Eileen Maksym's Blog, page 24
August 11, 2014
The naked melancholy
I love sad music. It’s sort of a guilty pleasure. Sadness feels like an indulgence, especially considering that I’m in an ongoing battle with depression. A friend once asked me if listening to sad music makes me feel better or worse. At the time I told him it was a catharsis, that by getting myself to feel really sad, I could experience it fully, satisfy the melancholy part of myself, and then put it away. I’m no longer sure that’s true. There’s certainly that part of me that wants deep, heart-rending sadness. That loves to watch sad movies, read books that bring me to tears, and listen to songs like “Fred Jones Pt 2″ by Ben Folds (or, honestly, any Ben Folds song. The dude is the master of melancholy.) But I’m not sure if it’s a beast that can be sated, or a black hole that sucks in sadness and only grows more hungry.
That said, I think sad songs (and movies, and books, and so on) are very important. There can be a sort of naked honesty to it. There is the danger of being mawkish or melodramatic, of course, but that’s true of any attempt to express an emotion. Done right, sadness (and joy, and love, and horror…) can be an insight into the human experience. It hits a note of truth that would be impossible without the bare confession of the emotion. Consider, for instance, this brilliant lecture by Nick Cave (warning: automatic audio of the lecture):
Though the love song comes in many guises – songs of exaltation and praise, of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is the haunted premise of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void for love and for comfort, and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of their loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God. It is the cry of one chained to the earth and craving flight, a flight into inspiration and imagination and divinity. The love song is the sound of our endeavours to become God-like, to rise up and above the earth-bound and the mediocre. I believe the love song to be a sad song. It is the noise of sorrow itself.
A love song is empty without sadness. Consider also the song I mentioned above: “Fred Jones Pt 2″ by Ben Folds.
There was no party, and there were no songs
‘Cause today’s just a day like the day that he started
And no one is left here who knows his first name
And life barrels on like a runaway train
Where the passengers change, but they don’t change anything
You get off someone else can get on
And “I’m sorry, Mr. Jones, it’s time”
It’s not a love song, but a song about a man retiring and realizing that his life has made no difference. That all his leaving does is make a spot for a younger person. It is heartbreaking because it’s true, and the truth hinges on that heartbreak.
It’s possible that listening to sad songs does ultimately make my mood worse, not better. I need to monitor my intake, and balance it out with happy songs (Weird Al’s album Mandatory Fun is my current bouncy music of choice). But I won’t be giving them up, because I think it’s important to be in touch with the melancholy in all of us.
August 8, 2014
/waves at the NSA
When I was in line at Starbucks today, there was a woman behind me on her cell phone, having a very interesting conversation.
“He got caught because he was talking with someone online, and it turned out to be a cop. I need to go talk to the sex therapist.”
Now, discreetly eavesdropping on conversations is something that writers do. But I didn’t even have to eavesdrop in this case; in fact, I couldn’t have avoided overhearing the conversation if I wanted to. And since the line was long and slow, I heard a lot. Apparently this woman is either a lawyer or a lawyer-to-soon-be, and has been working with both prosecutors and defense attorneys, and hopes that will help her get a job as a prosecutor, because she “knows how the other side thinks.” She ended the conversation when she was a couple people from the register (good for her, I hate it when people try to hold a conversation on their cell while ordering coffee, it is rude to everyone involved) by saying “I love you,” so…a significant other? Maybe a parent? Someone she felt comfortable sharing sensitive details of a sex offender case with.
You know…them and random strangers in line with her at Starbucks.
Is it possible she was playing around? Having a fake conversation to see how people react? It’s possible. But she’s hardly the first person I’ve encountered having a “private” conversation in public, and I very much doubt that she will be the last.
Now, I will readily admit that I’ve been guilty of this myself. I’ve had fights on my phone in public. I’ve told my husband about changes in my therapist or psychiatrist appointments. I’ve had conversations with my mother. I find I have to remind myself pretty often that when I am in public, my cell phone conversations are public.
The illusion of privacy is a very common phenomenon, and it makes sense. When you’re on the phone, your attention is on that person (and not on the sidewalk, the barista, the road…), and there’s the assumption that if you’re not paying attention to other people, they’re not paying attention to you. It is the grown-up equivalent of a young child playing hide and seek and “hiding” by holding a pillow up in front of their faces. And that’s hardly limited to cell phone conversations. People think their cars are private spaces, and somehow forget that they are surrounded by glass. And if you open up an incognito window on Chrome, it puts up a note of caution that an incognito window does not protect you from people standing behind you. If you are looking at pictures of naked people and your co-worker or your parent or your spouse walks by, the program will not do a jedi mind trick, wave its hand and say “This is not the porn you’re looking for.”
