Why is it dark in here?

my art + photoshop elements

Recently I joked, “I could’ve written a light comedy.” And my husband replied, “I don’t think you have light comedy in you.”

A friend said, “It’s odd because you’re a funny person.”

Hey, I didn’t set out to write a dark, emotional novel. I started with an image and went from there. But I don’t sit down with an agenda. I always start with an image.

The novel that is to be published this winter began with the sound of marbles hitting a wood floor. Just that. No characters. No plot. But I asked, why would the marbles be spilled on the ground like that? And all these words later there is a tale of abuse and violence and survival and friendship.

Another novel started with an image I’ve had since childhood–a girl with a paintbrush that can change whatever she wants. That became a story of murder and jealousy.

And another novel started with the image of a young man who loses the ability to sleep–which is about jealousy too, and secrets, curses, and death.

And another with a young woman putting on red lipstick–which became a story about falling in love with the wrong person and going through hell for them.

But for all I know I could write a comedy. You never know.

As I edit my novel, I’m having to think about some of the things I’ve put a character through, and I think, she may be too damaged to come out all right in the end. Then again, I know people in the real world who’ve been through very real hell, and on the surface anyway, they seem to be doing fine. It’s hard to know though, isn’t it?

You have to find a way to do justice to a character’s suffering. I don’t mean that the bad guy will end up in jail or realize the error of his ways. If you put a character through trauma, that character can’t just shrug it off and be fine.

Something JK Rowling said recently about how Harry Potter would function after all he’d been through–not very well. Don’t you imagine he suffers from bad dreams that wake Ginny up in the middle of the night? Or that sometimes he’s a morose and remote father–loving, and generally good, but a man who needs time alone to brood. Wouldn’t his children sense his sadness at all his losses?

JK Rowling doesn’t put that in the books, but she doesn’t make it an impossibility either.

My character is going through a dark time, and I’m not sure how she’s going to be.

I’m not sure what it is about me that compels me to write stories of loss and trauma, and I can’t afford the therapy to find out.

You? Are your stories mostly happy? Sad? Funny? Why is that do you think?

Brimming Over

don’t stay in the cup

Sometimes the mind just brims over with ideas. Do you ever have trouble deciding what to focus on or what to pursue?

I’m going to pursue as many as I can.

One is the idea of a princess detective. I want to try to write a princess that isn’t what most people think. I’m writing about her over at The Fairy Tale Asylum.

Another idea goes back to my love of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Agent Dale Cooper. Cooper is one of my most favorite characters on television ever. Twice readers have said that my writing reminded them of Twin Peaks! I don’t know why since I don’t have a murder nor do I write about the northwest, logging, or the FBI–but my character do drink a lot of coffee.

Anyway, I’ve started another blog for a character in love with Agent Dale Cooper and determined to find him in the real world. For her travels and travails, read searching for Agent Dale Cooper. If you want to help her find her man, feel free to leave a comment.

I’ve got an art show coming in October as well. Projects will be posted over at Words Are Art.

And finally, there is always facebook.

What projects are you juggling in life?

Pondering Killing Hitler

So finally the Doctor ends up in a room with Hitler. The year is 1938. The Doctor or one his companions could kill Hitler. Imagine. You may think you’d never kill anyone, but would you kill Hitler in 1938?

Imagine Poland never invaded. America never liberating Paris. London never going through the Blitz. And millions of people living the whole of their lives.

What would the world be like today? How would Churchill be remembered? What would’ve happened in Russia? Would the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor?

How do you imagine the world would be different and where is this parallel universe?

And I want to add…um, Stephen Moffat? He’s writing (as in writing and/or in charge of) two, TWO, shows with iconic British characters. The Doctor and Sherlock Holmes. Imagine being responsible not just for your characters, but famous and indelible and amazing and loved characters. He’s right when he says it is insane. What am I complaining about?

Women Are Awesome. How about if We Stop Murdering Them?

I don’t remember when I started to care about women. (And I’m not going to say women’s issues because it’s not a self-contained status sort of thing. We’re half the population—-nothing special interest about that.)

In grad school I complained about a professor who told the class his favorite bar was called “The Silent Woman” and out front it had a picture of a woman with her head chopped off. I was told he had tenure and to go away.

In college I complained about a physics professor who said, “You ladies with your pressure cookers will understand this…” I was given extra points on my grade and told to go away.

In 10th grade a male classmate who sat next to me in the computer class told me repeatedly how he was going to find out where I lived, force his way in, and show me how he was “a real man.” I complained to the office. They told me to avoid him and try not to provoke him. (Even by sexist standards, I failed to understand this. I was a flat-chested, make-up-less bookworm. Short of not existing, I didn’t see how I wasn’t going to provoke him.)

