Twenty Years Ago

Where were you and what was your life like twenty years ago? (ten if you're under 30, five if you're under 20 - you get the idea.) Perhaps more importantly, what were you like then and what are you like now in comparison?

It's doubtful that you are the same. If you are, maybe you need to examine why. Is it because you were perfect then and your life has been static since you see no need for anything to be different? Or more likely, have you buried yourself and your life in concrete, an attempt to avoid scary change - better the devil you know than the one you don't -kind of thing.

Change is usually painful. Most people don't change for positive reasons, because they want to, but because the pain of changing has become less than the pain of maintaining things the way they are. -And sometimes they have no choice in that. Many things in our lives are beyond our control, so if someone or something else changes and it has a huge negative impact on our lives, maintining the status quo becomes more painful than the frightening idea of changing ourselves and our lives.

So looking back, not to beat ourselves up but simply to recognize where we were at back then and what changes we've gone through since. Visiting the past is worthwhile - living in it isn't.

Thinking Backwards

I find myself writing a play, not something I ever thought about doing. However, I wrote a series of short stories - short fictional anecdotes really - that had the same speaker, an old retired farmer who is keenly observant and has a wry, gentle wit. I didn't know what to do with them until one evening I was at a fund raiser for the region's land trust and the MC was a local actor, a man with considerable talent, especially a keen sense of comic timing. Part way through the evening, I realized he would make a marvelous speaker in my stories, and maybe I should turn them into a play.

However, it evolved totally differently from my usual pattern. I always talk about 'thinking backwards', by which I mean when you have the general idea for a story, think about how it ends, then work backwards, thinking about what you have to include to make the ending make sense. Then think about what needs to come before that, both events and characters, etc. Eventually, you have a plan and you can 'write forwards', based on the detailed outline from 'thinking backwards'.

However, that isn't what I did here. When I began, I had no idea how it would end, so now that I have written the ending, I need to re-write earlier scenes, so the ending doesn't come out of the blue. The things that happen, the ways the characters act, the dialogue, etc. all need to fit realistically.

Generational Changes

During the last week or so, I've come to recognize just how much things have changed in my family. My mother had to quit school after Grade 8. It was the Great Depression, she was the oldest in a large family, and her father did not believe educating women was worthwhile. My daughter attended university in Scotland last year to complete a Master's Degree, and will be beginning a PhD program at the University Of Victoria next September.

How much things have changed in two generations.

Great Images

I was in a waiting room yesterday where two other men carried on an interesting discussion about the economic meltdown, environmental challenges, etc. When talking about how inter-related the whole world is, how what happens elsewhere has an impact here, one described a cartoon he had seen somewhere. There are four men in a rowboat, two in the bow, two in the stern. There is a hole towards the stern and the water is making a fountain as it gushes in. The two men in the back are madly bailing. One of the men in the front says to the other, 'Sure glad the hole's in their end.'

I love that image as it captures a sentiment far too common, denying the idea that choices we make have an impact on everyone else in the world and we can't play ostrich, thinking we are immune to what happens elsewhere. I recall hearing a radio interview with a politician after a ban of an environmentally disastrous pesticide that the government was then collecting from people and businesses who had been using it. When asked what they would do with all they collected, he speculated that maybe they should sell it to a jurisdiction that didn't have a ban. -Really strong grasp of the problem-.

Anyway, I'm glad that image is now strong enough that it was worth a cartoon that was published somewhere, and that it had a significant enough impact that a very middle-of-the-road man not only understood and remembered, but felt it deserved to be passed on.

On a completely different note - today I was using the photocopier in an adjoining office (the program I work part time in is very small, so we share theirs) and a woman came in and asked for something. When I explained I didn't really work there, that I was just using the copier, she said, "Aren't you an author?" That's the first time someone has used that to identify me. I have participated in many different work and volunteer activities in the past, so people usually identify me with one of those roles. -So this was nice, an affirmation that maybe my passion for writing , which I only started to move out of my personal life into the public realm a few years ago, can be more than just a part of my internal, private identity.

One of the problems of not growing up with this technology and living in a relatively isolated area is that I must try things I read about or people explain to me via email. That's how I learn. I'm learning how to create a link to another entry in this blog . So ignore what follows. It is nothing but an attempt on my part to see if I understand.

Jolts Per Minute is found here.

