L.E. Henderson's Blog, page 24

Is There an Emotional Barrier to Creating Convincing Characters?

What makes fictional characters seem real, like you could reach behind the wall of words and find a living, breathing person there?
A related question is: As a writer, how can I pretend to inhabit the mind of someone who has a different world view, background, knowledge, obsessions, and longings than I do?
There is a lot of advice about how to create convincing characters. Usually it involves filling out a questionnaire about traits: mannerisms, quirks, cultural influences, childhood memories, and appearance.
But is that enough? Creating characters is more than filling out a form. The writer has to draw on inner resources to understand them. And fully identifying with a fictional character whose personality and world view is a lot different from my own means crossing an emotional barrier.
According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Franklin, writing believable characters is impossible when the writer is unwilling to see from a  point of view that opposes his own. Believing that he is special and endowed with absolute truth, he thinks that his tendencies, habits, and passions are the only valid and correct ones. Therefore, allowing a fictional character to possess a full outfit of human qualities is difficult, and even painful, for him.
Creating convincing characters means allowing characters to be as real as their writers; to be as vital, heroic, despicable, or complex; to have fantasies, phobias, and silly obsessions; to be attached to a certain routine; or to dream.
To fully delineate a character, the writer has to peek behind his ego to see that others exist in an emotional world of their own and have a pattern of behavior that is logical to them; and that their solutions to conflict, though alien at first glance, are human.
However, like many people, I am attached to my own opinions, seeing them as being forged from the crucible of my life experiences. The problem is that everyone believes this of themselves.
Writing fiction means struggling against a powerful tendency to surround myself in the snug certainty of my own limited viewpoint.
The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes dramatizes this drive in an amusing way. Calvin wakes to find that the perspective of his physical surroundings is skewed like a cubist painting. As he runs through the house, he becomes confused. Up is down. Angles are wildly irregular. The floors and ceilings tilt.
At the end Calvin rejects the terrifying chaos of a skewed world for the comfort of his own viewpoint, possibly wrong but at least stable. His world rights itself and Calvin is happy again.
But writing well means letting the floor become the ceiling. I'll always have strong personal views, but if I'm unable to let them go for a little while, I risk creating characters who are clones of me or, worse, stereotypes.
Jon Franklin in Writing for Story suggests that for a writer to move beyond creating stereotypes, he must reach a crisis point where he realizes that his “specialness” is an illusion; that many of his most sacred “truths” are mere prejudices; and that, though he is unique, there is nothing “unique” about uniqueness.
This insight, he says, arises from thorough observation, careful listening, and self-searching, and it is usually painful. Though I've never had the moment of epiphany he describes, his personal story of painful insight has always intrigued me.

Of course, being able to entertain an opposing intellectual viewpoint is easy compared to allowing a fictional character to cross my moral boundaries. For that reason, I sometimes have to dig deep to build identification with someone like a villain whom in my life I would avoid and despise.
Many times, after hearing about a brutal murder, people angrily say, “I don’t understand.” I've thought and said the same thing, usually in a tone that reveals the real meaning: “There is no part of me that identifies with the person who did this; if I understand him, if I even try, I am complicit and may become like him. I do not claim him as a member of my species or an inhabitant of my planet.”
But the best fiction writers deny themselves the tonic of forbidding themselves to understand. This is not to say that all viewpoints have equal validity or value.
But, while not a moral relativist, I sometimes have to be an “emotional relativist.” To create believable characters, a writer must be willing to identify with anyone, to find some part of herself that can say, “Although he act was loathsome and despicable, what he did was still human.”
This can be scary and disturbing, leading to worries that I might become permanently trapped in the head of another, adopting values I hate or condoning actions I find despicable; or that I will become unmoored and my personality, unglued. 
But the problem of clinging to certain views isn't restricted to writers. Many people think that they need their belief systems and opinions for them to stay mentally whole; that without them, the ground will shift, and possibly open and swallow them.
But part of the allure of writing for me is taking that emotional risk, and for a time allowing the world to turn on its head. Like a cat sprawled on its back, I become mesmerized by my shift in perspective. I allow the world to open up, to become too vast for comfort.
And when I return home to myself, a little less innocent, my defense mechanisms rattle back into their place: I am right and they are wrong. For a moment the floor stabilizes, and the ceiling rests securely on the walls.
Until tomorrow, I think. Then, mentally exhausted, I crawl into bed, close my eyes, and prepare for a dreamless sleep.  

