To Younger and New Writers: A Cruel Blow and How It Helped Shape My Own Writing…

I find it great that my sons now view me as tough, fair–and unwavering.  I had realistic expectations of them, but I always let them be the individuals that they are and they later thanked me for that.  I vowed never to try to mold my kids into an image that was me and not them.  I grew up in a strict home and individuality was frowned upon to a degree, but I do not think my parents realized that this is what was going on. As I got older, they realized that I thought differently and had different ideas of how the world works, and then they started to listen to me more.  As my writing took on its Frankenstein existence, they definitely began to respect me more after that.  I am sure that I was born at the perfect time on this planet because had I been born, let’s say, 20 years earlier, I probably would have been given a lobotomy for my thoughts alone after being subjected to many rulers and whippings by teachers in front of a classroom for my free-thinking attitude.  My free thinking, as said earlier, always got me in a jam…I am never one to conform to anyone’s ideals of what they think I should be.  No writer should ever get locked into a box from which they can never escape.

However,  my younger son’s  father wanted me to profit from it and I refused.  It led to many fights because he would sneak into my notebooks so I stopped writing until we were divorced.  The final nail for that taking place was when one of my sons and I heard the man tell my best friend that he never loved me from day one.  Cruel isn’t it?  My son felt that he couldn’t love his own children if he couldn’t love their mother and it led to a lot of emotional wreckage which shaped my other stuff.  Some of my notebooks were stolen before and I didn’t want it out there because I write primarily for my satisfaction.  What looks like notes on here at times may very well come directly from my notes, but the ideas behind them work.

I write what I see happening.  It’s almost like watching a movie and it works for me.  It is the one thing that I never allowed anyone to take over or wrestle from my mental grasp.  It became a wonderful way to escape into other worlds I created and a way to punish those who did me harm.  In short, in those worlds I create, I am God.   There is something empowering about having the power of life and death in a pen–but there are times when writing off a good character has it’s purpose as well, so no…I don’t simply use it to kill off bullies and negative boneheads.

Some of my characters are actually what I refer to as closet exhibitionists for the simple reason that they would love to just say “Damn the torpedoes! Screw this! I’ve had it!” and then just let the other characters that tick them off have it!  However they don’t because they fear the unknown–the result.  Some never go into professions they wanted and are held back while others follow their gut instinct and are well rewarded later for it–maybe not in the way they anticipated, but they are rewarded.

However there is a reality that some people don’t seem to be able to envision simply  because they are too close to the soul of the issue…The rainbow….That is right…The rainbow.  In reflecting on my life and how all the events in it shaped me–my parents divorce, the wives Dad had that I knew of, and my grandparent’s influence, I did realize that at the end of this place a rainbow is present…When we see that rainbow, that is when  we finally believe that there is a purpose in all things and forms as well as in life itself.  It is also the point in which we realize in this life that it is not what you take with you, but what you leave behind that truly matters because like the ripples in a pond, those waves keep travelling–only that becomes your legacy.  It travels forever and others can learn from it, but the genealogy begins within your own voice–and emanates from YOUR own pen.  Two people got me to writing again.  I think they know who they are. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in the process.

I have grown to understand that I do not have to please everyone, and for you younger writer’s you simply need to grasp that you do not have to either.  Your writing comes from your soul…When you write faster than a dust devil in a hot sandstorm in the Mojave Desert that is stretching its arms out and  throwing cacti specimens around at everything in its path, this is the point at which your blood is boiling as you bring your characters, your plots and your backgrounds into a three-dimensional realm.  Your paper is your canvas for this chaos and that’s what you should use it for. Show the world YOUR picture as you bring your creatures to life and move them through their plots.  When you let your imagination run wild, a pen is now a wand and you are creating your own magic too…

That rainbow has many colors–but the only one visible is what others who read your work see, unless they have that gift of seeing between those lines and into the souls of your characters…If you have done a good enough job of creating those life forms from the nothingness of the universe, then you have created a rainbow of many colors for them…Sometimes it is better to see with the heart than with the eyes anyway–and they will see all those colors if you make these characters real, feeling beings..

Now for those of you with a normal upbringing and existence that want to write nice things with happy endings, disregard this post because you can’t allow that dust devil to come through…It can be an angel, a beloved pet, Bugs Bunny or whatever but unless you’ve had to deal with more drama than what TNT offers, it is hard to write from that perspective…Again, WRITE FROM your own perspective and nobody else’s. You’ll be less likely to get ulcers that way.  And you also might lead someone else to their own rainbow through your pen a lot quicker.

