It's been a rough year here. Granted, there are two and a half months to go, but even so. I'm not going to tempt fate and say "it can't get worse" because, as I discovered last week, it can. Very suddenly so, in fact. I'm not going to into details, because this has never been that kind of blog, and also because for all the problems I've been through, many out there had it worse, and I won't pretend otherwise.
Even so, I'm having a hard time of late sorting through all of it, and expect that's going to be a long process. Motivation, for a great many things, has been in precious short supply, as has any sense of determination to go with it.
Yet the part of it all that intrigues me is the fact that, for all that went horribly wrong this past year, had that stuff not happened, this would have been a pretty good year. Even the summer, which is when things well and truly imploded, there were plenty of positive things I did that under other circumstances would have had me feeling great. I got accomplished just about all the things I wanted to, and had a good time doing them. I suspect without those things I'd be a wreck by now, or living with my parents again. (Been there, done that already and not looking forward to doing it again unless I absolutely have to. Which I still might before the year is out. One never knows.)
So what do I make of it all? How do I put this year into the grand scheme of things? Do I wait and see how things turn out? Do I judge it in the short term, or the long term? Do I seize it as an opportunity, however unwanted, to make changes - some of which I'll even admit are needed?
The truth is, I don't. Not just yet. Even for the short term there is still too much in flux. I'm trying to, of course. Certain changes have to be made, others, like writing here again, are more voluntary. So ask me again at the end of the year, then at the end of the year after that, and after that. Life is cumulative, and I'm not done adding it up just yet.
And at the end of things, if the worst I can say is that the good things balanced out the bad things, I think I'll be forced to say that's not such a bad thing after all.
Showing posts with label all good things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label all good things. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Saturday, August 28, 2010
The Joy of Browsing
I miss the CD store.
Which is not to say that they're all gone, though to the best of my knowledge a lot of the major chains have either folded or closed up a lot of shops since the 1990's. There are still places where you can go to buy CD's, should you be so inclined. I am not including the big box stores here, or even the more specialized retailers like Borders or Barnes and Nobles. I mean the CD store that, aside from a small smattering of posters and other music paraphernalia, only sold music. I know that there are fewer of them, where once they were almost as prolific as Starbuck's.
Perhaps not quite so numerous, but close.
I don't even listen to most of my CD's anymore, honestly. Most of the time I'm on my laptop, and so that's where most of my music is. Not all of it, by any means, as storage limitations mean that the large items like operas or the complete Beethoven's symphonies have been left on CD. The vast majority of what I listen to on a frequent basis is, however, stored digitally, and I confess most of those are the music of known quantities. Musicians where I was already familiar with they're work, and wasn't taking a chance.
Not that some of it doesn't work like that. There are any number of places where I can find new music, and for a not unreasonable sum even purchase it and take it home. (Or download it, if the artist is giving it away for free. Which some of the more esoteric ones I listen to do.) Yet browsing through a blog or an online music store doesn't have quite the same feel to it. Maybe it's not having the CD in hand, or being able to - sometimes - turn to the store clerk and ask about the music in question. Maybe it's the lack of those sections where they say "if you like this, you might also like this."
A lot of it is simply not being able to find those rare gems you might otherwise overlook. One of my favorite blues CD's, for example, came from this little store in downtown Chicago, found while I was getting lunch and killing time until my train arrived. It was a small store, less than the size of the 7 Eleven across the street from it, but it had a steady stream of college students browsing the aisles. It aimed at mostly jazz and blues music, and while I know there are plenty of blogs out there devoted to that stuff, there is an inherent problem with those.
Mainly, they rely on someone's opinions. If a person is posting about music on their blog, it's a reflection of their tastes. And while, for a professional reviewer, that might mean a broader sampling, it still imposes certain limitations. Limitations you were less likely to find in a music store. Even simple things like crossing genre lines, and browsing jazz and blues over here, then new age over there, are made a bit more cumbersome online. Maybe not more difficult, as there is built-in convenience from shopping from home and all that, but you have to hunt in more locations rather than just going to the one spot.
Mostly, I miss being able to walk in and hear something over the speakers which you might never have listened to. Sometimes it was crap, sometimes not, and just sometimes it was something which, after asking the clerk what it was, you'd walk out of the store with. You don't get that online.
Which is not to say that they're all gone, though to the best of my knowledge a lot of the major chains have either folded or closed up a lot of shops since the 1990's. There are still places where you can go to buy CD's, should you be so inclined. I am not including the big box stores here, or even the more specialized retailers like Borders or Barnes and Nobles. I mean the CD store that, aside from a small smattering of posters and other music paraphernalia, only sold music. I know that there are fewer of them, where once they were almost as prolific as Starbuck's.