The Grim Reaper Sticks Out His Tongue at Me

This violates all the rules of having a cold, I thought. I should at least be able to concentrate on a silly comic book.
But the words on the page swam hazily before me as I sat in the recliner, drinking my coffee on a Saturday morning.
I could accept being physically tired as long as I could still perform mental tasks. A cold meant being too tired to do things I dreaded doing anyway, like house work or exercise. But now my mind seemed to be malfunctioning.
Plus, whenever I looked up suddenly, there was a visual lag between what I had been looking at before and afterward that left me feeling car sick.
Of course, maybe one of the drugs was to blame, like my OTC cough syrup or the Mucinex with pseudo-ephedrine I had taken before breakfast.
I put down my book and opened my laptop to write, but even the words I had written the day before jittered on the screen, meaningless. As I typed, my hands trembled. The words seemed to be shifting, and I was unable to get a visual lock on anything for long. I felt strange.
I Googled the name of my Delsym cough syrup to see if it had any weird side effects. The first thing I saw was a warning that an overdose could cause severe brain damage. I had not overdosed, and there was no good reason to think I had. But the word emblazoned itself on my mental screen. Brain damage.
The weight of the phrase bore down on me. Just seeing the term “brain damage” had a physical effect on me. A pins and needles tingling sensation ran through me, from my belly to my feet, followed by a muscle-deep burn that brought to mind tales of spontaneous human combustion.
I had never felt this kind of burn before, and my mind raced for an explanation. What if I had accidentally overdosed? Walked in my sleep somehow, remembered the yummy candied grape flavor, and downed it like Kool-aid? Or could I have absentmindedly filled the plastic measuring cup to the wrong line?
My heart beat out a hard, uneven rhythm, and I struggled to get a good breath. To calm myself, I decided to write in my journal, but the screen was sun-bright, and my fingers trembled.
I shut my computer and seized on the controller for my new Wii U that I had gotten for Christmas. Video games usually relaxed me. At the moment playing “Mario” seemed to be the only thing I could concentrate enough to do, but the springy, tingly flush of my legs distracted me.
I got up. On my way to the bathroom, my head swooned. My legs ached and felt wobbly. Looking into the bathroom mirror, I couldn't get my eyes to focus on the eyes staring back at me.
My trembling legs and feeling of wrongness was telling me to seek help, but I was torn. The doctors I had visited on weekends, I remembered, charged way too much.
My husband Donnie, who was getting over the same cold I had, was resting on the couch. Maybe he could help me make up my mind. “Donnie,” I said. “I’m really dizzy. My legs are all pins and needles. And I keep having this weird burning sensation.”
“Sounds like a hot flash,” he said. “Remember, you do have a cold.”
“I’m worried,” I said. “I've had cold symptoms before, the cough and the running nose, all that. This is different.”
“I think we have the flu.” Donnie coughed. “It’s just your cold making you dizzy.”
“Just a cold?” I dropped into the recliner. “Nobody ever said ‘just a cold’ in The Stand.”
“That’s Stephen King. You’re fine.”
I tried to adopt his lighthearted attitude. Meanwhile, the reverberant red-coil burn deep inside my legs was insistent. My skull seemed to vibrate. I felt certain that if Donnie could feel what I was feeling, he would take my symptoms more seriously.
“If this is the flu virus, then I think it’s winning,” I said.
“It’s not winning.” Donnie sighed. “You’re just sick. It’s normal to not feel normal when you’re sick.”     
I wondered if he would be comfortable including that quote in my obituary. I imagined a newspaper article: She complained to her husband about dizziness and tingling legs that morning, but he dismissed the symptoms as “just a cold.”
The thought sent a new shock wave through my legs, followed by another red-hot burning flush. While there was no pain, my agitation kept mushrooming. What if this is what it feels like to die? Never having died before, I had no way to answer the question.
Despite the alarms going off in my head, I was reluctant to go to the hospital. Going to the ER seemed impolite, among other things. It would cost money. It would ruin the day.
But what if something seriously was wrong with me? It would be horrible to die because seeking medical help was inconvenient.
Still, I thought I would try a more conservative approach first, lie down. “Just a cold,” I told myself. “I’m fine. Try to relax.” I stood from the recliner. The room lurched. A deep ache penetrated my legs to the bone. They were wobbling so much, I stumbled.
I grabbed hold of the arm of the recliner. The floor tilted toward me. “Donnie, Can you help me get to the bedroom?” Donnie got up and let me use him as a crutch to get to the bed. As I eased onto the mattress, the air seemed to shimmer as I was gasping unevenly for a good breath.
“I've had the flu before. It wasn't like this. I was never this dizzy. I never had hot flashes.”
“Well, I have. Most people have. Just because you haven’t, that doesn't mean your symptoms are unusual.”
Talking was too much work. I fell back on my pillow and lapsed into a grim silence. I was used to every unpleasant symptom having a clear solution. For headaches, there was Tylenol; for a runny nose, antihistamines.
But what was the cure for springy, nerve-jangling legs and this uncontrollable agitation? The feeling, rational or not, that I was dying? It was unendurable. I wanted to see a doctor, at least. I wanted to be reassured.
Donnie must have read my thoughts. “Look,” Donnie said. He handed me my plastic insurance card. “Call this number and tell the nurse your symptoms. See what she says, and then if you still want to see a doctor, I’ll drive you.”
I wriggled myself into a sitting position and took the card. Maybe, at the very least, she could calm me down, which I was having trouble doing for myself. My hands were trembling so much I got Donnie to dial the number and hand my phone to me. A woman operator answered. After giving her basic information about myself, she asked what was bothering me.
I described the tingling numbness in my legs, my trouble getting a good breath, my dizziness, and my aching muscles when I tried to walk. And I told her how, the day before, I felt foggy and kept forgetting things I was planning to do as soon as I planned them.
“Any alcohol? Drugs?”
“No alcohol.”
“Any other drugs?”
I told her about the cough syrup and Mucinex.
“Keep in mind, this service isn't intended to take the place of your provider or expert medical opinion. But I am going to give you my opinion, based on the information you have given me. Are you ready?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Ma’am, could you be having a stroke?”
“A stroke?” Not the response I expected. I was no expert on strokes, but I knew Donnie’s mom had died of an aneurysm. I had vague images of lopsidedly sagging faces and vacant eyes.
“Ma’am,” the woman continued, “From all the symptoms you've described, the numbness, the confusion, and your trouble breathing, it sounds like you are having a stroke.” It seemed to defy all logic, but the gravity of the word “stroke” resonated along with the sirens wailing danger in my head, with the feeling that my symptoms were exceptional, and my suspicion that Donnie was in denial.
“Based on everything you've told me,” the operator continued, “I am recommending that you hang up and dial 911.”
The dangerous words coming from a medical professional sent new ripples throughout my body. 
“A stroke.” I turned to my husband in bed beside me. “She said a stroke.”
I could see the disbelief forming on his face, a skeptical smirk and the beginning of an eye roll, but the word “stroke” found resonance with the alarm signals that had been going off in my head for the last half hour.
“I’m calling 911,” I said.
Donnie seemed taken aback by this announcement, but said, “Of course.”
I dialed 911, told the operator I thought I could be having a stroke, and spat out my address. I told her about my symptoms and what the nurse hotline had said. After asking a series of questions, the operator told me to lie down in a comfortable position and not eat or drink anything that would make it hard for the doctor to examine me.
The next twenty minutes seemed like hours. Who would have thought I could have a stroke? Maybe I had inadvertently overdosed on something. And Donnie. What would he do if I died? How would my family in SC feel if I died without saying good-bye?
I looked at Donnie, who was pacing the room and glancing at me now and then. “I love you,” I said. I didn't want his last memory of me to be me lying on the bed, taciturn, and wearing what I imagined was a deathly pallor that would one day haunt his dreams.
He returned my stare. “I love you, too.”
I turned my head and stared at the sunlight painting the window orange. I could see the parking lot and in the far distance the trees I loved, old oaks weeping with Spanish moss, a Florida vision that had charmed me the first time I saw Ocala.
My legs continued to vibrate, Novocain-numb as if they contained thousands of rubber bands being pulled taut and released. My skull was ringing.
What if I died? No fair warning. No compromise. Just a sudden, unceremonious end. I thought about all the novels still inside me that would never get written.
I began to make compromises in my head. Maybe I would live but be paralyzed, my legs dangling uselessly over the metal edge of a wheelchair. Not what I wanted, but I could cope, as long as I could still write.
The threat of imminent death put everything in perspective. Some friends were Beta-testing my new, as-yet-unpublished novel. I had edited it many times and weeded out all the plot holes I could find. But I was terrified that they would find some crucial inconsistency that would bring my brave edifice of words crashing down in a useless heap of debris.
Now it seemed not to matter; with a sigh, I thought that if I died, I would at least die enlightened.
When I heard footsteps bounding up the entrance stairway, I managed a long deep breath of relief. Three paramedics, all men, gathered into the bedroom, and one of them bedazzled my arms and legs with sticky-backed electrodes.  
They asked me a series of questions, which I answered, then stood back and took a long, unnervingly calm look at me. I looked back. Was it so bad, they had given up all hope? I wondered: Where were the defibrillators, the crash carts, and the oxygen masks? Where were the clipped words of emergency?
“Have you ever had a stroke before, Ms. Henderson?”
“No,” I said.
“And how has your medical history been in the past?”
I searched my mind; feeling so ill at the moment, I half-expected to find a long history of physical trauma in the reference book of my memory. But it wasn't there. “Good generally,” I said. “Bipolar disorder. Other than that, I've always been pretty healthy.”
“So what made you think you were having a stroke?”
“I called the nurse hotline on my insurance card. She said my symptoms sounded like a stroke, and that I should call 911.”
“Well, I can tell you,” he said. “You’re not having a stroke. If you were, your numbness would be in one leg, not both. One side of your face would sag. You’d be vomiting and you’d probably have a killer headache. Believe me, we see people dying all the time. However, we can still take you to the hospital if you want to go.”
The rubber bands in my legs became less springy. I vaguely sensed that I should be embarrassed. But my relief overwhelmed any shame.
“Just to be safe,” he continued, “we can take your blood pressure and heart rate before you decide.” I agreed and the blood pressure cuffs came out.
As he predicted, my vital signs were all normal, except for an elevated heart-rate. “Anxiety can mimic the symptoms of a stroke,” he said. “Elevated heart rate, tingling, trouble catching your breath. I think your anxiety played a large role here.”
“That being said,” the paramedic’s eyes locked with mine. “You know your body better than anyone. If you still want us to take you to the hospital, we will. It’s up to you.”
I looked at Donnie. “Your choice,” he said.
I was still reeling from a kind of emotional whiplash, thinking I was in danger and now discovering the danger was imaginary. The pins-and-needles feeling in my legs was still there. But I was no fan of the ER. “If it isn't necessary, I don’t want to put myself through that.” I looked at Donnie. “Or him.”
The head paramedic smiled with sympathetic approval. “I can guaranteeyou, you won’t die today. You’ll die someday. We all will. But not today.”
The words sank in. Tomorrow would come. I wouldn't have to think of any comforting or profound last words to say to Donnie. I would see my family in SC again. I would get to write more novels and eat chocolate and play Mario and walk beaches and stroke my cat. The Grim Reaper had leaned over me and stared at me with his dark skull eye sockets, only to stick out his tongue at me and go home.
“Although,” the paramedic continued, “I would talk to your doctor about getting your anxiety under control.”
At any other time I might have been offended at the suggestion that my symptoms had been fabricated by “nerves.” Instead, I thanked them all for coming and for reassuring me. I signed a form verifying that they had come and that I had chosen not to go to the hospital. I had to admit: The anxiety theory had credence; the white-hot burn inside my leg muscles was easing up, and my breathing was falling back into its normal rhythm.
The floor still tilted a bit but my legs had stopped wobbling, so I could walk without fear of falling.
After the paramedics left, I took a warm bath and ate a sandwich. Then I returned to bed and lay down.
Two weeks later, almost over my cold, I wonder: Did the pseudo-ephedrine precipitate my anxiety attack? I later looked at the box they came in. It says to stop use if you get dizzy or become agitated.
I now know that pseudo-ephedrine is a stimulant and considered a type of “speed.” Though I knew it was used to create Meth, I was used to cough medication making me drowsy, not wired. Maybe following it with two cups of caffeinated coffee was not the best idea.
Maybe if I had expected a jittery response, my symptoms would have alarmed me less, and Donnie would have been less tortured.
Later that day Donnie came into the bedroom and stared down at me, long and hard. “Know what you are?” he said. I stared back and waited to learn what I was. “You’re bad.”
“Bad? How can you accuse me of being bad?”
“You called 911.”
I tensed, feeling chastised. “Because the hotline nurse convinced me I was dying.And my survival instinct agreed with her.” He continued to stare at me. “I didn't go to the hospital, did I?”
“You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.” A hot flash surged through my legs but I reminded myself to stay calm. “It wasn't fun for me either.” After all, I had endured the same fears and denials and compromises I would have had if the danger of dying was real; I envisioned a future blog post: “Pseudo-strokes are Traumas, too.”
“You still have electrodes on you.” He plucked an electrode from my arm. “Lookat all those electrodes on the bed.” I looked at the bed covers, now an electrode garden full of scattered white, circular “blooms.” I felt like a dog that has just been told, “Shame on you. Look what you did.”
“Huh,” I said. “Did they really think I would need so many?”
A hint of humor flashed in his eyes. “I’m going to stick them all over you, every single last one of them.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Do I have to have a reason?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I do.” He picked up a new electrode, peeled off the backing, and slapped it on my inner arm.
“Does that make you happy?”
He gathered more electrode blooms from the covers and turned back to me with a look of determination.
“Yes,” he said.