The blah blah blah of Writing…Characterization and random thoughts…

Have you ever reached a point to where you just want to kill off every character you put in your own story, much like they did in the “Black Adder” series once?  Well I have…I have heard it all this week…”Send the character over the cataract or make them a bloody messiah!”, “Give your main character a tragic flaw”, etc…etc…etc…

When breathing life into or smothering my characters to death, I do not see the logic in having   “A” tragic flaw rather than several.  I also see no logic for NOT having at least one sardonic bitch in my story be it male or female. I have met men who make better bitches than some of the other females that I encounter anyway.  I also like putting dark wit wherever possible.  Also my “villain”  might be someone people can actually empathize with–much to my mentor’s dismay…She likes villains to be pure a-holes–clearly defined as EVIL.  Why?  In reality you can say Charles Manson is an ultimate villain of sorts. But in reality, was Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton or even Obama?  OR is it a matter of perception only?  It’s just a thought I felt that I should toss about because anyone who has ever been pissed at a politician of either side of the coin can relate to it.  Better yet, are WE our own worst enemies in labeling people as such?  Hmmm…What a question to pose given the political climate of the past 35 years or so…The “villains” I had most empathy for in my lifetime were Barnabas Collins of  “Dark Shadows” (the 1992 version with Ben Cross–it seemed more plausible and realistic) and  Bruce Dern‘s portrayal of  astronaut Freeman Lowell in “Silent Running” (1972).   Quite frankly, I’d really LOVE  to see Mr. Cross and Mr. Dern work together…I know it probably will not happen, but they are both freaking brilliant in their portrayals of any character thrown at them.

I also had a tremendous empathy for Jonathan Frid‘s version of Barnabas…I felt that he was “bullied” by Angelique.  If I had met Lara Parker as a child, I am 100% certain that I would have kicked her in the shins and ran for my dear life! I was a kindergartener that ran home every day to watch the original version!

For those who have never seen “Silent Running” I strongly urge you to watch it.  Here is a damned good clip with Mr. Dern here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji67t8xJF-s

And for those of you who really admire how Ben Cross played Barnabas, here is a clip–which he played pretty damned well, I might add…I used a clip showing the bad side of him too–and after watching it, I certainly wouldn’t want to be on that actor’s shit list! Not that he’d be like this, but that voice alone would definitely command some freaking respect, don’t you think? :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_zoTfRmm9o

Anyway there are times I write purely for my amusement and my version of Dark Shadows is one of those projects…One can tell when they read it, it is much inspired not just by my love of the show, but from movies such as “Spirit of the Beehive”, “Frankenstein”, “Paperhouse”, which is a strange movie but deals with the perspective of child emotions rather well, and I also deal with the perspective of a severely abused child–my main character, who thinks that while Barnabas guided her from his crypt, was only an imaginary friend. Barnabas, however, was meant to guide her in the present time.  Much of their encounters took place prior to her departure from Collinsport at age 8 to attend private school in Boston, per Elizabeth and Roger after they get guardianship of her.

In my version, the child is going to grow up to be the catalyst for resolving all things past and present.  I was really pissed off that Barnabas “declared” his love for Angelique in the end of the ’72 series when in fact, any psychotic bitch that did to a man what she did to him would never have been loved, but rather LOATHED.  To me that was unrealistic and done in haste.

While I am not giving my whole story away, I am going to point out there that I only wrote it because I get pissed off at all the crap that people toss  about with regard to characterization.  To resolve it and answer questions as to HOW Barnabas  knows about certain aspects of technology and historical information in the present, an outside character really has to be used for this. The characters of Willy, Maggie and others are “boxed” in due to the original adaptations of it, so I dug my own “good little girl” in the form of my character from the deepest recesses of the pit of my imagination.  Believe me, given what she has endured at the hands of her crazy bitch mother, the fact that she is actually “good” is amazing–but there are flaws she has…She trusts nobody-really…She keeps to herself even as a celebrity, and she feels that all she experienced was in her imagination.  She fears things that she remembers from time to time.  Her best friend up until she returns to Collinsport (outside of her band) is her dog…Can you fans of the ’92 series guess what I named him?    😀

I will reveal one thing…If anyone plays the part of the ghost of my new character’s dad someday (if I ever get this out there), I hope to hell it’s  Matthew McConaughey because he’d be perfect for that part.  As for the part of younger Barnabas there would have to be two younger people playing him as a boy and a young man, and then an older man to play him at age 50-55 (the namesake) in the present time.  Don’t ask…I won’t tell how that works, but it’s in there 🙂 !  I dug deeper than hell to explain things in a logical light…That time-space continuum that my character has to fix is a bitch to deal with but I finally worked it out…

Now for the big decision…Do I make my characters “messianic” and admirable, make them grey or send them all over the bloody cataract?  Stay tuned…Same bat time! Same bat channel!