In 7th grade I was sent to the office for slapping a boy. He had me pinned to a wall and was about to punch me. He wasn’t sent to the office. I didn’t get into trouble because, as the guidance counselor said, everyone knew I was “really a nice girl.”

In 5th grade I had a button on my person that read, “A woman’s place is every place.” I’d found the button in a bowling alley parking lot. I think it had already been run over. But I pinned it to my purse.

In 3rd grade I complained to teachers about a boy because, “He shouldn’t be talking to girls that way.” He had looked up my skirt and asked me to kiss him. I kicked him really hard. I was told to play nice. He got in no trouble at all.

And those are only the moments I’m going to share.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of about violence against women around the world and in school shootings. And today I read a piece riffing on the famous quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

And another piece about having The Right Reader.

It’s funny how everyone agrees with the saying, “You can’t please everyone,” until they’re the one not pleased.

Recently a male facebook friend made disparaging comments about the Duchess of Cornwall–Camilla Parker Bowles. His main complaint wasn’t that Charles had cheated on his wife. Sure that was bad. But the bigger sin was to cheat on his wife with someone ugly, and he hoped the if William ever cheated on Kate, it would be with someone pretty.

I am insecure about my looks, and I had to ask my friend if he really thought that women judge unattractive were underserving of loving relationships. Really? Honestly, while I think Charles is a cad, I reluctantly admire his ability to devote himself to a woman whose looks are constantly insulted in the media. Here is a man who ignored his pretty, young wife for an older, dowdy woman. How cliche breaking is that?

In most places a woman is only as valuable as she is pretty. And virtuous.

I think one reason I had trouble killing a character in a short story recently was because that character was a teenage girl. Before her death, she had not been virtuous… Gosh, now I’m rethinking the ending again. Don’t we have enough violence against women and girls? Then again, because it happens, shouldn’t we write about it?

So, I realize that my “right reader” would be someone who cares about women too.

Do you ever consider how your characters reflect the culture or an issue that matters to you? And I don’t mean being didactic about it. Just, do you consider such things?

Kill Them All!

I’ve just killed someone. Well, a fictional someone. A fictional character that I quite liked.

She was young. And sympathetic. I wanted her to live, but that seemed…so unlikely. I’ve killed characters before…this one just bothered me more than usual.

Maybe I’ve watched too much of Stranger than Fiction.

Am I killing a character because it makes sense or for shock value or to end the story when I can’t think of anything else?

How do you know?

How many characters have you killed? Do you ever bad about it?

The New Year and the Old Years Long Ago

a Florida childhood

New Year’s Eve I finished reading Girls of a Tender Age, a compelling and disturbing memoir.

Mary-Ann Tirone-Smith writes about her childhood and the murder of a childhood friend. The story would’ve caught me even if a classmate of mine* hadn’t been murdered back when I was in the eighth grade. She was not my friend, but her death helped shape my childhood.**

Reading this memoir about death and arriving at the end of the year, brought this past to mind, and all the death that edged my narrow world in central Florida.

My mother’s grief at the death of her favorite brother, our dog shot by a passing motorcyclist, my mother’s attempted suicide, my mother’s boyfriend who taught classes on death and dying and who punched holes in the wall, the classmate murdered, the man at my window in the very early morning dark, the step-mother who kept a folder of dead-girl news stories, the best friend whose aunt was murdered, and the steady stream of stories of serial killers in Florida (an orange grove is a great place to leave a body), and a fascination of murder mysteries.

And the shooting at the grocery store my dad goes to, the destruction of hurricanes and sinkholes, the alligators…

All turns the writer’s imagination.

And now I’m finally reading Alias Grace–more murder for the New Year.

And why, by the way, is Margaret Atwood such a brilliant writer?

Well, in this year I think I’ll be posting much less. At least until something worthwhile comes to mind.

Enjoy the New Year and the stories it brings.

—-

*I thought about not linking to the page about my classmate’s murder. Seemed morbid to do so. But at the same time, her death mattered. In a recent episode of Doctor Who (a show that deals a lot with death), the Doctor said, “900 years of time and space and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”

**I’ve written here before about when I woke up to a man at my window, which was level with my bed, the bed pushed against the low window so that I could get a breeze in the heat, and that the man stood with his hand near my face and watched me. This was four months before Tina was murdered. And now it was an uneasy feeling to read that her suspected killer used to break into homes and stand over girls’ beds. Tina lived to the south of me at that time and her body was found to the north. It is foolhardy to jump to conclusions, but hard not to.