It Is Time to Start Breaking the Chekov Rule of Story Writing

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” – Anton Chekov
This rule of story writing, often quoted, is considered elementary. When I learned it in college, it was a revelation. I had always thought the purpose of fiction was to mirror real life in an interesting way. But here is was: the shameless admission from a renowned short story master that art was artificial. Consciously artificial.
Whereas in reallife, a gun could hang on a wall as a silent showpiece, in stories they always fired. Had to fire. Unlike real guns, they were not allowed to hang peacefully on a mantle. Stories were not real life; they were tightly constructed, clockwork machines.
In every book or movie I saw after that, whenever I saw a gun, I thought, “Are they going to follow the rule? Is the gun going to go off?”
The gun always went off. The writers were conscientious professionals who could have probably quoted the rule. At first I was amused and intrigued; then disappointed; then bored.  
The drama seemed too mechanized. I imagined script doctors shaking their heads as they read the manuscript, saying, “You need to either make this gun go off or you need to take it out.” I had mixed feelings. I could understand wanting to trim the fat from a story, but did the writers have to be so predictable? Did the gun have to go off every time?
My annoyance went beyond mere boredom. Recently I wrote a story in which guns played a large role. The whole time the Chekov rule hung over me like an angry cloud about to shoot lightening on my scalp if I failed to make all the guns go off.
My discomfort has prompted such questions as, “If you have many guns in a story, must they all go off before the story ends?” Or, “What if the guns have a differentpurpose, such as frightening someone? If a gun scares a cashier into parting with money in a cash register, is not an adequate story purpose for the gun, a figurative way for the gun to “go off?”
Certainly, in real life this happens. Therefore, the Chekov rule, if literally followed, constrains how much an author can mirror reality, and limits creativity by predetermining part of a story before it is even written.
I wonder what Chekov intended with his proclamation. I like to think he simply meant that nothing should be introduced in a story without a purpose. After all, when Chekov made the statement he was talking about an unnecessary block of dialogue in a play he had seen; he was using a gun as a metaphor to illustrate why dialogue should not be shoehorned into a play unnecessarily.
Hoping that Chekov meant the rule figuratively, I began searching for incidences of movies using guns to fulfill another purpose besides “going off,” certain I would fine one. Every time I saw a cinematic robbery, I would say, “Maybe this will be it.” But after the robbery, the gun still always fired. I could find no exceptions to the Chekov rule being literally obeyed.
While guns always went off, this was not true of bombs. I saw many shows in which a bomb was set at the beginning of a story, only to be deactivated in a spit second before it was timed to go off. The bomb had served its purpose of driving character action, and that was enough.
So why are guns any different? Is it because a gun was the metaphor Chekov chose to illustrate the necessity of details having purpose?
Groping for a better explanation, I wondered if guns were a special case because guns are only designed to shoot. But when I tried to apply the concept more broadly, I ran into problems. It would mean that everything introduced in a story must fulfill, not just the artistic purpose of the author, but its known function.
In that case, a fireplace in a story must always be lit. A doorbell must always chime. A computer must always compute. A stove must always cook.
Under this interpretation, the rule puts considerable constraints on a writer. It means that a wood-burning stove must never be introduced as a side note to create a homey atmosphere. A car must never be shown in a driveway to show someone is home, unless it is going to be driven.
Creativity is smothered when writing becomes an obsessive compulsive need for the gun to “go off” everytime.Writing is not only a craft, but an art that needs the ability to mirror life as it is, or as the artist sees it. There are no “rules” in writing, only tools that serve an artistic or practical purpose. When the tool becomes an end in itself, it is time to re-evaluate.
Whether it follows literary etiquette or not, a story needs to accomplish its own purpose. To have a gun go off every time misses the real point, which is that every detail needs a story reason for being there. If the story purpose of a lamp is to hit a villain over the head, then switching on the bulb is superfluous.  
To break the Chekov rule as literally stated is not a crime, but is at times an artistic imperative. Maybe one day Hollywood will see it that way, too.
I am still waiting.

A Holiday Poem on the Persistence of Childhood Illusion

As a toddler, I fully embraced the dream of a magical white Christmas, though it was starkly different from the chronically green SC town where I lived.
Christmas cards, songs, and shows transported me to another world. I was enchanted by images of snow-swept hills; old firs weeping with ice-cycles; stately snowmen; and sleepy white-capped cottages draped with lights. I was so captivated by these images, I superimposed them over my surroundings until they seemed more real than the truth.
For a time, I even persisted in believing it was supposedto snow on Christmas, even though, where I lived, it never did. The dream was simply more compelling than what I saw around me.
This is a poem I wrote shortly after I graduated from college, dealing with the contrast between my culture-induced illusions about the holiday and my own, less dramatic experience.

Happy New Year everyone!
Sunblast
HereThe Sunblast blinds usUntil we think we see snowmen
We wonder if the beaches ofMistle-toe-decked CharlestonAre frozen yet –Chunks of sand crumblingLike crushed ice
If waves are frozenIn mid-air
So solid a toddler in red and greenMittens couldSlip-  along -    the-        surface-           in-                     sockfeet-
Lick the snow-encrusted crests of wavesAdmire the mountains of waterIn the distance
MeanwhileWe tread on itchy too-green grass,Scratch the sweat off our skins,And hang jolly cardboard Santas
Over porches of dust

Writing: Communication or Competition?

