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Swamps of Sadness

April 25, 2023 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

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.

Killing Silverfish

April 24, 2023 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

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.

Pretending to be Prolific

April 23, 2023 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

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.

Blahs

April 22, 2023 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

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.

Early Morning Writer

April 21, 2023 / JennyDetroit / 2 Comments

I’ve been trying to start this habit for AGES. Everyone who works and has kids seems to swear by waking up in the wee hours of the morning and getting their writing done before anyone else is up. They make the sacrifice to go to bed earlier, or simply give up some of their sleep, so they can devote time to their writing.

It sounds like a good solution, right? If life is busy and there’s no time for pursuing one’s creative work during the day or evening, then get up before dawn and do the work then. Simple. Effective. Before you know it, you’ve written a novel in your little early morning productivity hour.

Except, I have always struggled with this strategy. I can train myself to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier (or, as often happens, sacrifice my sleep), but what I cannot do is form coherent, interesting, or evocative sentences in the pre-dawn hours. I just can’t. My brain doesn’t have any thoughts or ideas that early in the morning. 6:00 a.m. is for shaking the fuzz out of my head, not for making up stories.

And if I wasn’t going to be an early morning writer, then I’d have to be a night time writer, slinking down to the computer after putting the kids to bed and trying to plunk out a few plot points before exhaustion claimed me. But that’s just it: by the time night rolls around I’m EXHAUSTED and cannot form many coherent thoughts either.

I know this sounds like a lot of whining, but there’s a somewhat happy ending here. You see, today, I tried again with the morning writing thing. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and headed down to the writing computer, and I told myself I wasn’t going to do anything else but write fiction. No writer’s notebook. No reading. No nothing. Just plunk those keys to make some sentences and write the next line in the story. I was going to force myself to write, and by some kind of miracle, I did! I wrote about 800 words in a little less than an hour.

Now, this was just one day, and one day doesn’t make a pattern or a habit. But I figure if I keep doing this every day, if I keep forcing myself to write (even if the writing is crap-ay), then over time, my mind and body will be trained to associate early morning wake ups with heading down to the computer to write.

This kind of pattern/habit building happened to me recently with my back injuring in late December. I was in so much pain (mostly down my leg due to my nerve being pinched) that the only relief I could get was to walk slowly around the house. I had to do — I mean I HAD to do it or I would be in excruciating pain — and because I did it every day without fail when I woke up in the morning, I started doing it automatically. Alarm goes off, do some stretches, roll out of bed, start walking. I used that walking time to listen the the Liturgy of the Hour, so that became part of my daily ritual as well.

And after fourteen weeks of waking up and walking around the house every dang morning, I find that I simply cannot start the day without doing it. My brain doesn’t even make the conscious decision anymore. I get out of bed and start walking. That’s just what I do.

I’m hoping to develop the same pattern/habit with my writing in the morning. Just like my walking, I don’t have to do it perfectly. Most of my morning walks are me hobbling along at a snail’s pace just to get my back and legs feeling normal again. It’s not pretty. But it doesn’t have to be pretty. The walking is what’s important, and the repetition that builds the habit.

So tomorrow, after I wake up and walk, I’ll head downstairs to the computer and start typing. I’ll write anything — a new short story, the continuation of an old one, the prologue to a novel, a random sentence in the middle of my work-in-progress — and I won’t think too hard or too much about it. I’ll just force myself to write, just like I had to force myself to walk despite the agonizing pain.

Knowing that I have to be a little hard on myself to keep the pattern going, it will be worth it if I can change this aspect of my writing process and work habits.

Today’s only the first day. Maybe after I’ve been at it for a week or two, I’ll revisit how this experiment is shaping up. I hope I can make it stick this time.