Reading: Walkable City Rules by Jeff Speck
Still reading: A Princess of Mars, The City We Became, The Face in the Frost
Listening to: Gnoll’s ode to Joe Dever and Gary Chalk’s Lone Wolf RPG Adventure books
Also listening to: Know Your Enemy podcast
Drinking: French roast coffee
Been listening to a lot of synth from HDK, an Italian record label that specializes in, as they call it, “ambient punk, minimal-synth, dungeon-drone, wartime music and post-nuclear wave.”
I’ve written before about how I discovered the dungeon synth genre and then eventually found out that some of the artists have disgusting Nazi/fascist leanings. Not all of them, thank goodness, but enough to make me wary of seeking out new bands.
I vowed in my earlier post that I would give up the genre and stick with other music for inspiration, but HDK is one of those labels I haven’t given up on. They still release incredibly cool music, and since they are left wing politically, I don’t have to worry about supporting fascists by listening to the music they put out.
(I have also found a couple other dungeon synth artists whom I researched to make sure they weren’t gross, so I’m proceeding with caution with their music at the moment too. But it’s too bad I have to do this in the first place.)
Right now I’m listening to Starlight by Logic Gate. It’s futuristic, very 1980s sci-fi/thriller movie vibe. The cassette tape is made of yellow plastic and the liner notes come with a little grid game called “Asteroids Storm.” Every product from HDK has this kind of playful, throwback aesthetic and interactive quality. I really should splurge some day and buy a cassette of one of these albums. The dungeon synth ones often come with a little dungeon crawl module inside that fits with the music.
What I like about this kind of synth music, especially when I’m writing or getting ready to write, is that they set a distinct mood and ambiance, and since there are no words, I can get lost in the vibes of the music without getting caught up in the lyrics.
I do like music with lyrics for inspiration too, but I’ve found that I do better when I listen to those songs outside of my writing time. Maybe when going on a walk or driving or biking. Then my mind can interact with the poetry of the lyrics.
But before putting my fingers on the keyboard to type, I tend to prefer the synth stuff, especially when I need to get into a certain mood. Classical music works for me similarly (or movie soundtracks). Or other instrumental music.
What’s cool about the stuff from HDK is that they really carry the vibe over into the whole product. Even though I’ve never purchased a cassette from them, the pictures of the product are inspirational, as is the narrative aspect of the songs themselves. These are concept albums telling cohesive stories, and that kind of conceptual design helps focus my own attempts to create narrative.
Some of what HDK releases is not to my taste aesthetically. Some of the more horror-related albums, for instance. But in general terms, they have a vibe that I very much dig. It’s punk and pulpy, both tongue-in-cheek and earnest in its dedication to reviving a look and feel from the past. They’ve created a sonic universe that makes me want to write stories in their world.
My husband and I were discussing which movies to watch with our kids for our family movie nights, and I thought it was time to show them some of the old fantasy movies from the 1970s and 80s like Rankin and Bass’s The Hobbit and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.
We both mentioned The Neverending Story, but then we thought, “Uh oh. Artax.”
Both of us had the same experience as probably every other kid who watched that movie, and that’s the experience of intense grief after watching Atreyu and Artax try to get through the Swamps of Sadness.
Our daughter is tenderhearted and loves animals deeply, and we both know that if we showed her The Neverending Story, she would be absolutely wrecked by the Artax scene.
So what do we do? We both love the movie; it was formative for us. And we were both devastated by the Artax scene as kids. I mean, that scene still gets me. Just thinking about it earlier made me tear up.
Do we pass on showing her the movie? Or do we tell her that even though there’s a really sad part, the rest of the movie is amazing?
In some ways, I want to shield her from that kind grief. I don’t want my daughter to cry.
But then I think of my own experience as a kid watching this movie, and how the intense sadness I felt at Artax’s death was somehow important to my development as a person. It showed me that death happens even when we don’t want it to. Even when it’s someone we love. Going through the process of weeping over Artax’s death, and watching Atreyu continue his quest despite the loss of his friend, was a kind of growing-up moment for me. The story revealed an important truth. Wouldn’t it be wrong to shield my daughter from that truth simply because I don’t want her to cry?
Of course, we could always wait a year or two before showing The Neverending Story, but I don’t think a year or two will matter. I still cry when I watch that scene. It will be sad at any age.
Should we avoid stories that make us so sad? Should we keep those kinds of stories at bay because they cut too deeply?
I don’t really know the answer. I know that I often cry when watching movies or listening to certain songs, and that I feel intense emotions when experiencing stories in all their various forms. This is the catharsis the Greeks believed was so important. We need to let out our emotions, even the really big and troubling ones. I wouldn’t want to stop watching movies just because they might make me cry. In a weird way, I like that experience.