Paranoia

Last weekend, I was at an all-day event sponsored by our local Writers and Editors Network. We (several authors) had displays of our books as people went through. As well, we each did a reading. After mine, I was approached by a woman who asked what the organization running the event was about. I explained what they do and when I talked about writing circles, including the fiction writer's circle I belong to, she expressed interest So I asked if she wrote and she said she had been working on a book for ten years. When I asked what it was about, she became rather defensive, showing considerable concern that her great idea would be stolen, and as she talked, it became apparent that she was reluctant to share the idea with anyone, including potential agents or publishers. I let her know she would be welcome to join our group, but we could not give her feedback on her writing, structure, etc. unless she was willing to share with us, and she would have to decide how much of that she would be willing to do.

When I disucssed this at the next meeting of our circle (she won't be able to join for another month, if she decides to risk it), one man expressed having once had similar concerns. He no longer feels that way, but said many years ago and with another group, he felt similarly.

This is quite foreign to me. I have so many ideas about possiblities, that I know I will never be able to pursue them all. If someone were to take one and develop it, I wouldn't feel it as a loss. To me, genuine ownership comes from the actual writing, not the basic idea in the first place. Though I suppose I might feel differently if I felt an idea was so unique and earth-shattering the actual writing was secondary. However, I don't think that is realistic. It is very rare a Dan Brown comes along with The DaVinci Code, and even then, if it is not well structured and written, it isn't going anywhere. Great ideas only take you so far, and that isn't all that far.

Anyway, every time I start to think I've seen it all, someone comes along with a differnt perspective to let me know I haven't.

Ignore this. I'm just making sure this will work - being able to edit an old post to include a link to a newer one.

Click here to go to Great Images.

Jolts Per Minute

At my Writer's Circle this week, one person said she had thought about buying all the best-selling novels to see what was working. However, when she looked at the rack of best-sellers in the grocery store (drug store, wherever she was), she said she was only interested in one, and that was a half-hearted interest at best. She said the others were all shallow, based on terror, and even that was not because of some well-developed evil character but because there was a psychopath threatening people for no logical, character-based reason other than his psychopathy.

I know there are other novels out there in whatever genre you want - novelists such as Jodi Piccoult, Sharyn McCrumb, CJ Cherryh, Elizabeth George, etc. - but it is disturbing that none of them are included in the mass-market 'best seller' displays in places where Joe and Jill Public might purchase a book.

That led to a discussion about why people might find that appealing. I think people have been conditioned by their exposure to television to need very strong jolts of adrenaline, such as would be caused by fear, sudden rage, or shock. I think TV producers (and other media too) probably have a way to measure 'jolts per minute', the number of rushes a watcher/listener/reader experiences. Is that what has led to the proliferation of action-oriented, scary plots with little if any real character development?

That discussion morphed into how even positive things like Sesame Street cause people to have very short attention spans. They expect something new and exciting every few minutes, as they have been conditioned that that is what will happen. Most older teachers who started teaching before the Sesame Street generation reached school will tell you that there has been a drastic change. Now students expect teachers to be entertainers, with something new, different, and exciting every few minutes. -But there is no off switch or channel-changer, at least no external one, but that doesn't stop students from using their internal one to turn the teacher off or switch channels to think about something else that is superficially more interesting.

Does that apply to writing too, that readers expect something new and exciting every few paragraphs, since they have been conditioned to believe that is what to expect?

Mass Appeal

We just had an interesting discussion at our Fiction Writer's Circle. (Only 3 people here - when it's a small group to start with, all it takes is a few vacation plans.) After we read and discussed our writing with suggestions ranging from minor corrections to structural reorganization, we got talking about what we read and how that relates to what we write.

I think we read (and therefore must write) things which have characters which people have to be able to relate to. Whatever the genre, whatever the plot, whatever the action details, the characters must approach what they encounter with persistence, fortitude, cleverness - or whatever characteristics people find appealing, because they think (or wish) they have those characteristics themselves. So Joe or Sue (or whoever the character is) approaches his/her problem - saving mankind or whatever - with the same characteristics people want to have when they approach a gossipy co-worker spreading rumours or whatever more mundane problems in their own lives there are.

But there are many very angry people out there, so does that mean we have to write so characters approach problems with violence since that is the way all those people would like to respond to every minor inconvenience? I'm not just talking about the obviously angry either - it's scary to discover how many apparently calm, stable people have built-up rage inside.

What do you do if you realize you are out of step with the masses? I often feel that way, and am quite content to be. But does that mean I will never write something with broad appeal unless I sacrifice my values to give my characters characteristics which run contrary to my authentic self, which I do not want to do.