Perhaps not quite so numerous, but close.
I don't even listen to most of my CD's anymore, honestly. Most of the time I'm on my laptop, and so that's where most of my music is. Not all of it, by any means, as storage limitations mean that the large items like operas or the complete Beethoven's symphonies have been left on CD. The vast majority of what I listen to on a frequent basis is, however, stored digitally, and I confess most of those are the music of known quantities. Musicians where I was already familiar with they're work, and wasn't taking a chance.
Not that some of it doesn't work like that. There are any number of places where I can find new music, and for a not unreasonable sum even purchase it and take it home. (Or download it, if the artist is giving it away for free. Which some of the more esoteric ones I listen to do.) Yet browsing through a blog or an online music store doesn't have quite the same feel to it. Maybe it's not having the CD in hand, or being able to - sometimes - turn to the store clerk and ask about the music in question. Maybe it's the lack of those sections where they say "if you like this, you might also like this."
A lot of it is simply not being able to find those rare gems you might otherwise overlook. One of my favorite blues CD's, for example, came from this little store in downtown Chicago, found while I was getting lunch and killing time until my train arrived. It was a small store, less than the size of the 7 Eleven across the street from it, but it had a steady stream of college students browsing the aisles. It aimed at mostly jazz and blues music, and while I know there are plenty of blogs out there devoted to that stuff, there is an inherent problem with those.
Mainly, they rely on someone's opinions. If a person is posting about music on their blog, it's a reflection of their tastes. And while, for a professional reviewer, that might mean a broader sampling, it still imposes certain limitations. Limitations you were less likely to find in a music store. Even simple things like crossing genre lines, and browsing jazz and blues over here, then new age over there, are made a bit more cumbersome online. Maybe not more difficult, as there is built-in convenience from shopping from home and all that, but you have to hunt in more locations rather than just going to the one spot.
Mostly, I miss being able to walk in and hear something over the speakers which you might never have listened to. Sometimes it was crap, sometimes not, and just sometimes it was something which, after asking the clerk what it was, you'd walk out of the store with. You don't get that online.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Back to the Beginning
Sometimes you just have to start over. Not saying that's always an easy thing to do. In fact, sometimes it can be downright painful. It can hurt. A lot. Even when you know it's the right thing to do, the knowing, in advance, of just how much it's going to take out of you can be enough for you to want to put it off. That is part of the appeal of procrastination, as we tend not to put off those things we enjoy, but instead delay those things we do not want to do, the things we dread.
I'm convinced there is also the tendency to not want to erase all the work that has gone into a project right up to that point where it becomes necessary to start over. No matter how deep the quagmire, there is the belief that some of what went before could be salvaged. A complete overhaul isn't really required, no, instead it will only take a little tweaking here and there, a couple of edits, and then it'll be easy to pull free of the muck and mire.
That Hollywood seems to defer to a re-boot every time a franchise stalls out may be part of the problem. For every Star Trek - which I still haven't seen - or Batman Begins - which of course I have - there are countless other attempts to rejuvenate a storyline or character just be starting over with new faces. Comics are guilty of this, too, often in the interest of sidestepping a particularly thorny plot issue that the writers backed themselves into. It very rarely goes well.
So the temptation to not hit the universal delete, and start afresh, is a strong one. It can trap even the most well intentioned author. You plug along, you edit, you move things around, but you do not start over because you have already done all this work, and it would be a shame to waste it. Not to mention disheartening, because why, oh why, did you invest all those days/weeks/months (years?) into something only to throw it all away?
All of which belies the fact that we all know it's not only necessary, it is at times the only way out. There was a Micheal Douglas film some years back, Wonder Boys, in which he plays a writer. A famous writer, who has been laboring for years on his latest opus. Laboring and not going anywhere, which as you might expect has not left him in the happiest of moods about writing in general. Ignoring the merits of the film - though I liked it - it stands out for me because of a scene, near the end, where this manuscript he's been working on for years is suddenly, literally, thrown to the wind, with hundreds of pages flying everywhere.
(This was the year 2000, when it was perhaps more conceivable that a manuscript would be in paper only format. I suppose there are still some writers out there who work that way, but I also suspect most of us would view such a scene and ask "why didn't he just save a back-up copy?")