It is so easy to forget all these things when the threat to our privacy is obvious and immediate. How much harder is it for any of us to remember that our privacy is an illusion even when we’re not having a “private” phone conversation in the middle of a Starbucks? There are some ways to encrypt our emails, our browsing data, but how many of us actually feel it’s necessary? We know that the NSA is listening in on our cell phone activity, and yet people still send each other sexts or pictures of themselves naked. We think we can be anonymous while posting on forums online, but with a little digging, people can uncover your location, even your identity. And try threatening a president and the FBI will be knocking on your door so fast your head will spin.
That’s one of the biggest, and most insidious, results of our rapidly expanding electronic globalization. I think all of us could use a sticker on our phones and our monitors that read “NOTHING YOU SAY IS PRIVATE”
Now, excuse me while I call my friend in Afghanistan and do a web search for “How to cook meth.” Hey there, NSA!
August 7, 2014
Bad Guys and Good TV
Today I am honored to have a guest post from author Camela Thompson. Camela writes in a variety of genres, from paranormal to thriller to romance, and all her tales center on kick-ass women who shine in difficult circumstances. Today she is sharing with us her love of dark and twisted TV, and why her current favorite “Fargo” is awesome.
Camela’s first novel is coming out this October. Check out her website and her blog for more information, and follow her on Twitter here!
♠
I have a weakness for television that verges on “a problem.” That isn’t to say I watch more than an hour a day at most. The issue stems from the intensity with which I throw myself into a series. A twisted little part of me relishes sick days, when I can give myself permission not to obsess about being productive and binge watch a series. When I only have a precious hour, I guard it jealously.
I watch my fair share of brain rot (my current trashy fascination is Party Down South), detective shows, anime/animated, and comedy, but I am more apt to get hooked on a dark series with complex characters. In fact, the more twisted and flawed the characters, the better. Think early Dexter with his code and the insatiable appetite of his Dark Passenger. Want to keep my attention? Throw in multiple points of view, each of them with their personal hang-ups, like Game of Thrones with Tyrion’s daddy issues, the incestuous twins, a falling family, and an ambitious princess with her dragons. Give me vengeance and even pointless deaths like Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead. Let me sit and wonder why a main character can be so easily written off the show, never to return again. Shock me.
The best series on television right now are not the formulaic crime dramas or comedies. Don’t get me wrong – CSI and Law and Order pioneered a system that works and has resulted in dozens of spin offs. Open with a murder, show people stumbling over clues that are just easy enough for the viewer to start connecting the dots, throw in one or two erroneous accusations, and end it by solving the crime within a neat little forty minute window. Bonus points for good guys with a troubled past and a tendency to blur the letter of the law to get their man. There are so many of these shows because they work. I still love me some NCIS, but sometimes I want a surprise.
My husband and I were hitting a slump in the television routine. Our old favorites were failing us — losing the magic. Maybe the producers got a little greedy and wanted to squeeze out one more season. Maybe they just ran out of ideas. Most likely the writers had shocked the viewers so many times that the tricks that had awed us in the beginning just weren’t working anymore, earning eye rolls instead of gasps. Whatever the cause, we were looking for a new way to spend that single hour when I saw Billy Bob Thornton speed by on the DVR as Lance fast forwarded through commercials. The dude is weird, edgy, and consistently delivers in the role of a psychopath.
“Stop!” I cried. “Rewind, please! I want to see what he’s doing! Please let it not be a comedy!” The only sense I got was that he was standing somewhere cold. The title popped up on the screen. “Fargo?”
The trailer for the season premier caught my interest, but I was skeptical. Fargo was a quirky movie – a combination of grit, humor, and excessive violence. They mercilessly made fun of a quiet area of our country that seems happy slipping under the radar. The movie was magic, but how would a series match up to the original?
I don’t know how the creators managed to mimic the tone of the original movie while updating it to our ever shortening attention spans, but they nailed it. Fargo skips to different characters, showing the viewer the big picture through multiple points of view while the protagonists remain clueless. The bad guys are revealed just enough so that I can see where they’re coming from even if I can’t bring myself to like them. (Here is a tiny spoiler: The red window scraper in the snowbank makes a cameo!)
Then there’s Malvo – the ultimate bad guy.
Malvo is a man who is very good at his job, so proficient that he is prone to boredom and caving in to whims. It’s almost as though he approaches life as a choose your own adventure, leaving himself open to pursuing different opportunities as they arise. Sure, there are horrible repercussions for the people around him, but that isn’t the point. Survival is priority number one and everything else is just gravy on top. He has no real attachments, just manipulations and experiments. Watching him cut through each episode like a shark through water makes me come back for more. As Malvo points out, each choice had consequences, but watching how they ripple like waves in a pond is what makes it interesting.