But I know not everybody does. I know from my teaching experience that many students really didn’t like to read a sad book or watch a sad movie. They were uncomfortable feeling those feelings. For them, the crying and sadness didn’t lead to catharsis, or if it did, it was an unsatisfying catharsis, a stunted one.
Maybe their negative reactions were due to never having watched movies like The Neverending Story as kids. Maybe their discomfort with sadness was because they didn’t experience it in the stories they read and watched in childhood. Because they never had to process something as traumatic as Artax’s death when they were little, they couldn’t find value or meaning in some of the sad books that were part of the curriculum in high school. Maybe for them, stories needed not just a happy ending, but a kind of pervasive always-happiness that never allowed for anything too bad to happen. There might be danger and peril, but nothing would ever go too far.
Or maybe their discomfort with sad movies was because their lives were already too difficult and traumatic, and there truly was no value in living through someone’s fictional trauma. Maybe they needed those always-happy stories because they needed a total escape from whatever bleakness was in their lives already.
I honestly don’t know why some of these students rejected the sad books for their sadness, but I don’t think their rejection of them was illegitimate. I just know that for me, these sad stories made me feel less alone. Sometimes the danger and peril went “too far,” and the characters had to suffer, but that suffering connected me to them in ways that went very deep.
Artax’s death is a “too far” moment: a horrible, shocking event that has no last-minute save. When he dies, he dies. And Atreyu must mourn.
But his death isn’t the end. The quest must continue, or else the entire universe gets destroyed by the Nothing. That was a powerful moment for me, watching Artax die and seeing that Atreyu couldn’t change or fix it. And that he still needed to keep going even after his friend’s death.
Maybe if we talk about it as a family and help our daughter both prepare for the scene and also process it afterward, maybe then we can watch The Neverending Story. One of the joys of being a parent is sharing my favorite stories with my kids. We’ve listened to some of the Little House on the Prairie and Chronicles of Narnia books on audio, we’ve read all the Frog and Toads, we’ve watched all the original Muppet movies, and we’ve spent many a Saturday morning watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse.
Now, perhaps, it’s time to ride on the back of a luck dragon and watch The Neverending Story. And we can all cry together.
There’s one on the wall of my office right now. I hate trying to kill these gross insects because they’re so flipping fast when they move, and then when you do kill them, they basically disintegrate into a weird silvery smudge.
It’s gliding along the wall, going back and forth, trying to shimmy its way up the wooden molding, but I think it’s unable to do it for whatever reason. Maybe it’s legs aren’t strong enough.
I just looked them up, and it turns out silverfish eat paper, which means they can destroy books, and I have several piles of books on the floor of my office (taken from my old classroom), and I wonder: Do I need to worry about them? Can the silverfish really destroy my books? How many silverfish are gliding their way through my basement at this very moment?
It almost made it up the molding just now. I thought it was going to fall off the wall, its little body sort of dangling as it tried to clutch the molding and pull itself up. But it gave up and scooted back down onto the drywall.
That’s when I squashed it. With a book catalog that came in the mail today. It left a streak of silver on the back page, smudging a few words: the advertising copy for a new book.
I don’t feel bad about killing the silverfish, but I do feel bad that it never made it up the molding.
Been thinking a lot today about my fears and the critical voice that constantly tries to stop me from writing. I wrote quite a bit in my WNB this morning, trying to figure out what my fears really are and brainstorming ways to combat them.
I’ve always admired prolific writers. Ray Bradbury. Neil Gaiman. All the old pulp guys like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith (and so many others). And there are women too, like Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, and Ursula Le Guin, who were incredibly prolific in their lifetimes. Jane Yolen is a writer today who is incredibly prolific and one I admire.
So, if I admire all these prolific writers, how do I combat my fears and get more writing done?
While writing in my notebook today, I decided to try a technique that will hopefully kill my critical voice and get me into the right headspace for writing.
That technique is visualization. If I can visualize myself as a pulp writer, as someone like Andre Norton, who loves to tell stories and doesn’t care what anyone thinks, then maybe I can let go of my perfectionism and fear of writing something “wrong” and just let the words flow.
You might be wondering, why the need for visualization? Why not just force myself to write more?
But this is where my critical brain is so deadly. The negative thoughts and fears keep me from “just writing.” I get hung up on worrying what people will think. I’ve tried “just writing more,” but critical voice always sneaks in and stops me.
Not necessarily in the moment of writing, but in the off-hours, when I’m thinking about what I wrote and start questioning everything. It’s in the in-between times when my critical voice is most ascendant, when it starts judging my writing and making me doubt myself. These off-hours ruin my energy and enthusiasm for the story. They make it harder and harder to sit down at the computer and write. I’ll force myself to do it, but critical voice has sucked all the fun out of it.