The manuscript, as overblown, tiresome, and voluminous as it had become, was lost, leaving him with no choice but to start over. One jump cut later, we see him typing away on the final pages of his new, much shorter - and presumably much better - manuscript. More importantly, he seems happy again with the writing process, thus ending that part of the movie on a high note. (There's a great deal of other material to the plot, so this is hardly a spoiler if you haven't seen the film.)
Most of us will not have such a divine intervention. Any windstorm strong enough to blow away my laptop is going to leave me with far larger problems. Yet it needs to be noted there is nothing stopping me - or any other writer in a similarly stuck vein - from being our own winds of renewal. I rarely completely delete something, because you never know when you might want to mine that dusty idea for new inspiration, or those few gems buried in the dull dirt of the rest of your prose. However, this is not to say I cannot start over, that I cannot, instead of staring at the same text that has vexed me for days/weeks/months (years?) call up a new document, a blank slate, and take those initial ideas that I found so exciting back in the beginning for a brand new spin on a brand new surface.
Because sometimes, that's what it takes.
I'm convinced there is also the tendency to not want to erase all the work that has gone into a project right up to that point where it becomes necessary to start over. No matter how deep the quagmire, there is the belief that some of what went before could be salvaged. A complete overhaul isn't really required, no, instead it will only take a little tweaking here and there, a couple of edits, and then it'll be easy to pull free of the muck and mire.
That Hollywood seems to defer to a re-boot every time a franchise stalls out may be part of the problem. For every Star Trek - which I still haven't seen - or Batman Begins - which of course I have - there are countless other attempts to rejuvenate a storyline or character just be starting over with new faces. Comics are guilty of this, too, often in the interest of sidestepping a particularly thorny plot issue that the writers backed themselves into. It very rarely goes well.
So the temptation to not hit the universal delete, and start afresh, is a strong one. It can trap even the most well intentioned author. You plug along, you edit, you move things around, but you do not start over because you have already done all this work, and it would be a shame to waste it. Not to mention disheartening, because why, oh why, did you invest all those days/weeks/months (years?) into something only to throw it all away?
All of which belies the fact that we all know it's not only necessary, it is at times the only way out. There was a Micheal Douglas film some years back, Wonder Boys, in which he plays a writer. A famous writer, who has been laboring for years on his latest opus. Laboring and not going anywhere, which as you might expect has not left him in the happiest of moods about writing in general. Ignoring the merits of the film - though I liked it - it stands out for me because of a scene, near the end, where this manuscript he's been working on for years is suddenly, literally, thrown to the wind, with hundreds of pages flying everywhere.
(This was the year 2000, when it was perhaps more conceivable that a manuscript would be in paper only format. I suppose there are still some writers out there who work that way, but I also suspect most of us would view such a scene and ask "why didn't he just save a back-up copy?")
The manuscript, as overblown, tiresome, and voluminous as it had become, was lost, leaving him with no choice but to start over. One jump cut later, we see him typing away on the final pages of his new, much shorter - and presumably much better - manuscript. More importantly, he seems happy again with the writing process, thus ending that part of the movie on a high note. (There's a great deal of other material to the plot, so this is hardly a spoiler if you haven't seen the film.)
Most of us will not have such a divine intervention. Any windstorm strong enough to blow away my laptop is going to leave me with far larger problems. Yet it needs to be noted there is nothing stopping me - or any other writer in a similarly stuck vein - from being our own winds of renewal. I rarely completely delete something, because you never know when you might want to mine that dusty idea for new inspiration, or those few gems buried in the dull dirt of the rest of your prose. However, this is not to say I cannot start over, that I cannot, instead of staring at the same text that has vexed me for days/weeks/months (years?) call up a new document, a blank slate, and take those initial ideas that I found so exciting back in the beginning for a brand new spin on a brand new surface.
Because sometimes, that's what it takes.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Guilt of Putting It Down
I have no problems turning off a bad tv show. Or changing the channel on a boring movie. I've started to listen to an album only to realize there's only one decent song on it, and switched to something else. All of which I do without remorse. Books are another story. For some reason, putting down a bad book is hard to do.
Putting down a mediocre book is almost impossible.
I'm not sure why I feel guilty about not finishing a book, about taking the bookmark out when it's only half completed it's march to the last page. It seems to be much stronger when it's a book from the library. (Certainly there were books I was assigned to read that I put down without compunction, nevermore to pick them up again nor feel a twinge of regret for having done so. Even so, those were few and far between.) I think part of it is the idea that I picked this, I chose this particular book, so I owe it to myself to validate that selection by reading through it.