I hear Fargo is using a new cast for the next season. This makes me look forward to more with the hope that it minimizes the risk of following the path of so many shows before it. Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman were amazing. I loved Tolman’s character, Molly Solverson, and how she was utilized to point out that sexism and gender biases are still alive and well in America. I also love that Solverson persisted when most people would have thrown in the towel. I’ll miss these wonderful characters, but I look forward to the potential that comes with change. My only question is: How can the writers possibly top Malvo?
Who is your favorite bad guy? What is your favorite dramatic television series?
August 4, 2014
I love it when a plan comes together…
I’ve read that when Tolkien first wrote The Hobbit, the ring that Bilbo found in Gollum’s cave was nothing of any great importance. He needed some method for Bilbo to escape, so the hobbit conveniently found this magic ring that made him turn invisible! It wasn’t until he was asked to write a sequel that he realized this seemingly insignificant trinket was actually an object of great, perhaps the greatest, importance. He even wound up going back and rewriting The Hobbit to strengthen the role of the ring and add some foreshadowing.
I’ve experienced this phenomenon in my own writing. In my novella Haunted, I described one of my main characters, Tara, as being one of those people who always dresses like the room is a good ten degrees cooler than it actually is. It was just how I saw her in the book’s opening scene, sitting there in a lecture hall in a white collared shirt and a heavy brown cabled sweater. But as I continued writing about her and her friends and their passion for hunting ghosts, I found myself wondering about that characteristic I’d given her. Why was Tara always cold?
And then it hit me.
Tara was being haunted.
And suddenly an off-handed detail about Tara’s appearance became the central plot.
I’m currently working on book 2 in the Haunted series, working title Committed, and the exact same thing has happened, again with Tara. It started with Tara’s senior project, which involves killing rats and slicing up their brains to study the influence of behavior on brain function. It occurred to me, again well into writing the novel, that Tara might be receiving hate mail for killing animals in the name of science. I wondered how people would find out about her research, and decided, hey, Tara’s a particularly talented student in neurobiology. Maybe she appeared in an article about up and coming scientists in some pop psychology magazine.
And BAM! I had a central plot point. I’ll let you guys guess what it is ;) You’ll have to wait until Committed is released before you find out whether or not you’re right.
I love when these things happen. It’s probably my favorite part of writing. My mentor Paul McComas is fond of telling his students that organic fiction involves putting characters in a setting with conflict and then writing to see what happens. Not knowing what’s going to happen next is terrifying sometimes, but more often than not it’s incredibly freeing. It allows the conscious and subconscious mind to dance together and produce a plot that surprises me, amuses me, breaks my heart, and hopefully will surprise, amuse and break the hearts of my readers as well.
August 1, 2014
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, or, 50,000 words, baby!
Hi guys! Miss me?
I’ve been AWOL here this past month, because I was participating in Camp Nanowrimo. As you guys probably know, Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a program where any writer, from beginner to seasoned veteran, can sign up to accept the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I’ve participated for over ten years, and I’ve won (aka, completed the 50k) three times now. The first novel ultimately became my novella Haunted (which you can buy on Amazon HERE!), the second novel we shall never speak of again, and the third, from this last November, is Crisis, which will be a novel in the Haunted series.
After writing most of Crisis in November (it’s still unfinished), I realized that I needed another book between it and Haunted. It has become my goal to finish it by the end of the summer. I decided what I needed was a jumpstart.
I needed Camp Nano.
In addition to the main event in November, the Nanowrimo folks do two “Camp” events, one in March and one in July. During those months, you can set your own goal, work with a partner if you wish, and work on a wider range of projects: novels, short stories, screenplays, dissertations…anything you want to write, go for it.
I set my goal at 50,000 words, and wrote book 2 of the Haunted series.
It’s not finished. I’ll be working through August at least, albeit at a slightly less frantic pace (a goal of 1,000 words a day instead of 2,000). It will be a little harder, because I won’t have a word count that I’m shooting for, and I don’t know how much longer this thing will be (one of the drawbacks of being a pantser instead of a planner). I have some idea where it’s going, but I know from experience that things can come up that will change the whole course of the narrative. It’s already happened. The book as it stands now is not the book I envisioned going into it. It’s an amazing and terrifying thing.
I will be blogging again, and I have some exciting stuff lined up, including a guest blog post from a fellow Booktrope author! So stay tuned!