I sometimes lapse into unwilling envy, and even going into a bookstore is hard for me. I see all the books exploding from the shelves and wonder, is there any room left? And I think of my book at home, on my computer.
I feel even less comforted when I consider that the books on store shelves represent only the tiniest fraction of books that are written; they are only the topmost points of the “slush pile” peaks that fill publishing houses.
In a world where many manuscripts, conceived in great hopes, are treated as annoying trash, is a new book – regardless of quality – wanted? I am already torturing myself, so I go a step further: “All of the writers of all these books that are weighing down the shelves; are they my competition?”
As a child I would have never had this thought. I never thought about writers competing, and if someone had told me they did, it would have made no sense. When I was twelve, I had an idealized view of writers. They were the people who let me read their minds; I imagined that they were endowed with a special sensitivity or preternatural empathy, and that if I met them, they would be my friends.
They were the ones who were honest with me when everyone I knew seemed too guarded for honesty. The idea that these enlightened beings called writers would have to fight each other to express their ideas, or that they got jealous of each other, or that they would have to “know the right people” would have been shocking.
Of course I knew writers entered contests. I had entered a few myself. But I never saw the winners of those elementary school competitions as a threat to my own dream of writing. Others could be good, but I could be good, too.
I became more competitive in high school. I understood that making an A meant doing better than other students, especially in classes where teachers graded on a curb, and it was easier for me to accept the idea that one writer could “out-write” another. 
But with that acceptance, something valuable was lost. The writers I loved as a child, whom I had idolized, who understood me; suddenly they were my competition. Or I thought they were.
I had met them on the common ground of emotion, but now they seemed remote. I felt as if my success, and by extension, my happiness, depended on my out-writing them. Plus, I saw them as being part of an elite circle as I hovered on the outer edges, looking in.
And getting “in,” I learned, was no small undertaking. Although in high school and college, I always got high praise from teachers for my writing, when I sent my articles to editors, they all bounced back to me with a surfeit of form rejection letters. After almost a hundred of these, I finally got an article published in a Canadian feminist magazine.
Though exultant, I was exhausted. I stopped sending out my articles. It seemed like too much work for too little reward. I wrote my first novel instead. At the time print-on-demand publishing was a new thing, and it appealed to me.
The memories of all the rejection letters I got just to publish one piece for practically no pay was still fresh in my memory. The idea of self-publishing my novel gave me a wonderful feeling of control, so I published it with iUniverse without ever sending it to a publishing house.
However, I had no clue how to market a self-published book. Although it was reviewed well on Amazon, the novel did not sell many copies. Plus, when I tried to get a book signing outside of my hometown, there were no takers.
Reading mainstream novels, the sort I once loved, began to depress me.
I could still enjoy reading, sometimes, but a bond I had once felt with the authors was gone and was replaced by a guarded feeling; published writers seemed to represent a faraway dream; they had achieved something I desperately wanted.
The publishing world had been kind to them, had bound their dreams in slick covers, had edited their thoughts to tight perfection, and stamped them with an official seal of authenticity.
The margins were perfectly even, and the sentences marched along like good soldiers. Whenever I read, I was no longer immersing myself in a novel. Instead, I was searching for the magic that had allowed the writers in, the secret charm that garnered approval from the editorial gods.
Was it the leanness of the sentences? The clarity of their thoughts? The social acceptability of their themes? The aptness of their metaphors?
Reading hurt, and so did writing, because I was always making comparisons between published writers and myself.
Trying to rediscover what I had once loved about writing, I went back to where it had begun: childhood. As a child, when I wrote, I wanted to write well, but not to compete with anyone. I wrote because I thought it would be fun to tell a story, and I wanted to do everything I could to tell it in the most compelling and entertaining way.
And it was remembering how writing had felt during my childhood that brought me back to my senses.
I did not want to compare myself to other writers. I wanted to focus only on my own work, the way I did as a child: how to better express an idea; how to write a better sentence or create a more interesting image.
Though I think competition in writing has advantages, there has always been something strange to me about it. For example, if two students are each writing a heartfelt essay about how their fathers died, does it make sense to pick a winner?
What are the judges comparing? The best rendering of painful emotions? The authenticity of the emotions themselves?
The need to be the best adds stress to the already risky effort at honest expression. Labels such as “sentimental” or “mawkish” can shame what may be a sincere attempt to communicate.
And if the goal is to be understood, it seems unrelated to, and even at odds with, the drive to win. Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, may have been thinking the same when she instructed her creative writing students to refrain from either praising or criticizing the stories the other student authors read aloud. The focus, instead, was on merely understanding what the writer was trying to say.
She said that the students hated this method, and that it caused a lot of anxiety. But I can see the value of simply trying to understand what someone is trying to say without sticking a value label on it. However, in the real world, comparisons are constantly being made, and few will deny that as a business, writing is competitive.
But it is too stressful, not to mention absurd, to view the millions of writers from all genres, both living and dead, from the dawn of recorded history, as being “competition.”
As an art, writing is not about “winning.” Each piece has a purpose unique to it. The object is the draw on every skill, tool, or insight in order to achieve whatever that purpose is.
In general terms, it might be to express a vision; to create a new world; or to share an unusual point of view.
Other writers are no threat to anyone being able to do their best to solve a writing problem uniquely her own. The problem is unique because the writer is unique; only she can faithfully translate her personal experience and point of view into words; no other writer, no matter how skilled she is, can do that for another writer.
At the same time, writers need other writers; art inspires other art; varied perspectives challenge, teach and inspire; by understanding the experiences of others, I can more fully understand my own.
Besides, no single writer, no matter how “good” she is can pit herself against every other writer in the world. Or even against all the writers in a bookstore.
But I can enjoy how it feels to perfectly capture an image in words, to transmit an experience the way it actually was, or to create something that did not exist before.
And although I would love to write a mega-bestselling hit, when I sit down with a notebook and a pen, the fantasies of fame and the pressure to please fade. Time stands still and I am twelve again; words are my friend and so are all the authors who made me want to be a writer.
And the world, dislodged and teetering, sighs back on its axis and resumes spinning.

Unencumbered

I had just graduated from college when the serial vacations to Myrtle Beach with my brother began. No more tests or homework. No research papers, no oral presentations, no grade pressure. It was 1994.  
After sunset my brother and I would wander through Barefoot Landing, a sprawling shopping complex built on a marsh, with shaky bridges that swung with the clomping rhythm of our shoes and lights scattering lollipop colors on the water.
As I strolled past candle shops and glass-front book stores, I felt lighter. No, not just lighter. Unencumbered. I liked the sound of that word and I became obsessed with the idea of air-light locomotion; at the beach I would stash my purse in the trunk before walking anywhere. I stopped carrying anything in my hands; even an umbrella on a cloudy day seemed like a bag of rocks to me. I liked my new self-contained, independent beach feeling, my arms swinging free.  
Having my hands empty changed how I related to the things around me. On a whim I could touch or grasp anything I saw, could yield to the moment. I fed the fish and turtles without a thought of where to put my purse. I read parts of books in bookstores, re-shelved them, and walked away.
But weightless travel had drawbacks. I longed for my handbag whenever I got a headache and had no pain relievers with me. I suffered regret when I looked into a mirror to see my hair was a wind-tossed tangled nest and had no comb.
Dragging my fingers through my hair, trying to un-knot the tangles, I could not deny it: The less encumbered I was, the less I was able to do on my own, and the more dependent I was on my surroundings to feed, hydrate me, or cure my headaches.
Still, I liked the feeling; at the time it seemed almost like an epiphany that obsessive preparation was a kind of prison.
But after returning from the beach, the magical feeling of being unencumbered faded; as routine clamped around me, I began to haul around the bulk of my purse again. I stocked it with snacks and OTC pain relievers in case I got a headache and a drink so I could swallow them.
But I returned to the beach a number of times, and every time, the jumble of my past dropped away, and with it my cluttered handbag.
My brother and I would sit on the wooden bench of the pier, lean over the splintered railing, and watch the waves slowly build, roll over, and collapse. Surrounded by vast, clear empty spaces, I could easily imagine a future of endless possibilities.
On each trip to the beach, I remembered the last, as if all the trips were part of a wonderful continuous dream. And with it came a dread of it ending; I was in a lull of transition and I liked it. I did not want to clutter the blank canvas of my future with ungainly decisions.
I thought I could carry my unencumbered beach feeling home with me like a seashell, and it would remind me to avoid doing anything that would weigh me down.
But when I got home this dream always receded; I had just graduated. The future, which had teemed with possibility on the pier, was just a frightening void; I needed direction.
Besides, I wanted to set goals that took longer than a day to accomplish, like getting a job or writing a novel. In a way, committing was freedom in action. Keeping all options open all the time because you never chose any of them was paralysis.
I became practical. My handbag resumed its place by my side. And finally, one day, it stayed.
After the final summer of meandering beach trips ended, the years tumbled over each other in a glass-green blur of motion. The beach trips, it turned out, had strained credit limits and the vacations slowed, finally stopped, and pulled away.
I got married. I bought a house.
Clutter multiplied in my cabinets. My handbag sank with new weight. Medical annoyances built up, slowly, over time.  In addition to pain relievers, rolls of antacids joined the clutter inside; my purse became a jumbled pharmacy.
In a way, I reasoned, stuffgranted freedom. Antacids, I reasoned, gave me the freedom not to have heartburn. My phone gave me the freedom to call people or search the internet. Tylenol liberated me from headaches.
Meanwhile, I became settled. I planted a weeping willow tree. I watered it and watched it grow, year by year, outside my window. As its roots dug in, mine did, too. I thought I would never leave and that anything I wanted to do could be accomplished where I was.
It was peaceful out in the country where I lived, and quiet. I felt as though all of the dramas of my life were far away, having receded safely into the past. And I thought that was okay.
In fact, the longer I stayed, the more I dreaded the idea of ever moving, imagining unbearable attacks of homesickness if I ever lost the house.
I lived in the house for over a decade, content, before everything fell apart. Financial disaster struck in the form of a layoff and threw my settled life into chaos. A dismal local job market prompted the question: Would I be willing to move to another state?
I wanted to say no. I had looked at the house every day for a number of years; the walls appeared solid and immovable. I liked the predictable way the bars of sunlight from its many windows striped the sofa and carpet. The house seemed as reliable as anything in my life.
But the situation was dire. And I remembered something buried by years, a hazy dream of myself at the beach, wandering Barefoot Landing wearing loose lightweight shirts and gazing at the lights shining down on the water.
I unloaded the cabinets bulging from accumulated clutter and gave away most of it. I gave the house a final glance and knew I had stopped seeing it, the way you stop seeing anything you look at every day. But I saw it clearly, as I said goodbye.
As I did I remembered that life, like ocean waves, was something moving, not static, a place to travel light.
My husband and I moved into an apartment in Florida where a better job awaited. I swam, explored parks, and got a tan; small lizards scurried in front of me on my way to the pool, and I saw ducks gliding through the green shining lake behind the apartment.
I visited NASA, swam in the Gulf, and saw hulking elephant-skinned manatees. I gained weight from eating at all the new restaurants.
But sometimes I still thought hazily of the house I had left behind with the willow tree and the sunlit rooms and the silence.  Again I wondered as I had many times: Is Florida home?
No, not like the one I remember. The home I had left behind was a place fixed in space and time that I thought I needed to be happy. Here, I was content, yet I felt as if I could move anywhere, at any moment, and still find things to love about where I was.
I thought maybe that was what it like, to be unencumbered: to enter and embrace the ebb and flow of attachment and change, and accept them both as parts of a single, constant rhythm.
Florida was not home, not the way my old house in SC had been, but I liked it. And there were plenty of beaches there, with stretches of sandy shore to sink my feet into.
And now, when I go to a Florida beach, I sometimes like to stash my purse into the trunk of the car and pretend, for a moment, that air is all I need to live.
But this is a fantasy. With each year my purse gets fuller; it bulges more and more as I discover new things I want or need to have with me. But there has been a progression. I have given up handbags and clutches.
The straps have gotten longer; and now, when I go out, the reassuring bulk of my belongings presses against the crest of my hip and the long strap cuts into my shoulder as I wade deep into a rolling sea of moments, lulled by the ever-constant cadence but ready to be splashed, with nothing left behind, and nothing in my hands. 

