Holland has these wonderful stores called Flying Tiger. They carry a wide range of products from a solar powered gnome lamp (he was cute!), loofas, sketchbooks and canvas, paper kites, travel sized staplers and more all arranged in tidy little bins at reasonable prices. I found this DIY Character book there. (Note: Amazon doesn’t have this book.) The characters are drawn in but you have to color them in and add a story.

This is Thea. She is 32 and loves swing dancing, backgammon and mai tais. She majored in French Literature with a 4.0 GPA. She is irrepressible and way brighter than her current job as a librarian can absorb.

Speaking of creating compelling characters, Goddesses Never Age is an interesting look at how to create your own. My belief system doesn’t stretch enough for everything in this book (energetic removals with the Archangel Michael, channeling Aphrodite or Venus for example) so I skipped a lot but I did get 2 things out of it.

1. Whatever character you create needs to be comfortable with pleasure. Not the unsavory, illegal or immoral kind but the everyday. Like drinking a morning cup of strong black coffee with half and half while sitting on the porch listening to the 2 robins and their excitement about the day. Like having a desk with no distractions on it or a tool chest with labels on the drawers.
2. The character we create as we get older is largely determined by our attitudes. Color yourself gray or color yourself vibrant and alive. The choice matters.

Lastly, whether you’re creating your story or a story, there’s a way to tell it so the world listens. Bobette Buster’s book DO / STORY covers the 10 principles of storytelling in 100 small pages. It’s concise and scaled to be a handy reference. “Bring yourself: a story is as much about you as anything else” is one of the principles. And this requires vulnerability which is another principle. In the back are 10 exercises related to each of the principles.

So in our journey to DIY our own characters, let’s also create an interesting story!