Hello everyone this is Duchess Willow de Wisp 
I am the oldest persona in the Kingdom, but it has taken me many years to get my persona to where it is at today. In 38 years here are some truths I have learned.
1. Persona building is an ongoing process. It is OK to start out simple. I was just "a Lady" for the first five years of my SCA career.
2. It is OK to not have a complex persona, but everyone needs a simple one. For the system to work you have to behave like there is a Kingdom of Ansteorra and titles like Lord or Lady mean something. It is necessary that everyone has the persona of a gentle of the kingdom or we have no "Dream" or "Game" or "Magic". Without some persona play we are people dressed in funny clothes at a cocktail party. How much you do is a personal choice. 
3. Persona development is easier if it is linked to activities. You decide that you are an 12th century lady or gentleman. What would you know? What would you do?  For a Lady, like myself I would either do all that fiber handwork or I would get involved in the "courtly game". I would patron arts and maybe even take up performing myself. Now in the SCA I might not find a venue that is the same as the Courts of France, but I can find similar things. I can sponsor the Bardic  college or promote "Ladies Pavilions" I can make a point of encouraging young fighters. I might take up dancing. I might encourage my local groups to have a "Court of Love" or encourage a hunt. It is hard to just sit and be in persona or even maintain and conversation in persona for a  long time, but it is easy to do something and be in persona. That is why fighter at tourneys and wars often feel the magic. What they are doing is what their persona would be doing. 
4. Persona development fuels our research. We do research into what people of our class would be doing and we start learning those things. We get out local groups to sponcer learning situations. For example, a lady of my period would hunt and would be able to shoot a bow. I learned how to shoot and because I was interested others joined in and years ago we had one our first archery tourneys because of people's trying to learn more about their personas.
5. Persona building is good for our groups. The persona player is a dabbler. He/she gets into many different things and they act like bumble bee carrying information from one part of our communities to another. They are happy to see events that have fighting, and arts and role playing and they are happy to see people doing many different things. Many of our populace are one sided. They like to just fight or do fiber arts or do just one thing. Do not delude yourself there are as many Neanderthal arts people as there are Neanderthal fighters. Many SCA groups in other kingdoms have compartmentalized. They will have events where all the fighters come and then pack up and the arts people come and take part in the contest and classes and then the dancers come for the ball. Each group is separate and sees no worth in the other groups. Ansteorra has been different because we had the role players keeping us together. When we work together to produce a pre-17th century event then we are working as a community with each one of us important to each other. We can't put on period events without the persona role player. 
Duchess Willow de Wisp
Lion of Ansteorra 
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