A Fan-Driven Star Trek Web Series Beautifully Captures the Spirit of the Original

The ambitious five year mission “to seek out new life and civilizations” launched itself into our culture, then ground to a sober halt in 1969 – two years early; the short-sighted network had stripped it from the air.
But Star Trek had captured imaginations, where it lived on. 
Now, in 2013, Farragut Films is reviving the mission in a nonprofit web-based series called "Star Trek Continues." Their goal is to continue the last two years of the original mission.
Their efforts are yielding a product that is uncannily close to the original episodes in both story and set design. Although no one can make a profit from it due to licensing conflicts, the team of fans producing it are no amateurs.
Stars such as Jamie Bamber of Battlestar Galactica are contributing their talents. Other skilled actors are dedicating many hours of unpaid labor, and everything from the set to the lighting of the original Star Trek has been expertly – and painstakingly – reproduced.
This faithfulness to the original series is a welcome gift to many fans who felt let down by the current reboot of the Star Trek universe by J.J. Abrams.
While J.J. Abrams re-launched Star Trek in 2009 and owns the movie franchise, the movies lurched away from the canon and left many fans of the original series cold. The progressive idealism that made the original television series so endearing was largely lost; instead fans were given a standard Hollywood action adventure flick.
While I was a fan of the Abrams series Lost and his Star Trekfilms were not necessarily bad movies, they did not feel like Star Trek to me. It was not so much about the canon. For me, it was more about the characters.
As a child, I fell in love with Spock the stoic, who prized logic above else, but whose repressed human side kept rising to the surface, much to his annoyance. It was not just the obsession with logic I loved about Spock, but his restraint.
Not that he never deviated. In my favorite episode, Spock, convinced that the captain is dead, found Kirk alive and perfectly healthy; Spock's face transformed, and a brilliant smile broke out. “Jim!” he says; it was a purely unguarded moment, and priceless.
As soon as he realized his “error,” he immediately worked to recompose his serious facade, but Kirk was amused and the secret was out. But what made the moment so amazing was that the spontaneous emotional display was a dramatic exception to his normal restraint and control.
Of course, Spock was not all about logic; he was an idealist who valued life and was willing to sacrifice himself to protect the “lives of the many” at the expense of a few, although, being half human, he sometimes struggled with this arbitrary application of “logic.”
But if he ever admitted to letting his emotions influence him, it was not without a fierce and painful struggle. 

Spock was fascinating to watch because he asserted control over his emotions so expertly that the slightest hint of emotion stood out and became all the more poignant because it was so rare.
But the J.J. Abrams version failed to adequately capture the dignified restraint that, for me, encapsulated who Spock was. The new Spock is romantically involved with Uhura, but the original Spock feared losing control, and if he did enter a relationship in which his duty might have been compromised by emotion, a good explanation would have been due.
The new Spock is comfortable enough with his human side that he opens up to Uhura about his grief about the loss of his home and his mother; he gives this as his reason for closing himself off to her.
The original Spock would have been unlikely to apologize for his emotional distance, since he distrusted emotion and saw himself as, above all, logical.
Of course, the viewer always knew that the original Spock was more human than he cared to admit. But he would have had trouble admitting emotion in the most extreme circumstances, even if it were painfully true.
But the Abrams Spock is apparently so emotionally precarious that Kirk bets that he can provoke Spock into a burst of unhinged violence. More incredibly, Kirk succeeds. But the original Spock had extraordinary impulse control; it would have taken more than one try to reduce him to histrionics or fisticuffs.
The Abrams Spock, no matter how many times he spoke of logic, was Spock in name only.
The Farragut project, however, is doing everything it can to honor the spirit of the original series and so far, it has done an excellent job. The first web episode, which has already aired, mirrored the original episodes with spectacular fidelity.
And while Spock was not the central focus of the first web episode, his character was much closer to the Spock I loved, and I am looking forward to seeing how he unfolds as the new series progresses.
I am hopeful, especially after seeing how the new “Kirk” presented himself in the first web episode. He did an ingenious job of capturing the original captain, down to the most subtle hints of humor in his eyes that I remember about the William Shatner version, but that I had forgotten until the new actor reminded me of them.
Fortunately, my experience of watching the first web episode did not end there. In October, due to an invitation from someone who is involved with the project, I got to explore the new set in Georgia. I was amazed at the lengths that the cast, set designers, make-up artists, and technical experts were willing to go to in order to achieve sequels worthy of the Star Trek name.
At the time of my visit the production crew was filming the second episode and I got to watch them shoot part of one scene, lasting less than a minute, in which an actor merely drags his fingers across the transporter console. The scene was shot again and again, the camera dipping each time, and then rising.
Cameramen also fretted about the original sequence of lights on the transporter in a scene where someone was to be “beamed in.” No detail was being overlooked in the effort to produce an experience that honored the original Star Trek.
The set, too, was an amazingly faithful reproduction of the original, having been replicated, I was told, by reverse engineering; a computer was used to analyze how the set design looked in the original Star Trek episodes in order to reconstruct it.
It was surreal to me, walking down the ship corridor I had seen so many times as a child and adolescent. I stood on the bridge, sat in the seat where Kirk sat, and got to examine the consoles. While walking around, I was continually dazzled by the amount of effort, talent, and skill that was being applied to a nonprofit venture.
Only after seeing the first web episode and the elaborately detailed work going into making the film true to the original Star Trek did I realize how disappointed I had been in the Abrams films. The characters I loved did not appear as I remembered them; nor did the themes of equal treatment of genders and races, or respect for cultural differences play a significant role.
Star Trek was about more than futuristic gadgetry and exploding satellites. It was the complex characters and the progressive themes that lifted the show from escapism to greatness.  
I was excited to see that the spirit of the original was being carried on by a modern team of skilled actors, set designers, and technicians working not for pay but for the prime directive of art: to strain every resource, spare no expense, and withhold no effort in order to realize the most powerful expression of a vision, simply because it would be awesome.  
And continuing the original voyage that shot its way through the final frontier and into our cultural imagination is nothing, if not that.

