Outward signs. We burn last year’s palms from Palm Sunday and mix them with consecrated oil mixed with incense, also from last Easter. Inner meaning: we burn all the failed attempts of the year to make a new beginning.

I have been thinking about outward and visible signs of what is inward and invisible. Rituals, actions, habits, practices. They all hint at inner beliefs and motivations. This month, I’m slaving over the backstory, character, and inner motivations of characters for the next four books (one novella and three novels, one of which I need to have completed by the end of May). They’re all crowding my head with scenes that are giving me glimpses of my character’s inner self. But, I have to ask, do they show the character’s true self? Or do they show the mask they display to the world? To write them, I need to know both.

I’m religious, which (to me) means that I love the rituals and practices of my church. I’m also (I hope) a person of faith. I believe, and I try to act accordingly. The books I enjoy, and the books I try to write, are about characters with depth. I want the words I use on the page to hint at dimensions to the character that I don’t spell out in words; not just the rituals and practices, but the beliefs and motivations. And I want them all to be different — not the same hero and the same heroine in book after book with just the physical appearance and the name changed.

My husband has been watching best man speeches on YouTube. (No, I don’t know why, but he has.) The jokes and male-to-male insults of a best man speech are a ritual that indicates the support and affection of the selected friend for the groom. Outward signs with inner meaning.

At Mass today, they had the ashes ceremony for those who missed it last Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday. That day marks the beginning of a period of fasting, abstinence, and prayer in preparation for Easter, more than six weeks away, and the ashes are meant to remind us of the shortness of our lives (‘for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, says the priest as he marks the forehead of each believer with a cross made from a mix of ashes and oil). They also call to mind the ancient practice of wearing sackcloth and ashes for remorse or mourning. Outward signs with inner meaning.

Oddly enough, one of my characters is a widower who may or may not be called Ash. That’s his name, in the notes about his story that I made close to six years ago; a shortened form of his title. However, in the last month I’ve given him a backstory that includes an unfaithful wife, a manipulative older brother, and a couple of daughters, one (and possible both) of whom is definitely his niece, rather than his own child. This means he hasn’t been Earl of Ashbury for very long, so he might think of himself as Val or Fort. I’m still working on it. Inner motivations. He’s a grumpy devil, and a recluse. He arrived home after his brother’s death three years ago to find that his brother’s widow has sent both girls off to boarding school, washed her hands of them, and departed for parts unknown. He has left them there, figuring they’re better off without him. I’m also still working on his heroine, but I need to know her a lot better before she turns up at his house with a carriage full of children, including his own two, refugees from the cholera epidemic sweeping the school.

I know that he will refuse her admittance and she will demand it, and refuse to move on since two of the girls (including his niece) are showing early signs of the disease. I know she shows her anxiety in contempt for his reluctance, not realising he is already thinking about how to help her. I know that he’ll marshal his pitiful complement of servants to look after the well girls and join her in nursing those who have become ill.  Outward signs with an inner meaning.

I know those things, but I have a lot more work to do before I start to commit the random scenes swirling around my brain onto a page.

I wonder if the whole story could happen around an Ash Wednesday?