Sometimes I think it's a question of just the wrong book at the wrong time. There have been one or two books where the first time I checked them out I wound up returning them unfinished, only to get them again some time later and take them to completion. I don't often give books second chances. Usually it's only when I know it wasn't the fault of the story, or when it's a particular author whom I'm trying to give another redemptive shot to. In part this comes with the recognition that once I've put a book down from an author, I'm much less likely to get another one from them. (This has kept me reading authors who have long since managed to lose their spot on my "must read" list, by sheer hope that someday they'll pen something to find their way back onto that list.)
So I know, when I put a book down without finishing it, that author just got a black mark from me, and the odds of my getting another book from them have dwindled significantly. This means it is a major undertaking, a severing of either a well-established relationship, or the ending of what might have been a promising long term endeavor. I don't set a book down without consequences, and as a reader I tend not to be very forgiving.
Some of the guilt is also tied up with other people's expectations, especially if it's a story I'd heard good things about. Then it becomes a question of, everyone else loved this. I don't. Ergo there is something wrong with me, as a reader, that I don't get how awesome this is. It's not really a valid argument, I know, and speaks more of my own insecurities than anything else, but hey, we all have our neurotic ticks. This just happens to be one of mine.
Sometimes it's simply the reluctance to abandon a project once it's started, and often for reasons that make up only part of the whole. I'm finding myself struggling through Under the Dome right now, for example, because I absolutely cannot stand one of the major characters. I just want someone to put a bullet through his head, and suspect instead I am stuck with him for the next thousand pages or so. Abandoning the book now just because of one character feels slightly treasonous. Yet I have a hunch I may do so, and know also I'll check it back out again eventually.
Only to perhaps feel guilty all over again if I put it down a second time.
Putting down a mediocre book is almost impossible.
I'm not sure why I feel guilty about not finishing a book, about taking the bookmark out when it's only half completed it's march to the last page. It seems to be much stronger when it's a book from the library. (Certainly there were books I was assigned to read that I put down without compunction, nevermore to pick them up again nor feel a twinge of regret for having done so. Even so, those were few and far between.) I think part of it is the idea that I picked this, I chose this particular book, so I owe it to myself to validate that selection by reading through it.
Sometimes I think it's a question of just the wrong book at the wrong time. There have been one or two books where the first time I checked them out I wound up returning them unfinished, only to get them again some time later and take them to completion. I don't often give books second chances. Usually it's only when I know it wasn't the fault of the story, or when it's a particular author whom I'm trying to give another redemptive shot to. In part this comes with the recognition that once I've put a book down from an author, I'm much less likely to get another one from them. (This has kept me reading authors who have long since managed to lose their spot on my "must read" list, by sheer hope that someday they'll pen something to find their way back onto that list.)
So I know, when I put a book down without finishing it, that author just got a black mark from me, and the odds of my getting another book from them have dwindled significantly. This means it is a major undertaking, a severing of either a well-established relationship, or the ending of what might have been a promising long term endeavor. I don't set a book down without consequences, and as a reader I tend not to be very forgiving.
Some of the guilt is also tied up with other people's expectations, especially if it's a story I'd heard good things about. Then it becomes a question of, everyone else loved this. I don't. Ergo there is something wrong with me, as a reader, that I don't get how awesome this is. It's not really a valid argument, I know, and speaks more of my own insecurities than anything else, but hey, we all have our neurotic ticks. This just happens to be one of mine.
Sometimes it's simply the reluctance to abandon a project once it's started, and often for reasons that make up only part of the whole. I'm finding myself struggling through Under the Dome right now, for example, because I absolutely cannot stand one of the major characters. I just want someone to put a bullet through his head, and suspect instead I am stuck with him for the next thousand pages or so. Abandoning the book now just because of one character feels slightly treasonous. Yet I have a hunch I may do so, and know also I'll check it back out again eventually.
Only to perhaps feel guilty all over again if I put it down a second time.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Death of a Character: The Show Must Go On
It's been a while since I touched on this topic. I've covered a bit of ground in this little ongoing theme I have here. I've dealt with replacements, the "really really truly we're not kidding they're completely dead," and resurrection. Yet there's another kind of character resurrection, and that's when an author dies but his most beloved creation lives on. Which is why it seemed appropriate to dust off this last little bit I had to say on it in the wake of an author's passing. Robert Parker died earlier this month, and I for one shall miss him.
Parker's most iconic creation was, of course, Spenser - spelled like the poet and no first name ever given. (Except maybe once, but I think perhaps that was a typo in one of the early books.) Much has been written elsewhere about that, and he penned other characters as well, most of whom I liked and enjoyed. I have read all the books, and read that there were, I think, two more books ready for publication. I will look forward to them, and be sad when I finish the last one knowing it is the last one, but I must also say I hope that's where it stops.