Writers No Longer Allowed to be Shy

I recently learned a startling piece of information: Apparently, when literary agents like your work, they call you.  
As a confirmed shy person, I thought, “You mean I will have to talk to her?”
It was, I admit, a strange thought to have. What was I expecting, that we would correspond via owl?
On the other hand, it just seemed wrong. One of the best things about being a writer was hiding behind a curtain of words, controlling little buttons like the Wizard of Oz as you appear as an augmented disembodied mind on a blown-up screen. But talk to an agent? I was a writer, not some flashy performance artist.
But the modern role of a writer goes far beyond conversations with prospective agents. If you are lucky, it means giving interviews on radio or television; if you are offered these opportunities, they are considered good things.
Being a successful writer now ideally means being a type “A” go-getter, a charismatic self-promoter who manages to meld the aplomb of a third world dictator along with the humble charm of a Tibetan monk. The problem is, I am now having to go back to my childhood and look at a conflict I thought I had resolved long ago.
As a child I was constantly getting the message that “shy” was the worst thing you could be. No a bully, not a liar, not a cold-hearted manipulator or a charlatan faith-healer. They all paled next to being shy.
I spent most of my childhood trying to delete the undesirable trait from my character. But forcing myself to talk ultimately made me feel fake and made my social problems worse.
When anyone accused me of being shy, I hotly denied it. But what I was really rejecting was the stigmaI had been taught clung to it.
I could hear it in the sighing note of regret adults used when they said the word. Bullies gave me “shy” as their excuse for being mean. My dad, a psychology professor, owned rows of books on how to not be shy.
By adolescence, I’d had enough. I decided I was going to stay shy whether anyone approved of it or not. In fact, I was going to be so shy, I would redefine shyness; I was going to be all-out, militantly, in-your-face shy.
I would stop apologizing for it to people who were unable to let a moment pass without stuffing the air with their most inconsequential thoughts, who would never know the bliss of quiet introspection. I jettisoned the whole idea that shyness was on par with leprosy and decided to embrace it; I began to view shyness as a lonely misunderstood puppy with sad eyes that needed a home.
Surrendering the self-conscious struggle left me free to pursue interests that made me happy. I mourned my childhood, which I could have spent doing things I loved or learning fascinating things about the world; instead I had cluttered it with the futile, and even harmful, attempt not to be something that I was.
For many years, the situation has been happily resolved. But recently I have discovered that writing, which used to welcome shy bookish types, now seems to require for success the same trait as many other businesses: a larger-than-life, go-getting extroverted charismatic party personality.
Recently my husband, who used to have his own marketing firm, told me that if I wanted to succeed at writing, I would have to give up being shy.
“The hell,” I said.
“I mean it,” he said. “All the successful modern writers -- in fact anyone who is successful at anything -- tend to be brilliant self-promoters. Look around. There are no shy, successful writers.”
“Watch me.” I was not about to sit back and let my puppy be maligned. “I’ll be the first.”
In fact, I was not quite as confident about this as I sounded. I had noticed some things about Shyness the Puppy over the years. Mainly, that he could be exceedingly needy and inconvenient.
“Guess what, Shyness?” <Puppy wags tail> “There is an interesting person I want to meet. She knows a lot about writing and there is a lot I would like to discuss with her, like foreshadowing and commas. But to talk to her, I have to leave you here for a short time. What do you think?” <Puppy bows head dejectedly, gazes at me with soulful liquid eyes; then he lifts his head high, throws it down, and begins to thrash it violently against the floor.>
“No, puppy, no! Stop that! Your forehead, it's bleeding!”
Or “Guess what, Shyness? I’m going to a writer’s convention. There is the potential to meet editors and agents there. I can tell them about my book and do a thing called ‘networking.’” < Shyness tilts head, clearly amused. Then he rolls over on his back and lets me rub his belly, tongue lolling, because he thinks I am joking and that I will never approach an editor and tell her about my book.> (You’re wrong, puppy. You’re wrong.)
But shyness aside, I have to ask how many of my social hang-ups are congenital, and how many are irrational fear. I am confident in many ways, but I do have childhood emotional baggage that can be limiting.
The bullying, though it lasted only for a short period relative to my whole life, left a lasting mark on my social confidence, which I dealt with by detaching myself and focusing only on the things, like grades, that I could control.
While I am perfectly fine with being shy, I am not okay with letting fear rule me, particularly when it interferes with my goals.
In high school and college, I dealt with a similar clash of goals and fear. Wanting to maintain my straight A average, I had to master the public speaking assignments.
I wrote my speeches and rehearsed them in front of my dad, over and over. Then, on the day of the speech, I ordered Shyness the Puppy to stay under my desk and be quiet.
And instead of barking at me, this time he listened, as I made my way to the front of the room, delivered my speech, and earned I my A. Gnaw on a sock, Fido.
That means that if the issue is fear, I can deal with it if I have a strong enough reason.
The popular remedy given for irrational fear is called “immersion therapy.” It consists of imagining the most awful thing you can possibly imagine yourself doing, and then doing it over and over again, until the fear goes away.
Commonly used to treat phobias, such as fear of germs, flying, or the number 13, it always seemed to me like the emotional equivalent of pressing your hand on a hot burner and seeing how long you could hold it there. I wondered how long it would be before I started to need therapy for my therapy.
But maybe, at this point, it is worth trying. But first I have to ask: What am I afraid of, and what are the worst things I imagine happening if I approach an editor and tell her about my novel? That in the middle of my elevator speech or a conversation my mind will go blank, leaving me to squirm under expectant, bifocal-enlarged fish eyes? That the editor will not receive me warmly but will instead greet me with an impatient eye roll? That I will accidentally say something that has a terribly offensive sexual double meaning, unknown to me, and that the entire event will be captured on camera and broadcast on to the world?
Or is it a dropped smile?
A dropped smile sometimes happens when you see someone clearly in a wonderful mood, like a cashier; the smiling afterglow of a recent friendly conversation still radiates on her face. You lay your bag of cat treats on the counter and she looks at you. She is still smiling dreamily, so you smile back.
Abruptly, face freezes into a corpse-like mask, the smile all gone. It is awkward; you are unsure what to do with the smile you have just given her. You have the insane impulse to apologize for trying to accept a smile not originally intended for you.
Should you abruptly drop your smile, too, as a way of saying, “Oh, I didn't intend to smile at you either. I have made a terrible, terrible mistake”?
Few things an editor could do would be worse than a dropped smile.
But the main issue here is not dropped smiles but irrational fear, and so I am giving immersion therapy serious consideration.
So, in accordance with its principles, I am making a checklist. I need to go ahead and recklessly do everything I am afraid to do: go bumbling through awkward conversations with strangers, seek out public speaking opportunities and go gloriously blank during all of them, and make a slew of ambiguously offensive sexual comment to editors.
And I have to do this a lot.
Then, flushed and exhausted, with nothing else to fear and nothing left to lose, I can finally clear away the last of my emotional flotsam, creating a clear path of sanity through the waters of my social angst, and sail smoothly toward my goal.

A Note to Readers

Forty-nine posts ago I was living in the small SC town where I was born, and I had no idea I would be writing my fiftieth here, in Florida.

Although “Passionate Reason” started out with the advice that it would be a good way to promote my novels, it has become much more, traveling through part of my life with me.

It has also given me an incentive to experiment while having the potential for instant feedback. It has swung me through my intoxicating 15 minutes of Reddit fame and readers have given me a lot of much-appreciated encouragement. Reports of writers being inspired to continue were especially priceless.

I began with writing mostly essays, many of them about writing. Lately I have been veering more toward story-telling. Before, I hesitated to write about current experiences. As I am going through changes, it is often hard to make sense of them.

I am inclined to write about the problems that rest safely in the past, where I can find rounded-out, clearly resolved stories. It is hard to show myself the way I really am, groping for meaning and direction as I move uncertainly ahead.

But I am learning that seemingly mundane events often have hidden potential to become interesting stories. Writing is a way for me to process life, to make sense of everyday events, and my blog is a great way to do that.

