eyes when I need to or come back to it later. This isn’t a surprising thing for me to do. What has surprised me is that I usually choose pictures of food. Cake, doughnuts, ice cream and pastries. Yum. With IBS as one of the fun side-issues of my chronic illness, these are things I can’t eat very often. But they are comfort foods. I guess this is calorie and risk free for me, I just didn’t know salivating could be such fun.

It made me wonder about the characters we write and their small defects, idiosyncracies and the things they see as comforts and faults. Like Miss Lane in Larkrise to Candleford, what might they proclaim in a knowing aside as their “one weakness,” (even though the joke of course is that it seems to be a different thing every week)? “Fly tipping, my one weakness!” or “Vodka and lime, my one weakness!” or perhaps even, “Locking my mad first wife in the attic, my one weakness!”

Have other writers been surprised by what brings them comfort under stress, and is this something we can think about when we are fleshing out fictional characters? When things are tough, where do they go for comfort? Music? Food? Books? Romance? Drink? If they are contemporary, do they have online friends and interests that those closest to them know nothing about? Are there sides to them that might show themselves if life got difficult (as, no doubt, it will, if we are writing them into perilous situations, as all the good writing textbooks tell us to)?

In historical fiction, can our creations become more human, more rounded, by showing us the things they view as their own slight flaws? Perhaps a heroine snaps at the servants, or a villain stops to smell roses.

 I’m not sure doing online jigsaws would be particularly interesting, or indeed revealing, unless a rector has a preference for Reubens, but sometimes it is the smallest things that tell us the most about someone.

My painting above of cheesecake. “My one weakness.” *

*overheard at an ACW meeting. The speaker shall remain nameless.

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically ill writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her full-length publications include Garden of God’s Heart and Whale Song: Choosing Life with Jonah. She has a new book, Recital of Love, coming out with Paraclete Press in September 2020. Keren lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.