And sadly, I don’t mean Terry Pratchett’s book. I mean the wonderful resource we writers have right now as most of us watch our lives circle the drain while swimming frantically against the current in the hope we’ll find something solid that’s a bit less odorous than what you’d expect to find circling a drain.
We’re living in interesting times in the full sense of the curse – we don’t know what the heck is coming, but we have a sneaking suspicion it won’t be pretty and most of us don’t have the resources to cushion ourselves against the worst.
Since this is exactly what we do to our characters, it’s worth paying attention to how it feels. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I suspect my characters are waiting for an opportunity to ambush me and express their displeasure via the time-honored fashion of extreme violence. The way things are for me right now, I’m just as likely to go to sleep in the middle of the process.
No, this isn’t just the narcoleptic whining about never getting enough sleep. Yeah, there’s some of that, but there’s also the fact that we’re only just crawling out of the financial hole we landed in when I got laid off last year, the fact that while I enjoy the job I’m often pretty brain-dead when I get home from it because there’s only so much intense concentration I can do in a day – and too much of that will nuke any chance of me being able to write that day, the added ‘joy’ of trying to de-flea the house (which we can’t even blame on the cats – they had no problems before we moved into this place: we’re pretty sure the previous owner’s dogs brought fleas in, and because we didn’t realize that until too late, we now have an infestation), and the usual other stuff that goes on. I’d be tired if I wasn’t narcoleptic. Just not as tired.
Interesting times indeed.
Then there’s the industry busily doing its best to self-destruct its way out of crisis – this seems to be a remarkably common strategy, to judge by the actions of numerous businesses, political organizations, countries, states, cities, people… I guess if you destroy yourself, you don’t have to worry about anything the future brings, although it seems a pretty dopey thing to do.
Although… Adapting is hard. I’ve had to do it often enough to know. It can hurt, too. A lot (that sound you heard was my characters screaming “YOU THINK?” at me. Not all of them were that polite). A lot of people and a heck of a lot more organizations won’t change unless they’re forced, and sometimes not even then. Sometimes they can’t change: the old ways of doing things are so deeply ingrained nothing short of destruction is going to remove them, or they depend on something else that isn’t changing, or… you get the picture.
It’s easy to write worlds where you’re turning things inside out and miss the stress it puts on everything else – let’s face it, life is complicated. It was complicated way back when, too, judging by the evidence. We humans probably haven’t been isolated since, well… ever. Even back in the times of hunter/gatherer tribes there was a lot of trade and other stuff going on – to the extent that in some of the most isolated parts of the world where the hunter/gatherer model still applies it’s not that rare for people to speak multiple languages: their tribe’s language, the languages of the neighboring tribes, any trading pidgin that’s grown up because at the extremes of the ranges the languages that have lots of overlap with their neighbors are completely unintelligible, and of course if they’re in regular contact with their more technologically advanced relatives, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, or the language of whatever other colonial power happened to get there first.
So even in the most primitive and isolated societies, there’s a lot of connections that can fail and a lot of potential for cascading problems. For the want of a nail, as it were.
All of which probably explains the rather dark undertone of the current work in progress. This stuff leaks out no matter what.
Oh, and ARGH! I set this bloody thing up to post early this morning so what does it do? It ignores me altogether.
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “Interesting Times”
Murphy Strikes Again!!!! [Wink]
There are three things that never change. Death, taxes and Murphy.
Go to the local pet store and get some insect juvenile growth hormone, and sprinkle it on all your floors at least twice, a week apart. It blows the little buggers up!
I’ve known stress most of my life. Then I retired and thought I’d left that all behind me. It rose up and smacked me upside the head anyway. I try to show my characters under stress, but I’m usually too much of a softie to go into much detail.
Insect juvenile growth hormone to explode fleas… okay. I’m sure I’ve heard weirder things, but I can’t remember where, offhand.
I tend to start from a place that’s grimdarkevil, which is probably not good for human wave. Of course, I’m also responsible for some of the more… interesting uses of humor in the middle of something that would ordinarily be utterly horrific.
Bigger more complicated societies can make it possible for a single collection of circumstances to intensify stress over a wider population. Stress will out.
Absolutely. Cascading system failure is something that tends not to happen in smaller, less complex groupings.
Interesting times, indeed. Being social creatures (well, most of us), there’s always the universal undercurrent of gossip, Very Big Things (like wars) that may or may not impact us, impending personal apocalypse things like what will happen if we ever slip those last few inches into complete poverty and debt… But.
The corollary to the Phrase Which Shall Not Be Spoken is that it really could always get worse. Add in substance addiction to the already failing (flailing?) life, and all sorts of consequences arise. Being long time residents of first world countries, it is easy to forget what a difference cultural attitudes can make, too- for ex., we’re a lot less violent a people than we could be. I’m thankful that cholera and giardia are less common these days. Hell, being able to take full, deep breaths is something easily overlooked as a blessing. Found that out the hard way a month ago.
That ain’t to say that life all sunshine and skittles, ‘cause there’s plenty of badness going on. And yeah, the stress and the mess can make for absolutely *great* story material. Can you imagine a person completely free of want? I can’t. Really. I think we’re hard-wired to always want *something.* And stories of trial and tribulation can make for gripping material.
It has to mean something, and be worth it, though. One of my older stories that I’m trying to re-work is like that- oppressively dark regime, better virtues of mankind on the ropes and reeling, light of hope flickering, going dim and all that. Pessimism is fairly easy to pick up, but there’s another trap I find in my own work that goes merrily hand in hand- excessive world building.
Fortunately, lack of time to do such excesses justice keeps me from going too far down that path. *grin* There can be virtues found in having limited time, such as forcing one to focus on certain things and stick to a schedule. Well, I suppose the paycheck that goes along with the reason my time is limited is nice, too. I’m rather fond of eating and occasionally sleeping dry. *grin*
Good luck with the story, lass. It sounds like it will be interesting reading.
Oh, yeah. All of that and then some. It’s easier to do grim and horrible and all, which is probably why it happens so much. Heck, a lot of my earliest stuff is beyond grimdarkevilnasty. Now I still have all of the darkness but I can offset it with humor.
Hm… You make a good point about the virtues of limited time. I too am rather fond of a paycheck and the little side benefits it provides, like food and housing and little luxuries for the cats.
One thing that can help move things along (if you’re not already doing it) is keep one of those little pocket notebooks at work. I’ve been known to jot story material on the back of convenience store receipts, table napkins, and scraps of discarded boxes during breaks and downtimes, but you don’t have to be like me and people will probably look at you less strangely if the mad scribblings are confined to a notebook.
Either that or security will come find you, convinced you are a terrorist spy killer, and won’t that make for more interesting story material?
Hello Mr. Dan,
I am lucky enough that I work at my college bookstore. My occasional mad scribble sessions fit right in! If I don’t have a notebook, I will outline a plot bunny on my cellphone’s memo pad. Tapping madly on my phone also fits right in around a college. (I have a couple of friends that tend to pounce on my notebook/phone when I come up for air since they can tell how ‘interesting’ my writing is going to be by my level of concentration.)
Ms. Paulk, I actually have the opposite problem. Instead of “grim and horrible”, I tend to write very ‘fluffy-bunny’ and ‘happy, happy, joy, joy’. It’s great for Romance, but readers from other genres end up nauseous. I am working hard to put more ‘bite’ into my stories as we speak. Perhaps studying your works will help me write for a wider readership.
Thanks everyone!
SheBear