Meanwhile, I have put finishing touches on my new novel, The Ghosts of Chimera, and I am ready to start querying agents for representation. For the next six months I am going to seek traditional publication. If that period ends without success, I will re-evaluate.

During that time I will continue to post here. The time it has taken me to write 50 posts has brought a lot of interesting surprises, and I wonder what new ones may await and what I will be doing when I reach 100.

So far, I have enjoyed this adventure more than I ever expected. Thanks to all of you for sharing it with me. :)

My Quest for Luck at Dragon Con 2013

My last visit in 2011 was a nightmare of throngs and the throbbing headaches. But my husband has been looking forward to this all year. Besides, I am a fantasy novelist who likes Game of Thrones and Dr. Horrible; I belong here.

And this year I have come prepared. I have a prescription for my chronic headaches this time and something else: oxytocin.

Here, at Dragon Con 2013, I will need a lot of oxytocin, a hormone that the brain releases when you are with people you identify with, creating feelings of happy kinship. This means I am inclined to like those who share my love for critical thinking and Star Trek, or to have an insatiable urge to hug a Wookie.

I need to remember the oxytocin, so that if I get too impatient with the crowd, I can remind myself that these are people who share my interests, so that my oxytocin can replace my anxiety with a feeling of calm solidarity.

Of course, oxytocin can also generate hostility and scorn toward non-conforming outsiders, but at Dragon Con, most everyone is there because they want to be.

But when I see the registration line, I can feel it seeping away, all of my oxytocin falling into the uncompromising fires of Mount Doom.

At Dragon Con I always suffer from denial when I see the lines. The line, I think, cannot be this long. No line anywhere or at any point in the history of the world has ever been, or ever will be, this long.

Long, unmoving lines frustrate me; worse, they make me feel unlucky.

When my brother and I used to vacation at the beach during the off season, we always felt lucky; having so few people there created the wonderful fantasy that the universe was working in our favor; discounts, close parking spaces, ocean front rooms for almost pocket change; clearly, the beach loved us.

At the time “beach luck” seemed like a mystical force, but looking back, I know that the feeling came from having a lot of people-free space around us. There was no luck; there was no one there.

But every year there seems to be twice as many people at Dragon Con as the year before, and every year that sought-after feeling of being lucky fades.

The outdoor registration line looks far from lucky. In costumes everyone looks like cartoons and I trace the line as far as my eyes can see. Many blocks later, I end up about a mile away from the entrance under a depressing bridge.

Dragon Con requires patience; more than patience. It means setting aside your personhood and submitting to herd-dom.

But my husband Donnie has been looking forward to the trip for months, and complaining could ruin his fun. For him I try to settle in and summon an enlightened mind-set. Suffering is caused by desire, I remind myself. Stop envisioning the front of the line as if it is the entrance gate to heaven. Live in the moment. Look. See? Spider Man. Even better. Steam-punk Spider Man.

It kind of works.

It is warm and humid, and my mouth feels dry, but near the doorway I make a wonderful discovery; luck, it turns out, is here at Dragon Con after all.

I see a concession stand, an oasis, where Cokes are submerged in deep trays of ice, dewy drops of condensation beading on the can walls, irresistibly cold, a darkly sweet blast of bubbling refreshment waiting to happen.

I am reaching for one when a woman guarding the door announces that if you buy a soda, as soon as you come onto the building you have to throw it away.

I only have three minutes to debate the issue before my part of the line moves indoors. I would not have had time to even take a sip.

At least the line moves quickly. An hour from when we got into line my husband and I have our name tags with real names and self-chosen nicknames. I am Zelda, and my husband is Link.

The hard part is over – I think. The fun begins.

All of the joys of Dragon Cons past seem to converge with the present moment: the celebrity meetings and the photograph of ourselves posing giddily beside Edward James Olmos of Battlestar Galactica.

But while I like the celebrities, my favorite thing about Dragon Con is the discussions. They make me feel like I am in school again, just to learn, without any tests, and only about things I already care about.

My husband and I usually camp out at the Skeptic track. I even have a shirt for it, an aqua blue cotton t-shirt with the word “Skeptic” marching across the front. The fabric is thinning, though, from so many launderings, the edges of the letters beginning to blur.

So the first thing I want to see is a Skep-track discussion called “Why Mensa will never solve world hunger;” my husband and I start walking toward it.

Walking. It is the main event at Dragon Con and one few mention or record on video.

Dragon Con is scattered over multiple hotels, some of them connected, and they all make up a confusing maze of booths, signs, and shops, a dense amorphous crowd streaming in and around them.

I am vaguely aware of all the people around me wearing interesting costumes, but the crowd bears down on me like an army of ring wraiths, trailing an exhaust stream of body heat.

It is too much; my mind is boggled, my synapses scattered. My effort to get to the next point of interest becomes a brutal battle to find a secure place to stand, much less a clear path forward.

At Dragon Con personal space is never secure but in constant jeopardy. Someone is always bolting toward you blindly at break neck speed. Elbows jostle and poke.

I remember the good times, but all I can see is the crowd; I, of course am not part of this crowd. I never view myself as part of the crowd, but always as separate, always alone and always against it.

I wonder how many people here think they are the crowd.

Because my brain has checked out to get away from everyone, my husband navigates and finally we make it to the Skep-track discussion.

I love the presentation. The woman speaking, a former Mensa member, makes the point that people deemed by IQ tests to be “geniuses” are not necessarily rational. A high percentage of members believe in alien visitations or astrology, for example, or other discredited belief systems.

Unfortunately, not all of the Skep-track topics of discussion are so provocative this year; all of the topics seem like ones we have heard before. Besides there is no James Randi this year, no Neil De Grasse Tyson or other luminaries of rationalism.

Congratulating ourselves and other skeptical attendees for being rational while saying things like “correlation is not causation,” seems like a poor reason to stay.

We wade back into the churning sea of people, becoming insignificant, restless drops.

Dislodged from Skep-track, we are uncertain where to go. We walk, finally, to the signing room, the happy place where I got my picture taken with Edward James Olmos, the place where I met “Data” from Star Trek.

I cannot see over the crowd that locks me in on every side, cannot see the celebrities at the tables at all but Donnie, who is taller, sees better. He scans the room for Adam Savage from Mythbusters, but cannot find him anywhere.

However, he tells me who is there, including the mom on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But the magic I remember is gone, and we head back to our hotel room. On the way Donnie is limping; he has hurt his knee.

Not good. We stop at a CVS and Donnie buys a knee brace. The lines are so long at the food court, we buy sandwiches from CVS, and sit at a table while Donnie wraps his knee before beginning the limping journey back to the hotel.

The Westin hotel is a soaring circular tower with over 50 floors. As a result, the elevators require the patience of a nun. The doors rarely open. When they do, it is packed and its occupants are shaking their heads or yelling no.

But after a lot of waiting we make it back to our room. The relief is like a cool gentle rain shower on a hot day. I have so much clear space around me: the silence, the emptiness; it is paradise. I never want to leave.

But this is Dragon Con, and there is too much Donnie wants to see and do, and he is not about to let a hurt knee stop him, even if it means pain, hospitalization, or as a last-ditch measure, amputation.

For supper we eat at a Chinese restaurant with friends, Randy and Melissa, a couple we have not seen since we moved to Florida. Even though I am an introvert who ordinarily hates prolonged group dinners, I am happy to see them.

They always add surprising layers of interpretation to the shows and movies we like to watch; they are ninjas at this. Being with them sometimes feels like being in a graduate literary course, only instead of deconstructing works by T.S. Elliot, they unearth nuances of shows like Battlestar Galactica, Lost, or Fringe.

After eating with them I feel relaxed and more hopeful about the next couple of days. And since most of my oxytocin is depleted, I have to conclude what I have suspected all along: that I genuinely like them.

For breakfast the next morning, we get into line at a Starbucks downstairs. I am pining for a cinnamon raisin bagel but they only have plain ones. No problem; I can just add jelly or strawberry cream cheese. Of course, a national chain of a coffee shop like Starbucks will have jelly.

But there is no jelly, no flavored cream cheese; only the plain savory sour kind. I glop it onto my bagel. I am okay with this, I decide. I am far too mature to quibble over something so trifling.

Soon we are walking, slowly, through the crowd. Donnie is limping, and I am concerned about him.