But the prolific SFF writers? I don’t know if they really didn’t care what others thought of their work, but I suspect they had a healthy dose of “don’t give a fuck.” And that’s the attitude I need to channel.
So my solution is visualization.
I like pretending. That’s why I like writing stories in the first place. It’s all make-believe. Like when I was a kid. Telling myself stories while I ran around the backyard. My kids do this too, all the time, and they are so engrossed in their make-believe epics, they have zero time for worrying what others will think. That is the key.
Since I like to pretend, since playing make-believe is where it all started for me, I’m going play make-believe now. I’m going to pretend I’m a prolific writer. I’m going to pretend to be an Andre Norton-esque fantasy writer who writes fearlessly and doesn’t care what people think.
Dean Wesley Smith often talks about how writing should be fun. His advice: “Make it play.”
Well, this is part of my play. I’m pretending to be prolific. Playing make-believe as I sit to write. I’m playing around in the story world even as I’m playing a part at my desk. And if I pretend enough — if I visualize myself as a prolific writer — then perhaps the make-believe will bleed into reality.
Visualization is one of those popular techniques for achieving goals and establishing new habits, and there’s a bit of a hippy-dippy quality to it, but I remember a teacher training we did at my old school several years ago, and the instructor was a professor of psychology, and he told us about the studies they did with students who visualized themselves taking a test and doing well, and he said that students who visualized themselves being successful on the test before they studied did better than the students who just studied. And there’s a bunch of research on how visualization coupled with practice can help basketball players improve their free throw shooting. It’s not unusual for performers, athletes, and others to imagine themselves on stage or on the field doing their thing and having success.
So why not visualize myself as a prolific pulpster who is having a blast writing all the stories of her imagination? To some, this might seem like a crutch, but to me, it’s just an extension of the fun to be had writing stories in the first place. If I can make-believe a story and write it down, why can’t I make-believe I’m someone who has a prolific career and writes with abandon every day?
The visualization has to be coupled with practice, of course. Which means I still need to sit at my desk and write. But when I sit down, I’ll imagine I’m a pulp writer, bursting with stories, fearless, ready to spin a yarn. It’s the fun of the masquerade, of playing dress-up, of pretending. I don’t write under a pen name (well, most of the time I don’t), but I can see how a pseudonym gives one the freedom to be someone else for a little while. If I pretend to be someone else when I’m at my writing desk, perhaps I’ll unlock some of that freedom.
What I hope will happen is that over time, I won’t need the visualization exercise. I hope I’ll simply BE a prolific writer who doesn’t care what others think and who has banished her critical voice. Until then, I’ll use my imagination and pretend.
It’s what writers do.
Kids were sick, so we stayed home and watched a lot of Hilda. I tried to read a couple of books but was too tired and ended up taking a nap. Tried to write in my notebook but only managed a page. Tried to find the will to do something — anything! — but found myself sinking back into the couch every chance I got.
At long last I roused myself to write a bit more in my notebook and then came down to the computer to write this blog.
I have blah days like this at least a couple of times a month (sometimes more). I’m tired, brain-fogged, out of gumption, and I wish I could do some work, but there’s just nothing left in the tank. These days are most likely tied to my cycle and I’m PMSing, but that doesn’t make them any easier. I wish I could get up and do something, but I’m just, well… blah.
I wish as a parent and adult, I could have more days where I’m allowed to be blah and just lay around watching TV and listening to music and doing nothing. I feel SO guilty about a day like today. What did I accomplish? Nothing.
(N.B.: I did write some fiction this morning in the early hours after waking. I’m trying to make this a thing, so I made sure to follow my new morning routine. So I did accomplish about 700 words.)
But why do I have to feel guilty about having a blah day? Are adults not allowed to spend a day doing nothing? Are parents not allowed to just veg on the couch with their kids for the afternoon?
Am I the only one who feels guilty for not having a more “productive” Saturday? Are other people having blah Saturdays and just not caring?
I wish I could be a not-caring type. I wish I could relish these blah days and go with the flow. I’m allowed to have a blah day. I’m allowed to spend my Saturdays doing nothing in particular. I wouldn’t want every Saturday to be like this, but a few every once in awhile is fine. Good, even.
The thing about the blah day is that it’s so slow and melancholy that it makes me start to think of all the stuff I could be doing if I had just a little more energy. And then I start making plans and looking forward to stuff, and pretty soon, a few days after the blah day, I’m back to normal and ready to get on with my work. So, if the blah day eventually helps me get back to my normal self, why shouldn’t I embrace it? Why shouldn’t I luxuriate in the blah day and accept it for what it is. It’s my body and mind telling me I need to rest, and that it’s okay to idle the whole day through.
There’s still some hours left before I need to go to sleep. Maybe I’ll spend them vegging on the couch or trying to read those books again. And if I happen to doze off, then all the better. That’s what blah days are for.
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