I am also agitated; the volunteers directing the crowd are always yelling and sound angry. “Take out your badges! No, not there! Up the ramp! Move! Move! Move!”

Every year I have gone to Dragon Con their voices have gotten louder and angrier, but this year they verge on hysteria.

Since Dragon Con does not cap the number of attendees, it is never sold out, and some have suggested setting population limits. But why make changes when the impressive head count must be evidence of success?

But if for no other reason, caps should be set to spare the precarious sanity of the volunteers. I have never seen them like this. An overweight twenty-something volunteer managing the sky bridge appears on the verge of exploding, his face a dangerous fire hydrant red. He booms, “People on the right, stay on the right! People on the left, stay on the left!” Maybe he is only trying to do his job, but he comes across as a bully.

A girl next to me eyes him with contempt. “Shut up, asshole,” she says.

Maybe I am going about this all wrong; maybe, rather than fighting the crowd, I should just let go and try to enjoy the crowd. I am told that there are people who become deliriously happy around mobs of people. If only I could turn myself into one of them I would be in ecstasies.

I open my mind when my opportunity to learn crowd love arises. Donnie convinces me to stand in line for “Once More with Feeling,” a classic musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am a huge fan of the series and I have happily listened to the soundtrack countless times, alone.

But it seems silly to me to stand in line to hear music that I could more easily listen to at home. I point this out to Donnie, and he says, “But the crowd energy. All these people, they like what we like.”

I try to understand, and I think I do a little, but maybe I could understand better if the registration line had not drained away so much of my oxytocin.

Following the directions of a volunteer worker, we line up near the top of an escalator, hugging a rail. It appears that we are in first in line, and Donnie says, “I think we got lucky. This is the balcony level. I bet we’ll get a really good view.”

Lucky?

My question is soon answered. Our line is led downstairs and we end up on a back row, far from the stage. But I try to keep an open mind.

When the show begins, I start to enjoy the music. People sing along, clap, and pump their fists; they hoot and scream; it reminds me of a high school pep rally. Actors on the stage mimic the ones on the screen, but I can barely see them from where I am.

Not bad. But then it all turns dark. There is a character in “Buffy” named Dawn, a teenage sister who magically arose late in the series. Every time Dawn comes on the screen, the crowd breaks into angry jeers and boos. Calls of “You suck, Dawn!” shake the room. Or “You should kill yourself. Your whole life is a lie!”

Although I realize that this animosity toward a fictional character is supposed to be humorous and charming, I find myself wanting to rush up onstage, wrap my arms around Dawn, and shield her from the verbal onslaught; I have to remind myself that Dawn is a two dimensional fictional character who cannot hear or be hurt by the abuses slung at her.

Catapulted back into the hell of elementary school, I am reminded why I am not a big fan of mob energy.

What have I gotten myself into? I wonder. Is this Once More with Feeling or Lord of the Flies?

For the rest of the trip, we attach ourselves like barnacles to the apocalypse survival track. Unlike many there, we are not eager for the world to end, but it is relatively uncrowded, and at least it is a place to sit; because it is raining, most of the discussions we have attempted to get into are standing room only.

I am drowsy for most of it, because of my headache medication, and I only absorb a few things. I learn that if you are ever stranded on a deserted island, fishing is a bad way to feed yourself. It takes to much time and energy; you would starve.

I miss a lot of life-saving tips due to my drowsiness, but I do manage to take away one thing: I should never try living in the wild.

The rest of the trip is a montage of costumes, crowds, and hunts for places to sit and eat. It is a blur of faces, a network of escalators, and a press of bodies walling me in on every side.

On Monday it is all over; I am relieved to be, finally, going home. I pack happily. I miss Florida. I miss the swimming pool. I miss my cat. But it is done. I made it.

My stomach is gnawing, but soon I can get my bagel downstairs and we can head toward the Marta, then to our car, and home.

But when we reach the elevators with our luggage, everything stalls. The few times the elevators open, they are already glutted past capacity. Getting on the elevator with our luggage seems impossible.

We can take the stairs but we are on the 22nd floor, and it is a long way down, and since Donnie has a hurt knee, we wait. Minutes pass. Nothing changes.

I eye the digital numbers accusingly. This trip is supposed to be over. In my mind, it already is. So why I am still here, still feeling frustrated?

This was supposed to be a vacation, but I have spent most of my time standing in lines, weaving through crowds, being yelled at, and waiting at elevators.

There has to be some luck here, at Dragon Con, despite the number of people; even statistically I must be due. A grain of luck. Where is it? I eye the elevator, my arch-nemesis of the moment. Open, elevator, I think.

Prove to me that you can be a nice elevator, that you are not a Mech Minion sent by Dragon Con to destroy me.

I want jelly for my bagel. No, damn it, forget the jelly, I want some frakking flavored cream cheese. I want the icy Coke I was forced to pass up. I want a seat where I can see the stage. I want lines that are indoors where they are supposed to be.

I want to be treated like a paying guest, not like cattle. Luck, where are you? Show yourself!

I glare at the elevator doors. They do not move.

Time passes. We sit. Nothing changes. “Ready to go down the stairs?” Donnie says.

My gnawing stomach is declaring emergency, so I collect my luggage and prepare myself for the long journey down.

I try not to think about the fact that I have spent the last few minutes mentally speaking to an elevator door. Our baggage rolls, but on stairs the rollers do little good. “We have to carry it,” Donnie says.

The luggage pulls hard at the tendons in my wrist. After four or five flights, my knees are wobbling. A lactic acid burn settles into my upper arm, causing me to loosen my grip. I imagine myself pitching forward. I change strategies.

I set the luggage back on its wheels, take a few steps forward, and pull it down. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Down it goes, stair by stair, behind me. It is a slow, clunking, torturous process; one flight, then another; behind me, a crowd gathers into an impatient knot.

I could let them all pass, but it would mean separating myself from Donnie, who, despite having a hurt knee earlier, is forging right ahead as if nothing were ever wrong.

I understand how they feel. A thought disturbs me: to them, I am the crowd.

Finally, a man behind me asks, “Can I take that down for you?” For his sake, and for mine, I thank him and accept his offer.

For a couple of flights my hands are free, but my face is hot. I feel chastised. Soon I have reached the bottom.

I go to Donnie. “How is your knee?” I massage my aching bicep. “My arm is still burning.”

“Huh. Maybe you need to work out more,” he says. “Join a gym. Build some upper body strength.”

Walking toward the hotel Starbucks line, my knees still wobbling, I stare at him incredulously.

“Some upper body strength?” I give him my best glare and let him know exactly what I think about his advice. I leave him then. I leave him to stand alone in line; I go into the area with all the tables, find the most remote corner available, and sit.

A while later Donnie appears and sets a bagel in front of me. “I was joking,” he says. I inspect my bagel and remember; last night at a restaurant I pilfered some strawberry jam from a table condiment basket. I take it out now, and spread the jam over the inner side of a half. I take a few tentative bites.

“Amazing how much your mood improves when you eat,” Donnie says.

Without looking at him, I continue to eat my bagel, the plain bagel, which is so much better with jelly.

“This time next year, maybe we could take a cruise.”

Ironically, the last time we took a cruise, I missed Dragon Con. Before it became an annual juggernaut to prove pop cultural loyalty, before the crowds got too big and took all the luck away.

“A cruise,” I say, “might be nice.”

As I watch the crowd milling around, in lines, or groups, or going home, I think about the simple things that attracted me to Dragon Con in the first place: childhood nostalgia, the books and movies I love; I could still enjoy those things on a boat.

We finish our bagels and gather our belongings. The Marta awaits.

As I clear my side of the table, I pick up the empty packet of jelly, holding it delicately, as if it is a rare gem.

Who needs luck anyway? I think. Luck is for role playing games, not girls who own skeptic shirts.

As I walk away, rolling my luggage, I look around. Will I ever be back? I think that one day, I will.

But right now a cruise sounds nice.

I can pack my Ray Bradbury book, the earmarked paperback of short stories I keep on my shelf at home, the one with “The Foghorn” in it, and read it on a ship surrounded by a clear silent expanse of ocean.

I exit the lobby.

Next year, away from the crowds, maybe I can rediscover the seeds of love that brought me here. Just me, a book, and the mind inside, a silent, simple conversation with an author I love.

Yeah. My luggage trundles behind me. I think I would like that.