Ironically, Parker himself took on another author's creation post-mortem. He finished Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs and then wrote one more Marlowe book based on Chandler's notes. However, he didn't keep going after that, and if any author can be said to be a reincarnation of another one, or a reinvention, then Parker was that to Chandler. Spenser wasn't Marlowe, but he was a Marlowe for his times. And he had the good sense to let Marlowe rest in peace once his creator's ideas were done.
Other characters have not been so fortunate.
James Bond is an example, so too now is Jason Bourne. Neither character ever died, but with the death of their creators I think they should have been allowed to. On paper, anyway. I love the Bond and the Bourne movies. Just not as fond of the later books, even though I like Lustbader, who has taken over the Bourne helm. The Bond books are another story altogether. There were (perhaps are) rumors that there was a final "Travis McGee" story, penned by the author in anticipation of his eventual passing. To the best of my knowledge that's just a rumor, and thankfully McGee's been left alone. Sherlock Holmes has also been penned once or twice by other authors.
Never successfully, in my opinion. Not for the caliber of writers that have attempted it, mind you, and not because they weren't good stories. Some of them were very good stories. But they weren't quite Holmes and Watson. Close, perhaps, and an excellent imitation, but never quite the real thing.
Bond, Bourne, and Holmes were all resurrected for one simple motive: money. The series are money-makers, and the new Bourne books didn't appear until Matt Damon built a franchise. I suspect for that reason there won't be any rush to hand Spenser's reigns over to someone else. (The Tom Selleck CBS movies based around one of his other characters are different. Like the Robert Urich Spenser for Hire series, they have established their own universe, more of a "based on" than anything else. There is apparently one more Jesse Stone book, and I shall mourn him after putting down his last tale, too.) There isn't the oodles of money to be made from it that there are with the others.
I do think, however, that characters like that ought to be left alone. There is no way to capture the original voice of their authors, not completely, and so they come off as the imitations they are. When the only reason not to come up with your own character - as Lustbader has done in the past - is money, while I can't begrudge an author for taking a pay check (heck, I'd take it), I wish the powers that be behind it would have the good sense not to offer it in the first place.
As the horror cliche says, sometimes it's better to let things rest in peace.
Parker's most iconic creation was, of course, Spenser - spelled like the poet and no first name ever given. (Except maybe once, but I think perhaps that was a typo in one of the early books.) Much has been written elsewhere about that, and he penned other characters as well, most of whom I liked and enjoyed. I have read all the books, and read that there were, I think, two more books ready for publication. I will look forward to them, and be sad when I finish the last one knowing it is the last one, but I must also say I hope that's where it stops.
Ironically, Parker himself took on another author's creation post-mortem. He finished Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs and then wrote one more Marlowe book based on Chandler's notes. However, he didn't keep going after that, and if any author can be said to be a reincarnation of another one, or a reinvention, then Parker was that to Chandler. Spenser wasn't Marlowe, but he was a Marlowe for his times. And he had the good sense to let Marlowe rest in peace once his creator's ideas were done.
Other characters have not been so fortunate.
James Bond is an example, so too now is Jason Bourne. Neither character ever died, but with the death of their creators I think they should have been allowed to. On paper, anyway. I love the Bond and the Bourne movies. Just not as fond of the later books, even though I like Lustbader, who has taken over the Bourne helm. The Bond books are another story altogether. There were (perhaps are) rumors that there was a final "Travis McGee" story, penned by the author in anticipation of his eventual passing. To the best of my knowledge that's just a rumor, and thankfully McGee's been left alone. Sherlock Holmes has also been penned once or twice by other authors.
Never successfully, in my opinion. Not for the caliber of writers that have attempted it, mind you, and not because they weren't good stories. Some of them were very good stories. But they weren't quite Holmes and Watson. Close, perhaps, and an excellent imitation, but never quite the real thing.
Bond, Bourne, and Holmes were all resurrected for one simple motive: money. The series are money-makers, and the new Bourne books didn't appear until Matt Damon built a franchise. I suspect for that reason there won't be any rush to hand Spenser's reigns over to someone else. (The Tom Selleck CBS movies based around one of his other characters are different. Like the Robert Urich Spenser for Hire series, they have established their own universe, more of a "based on" than anything else. There is apparently one more Jesse Stone book, and I shall mourn him after putting down his last tale, too.) There isn't the oodles of money to be made from it that there are with the others.
I do think, however, that characters like that ought to be left alone. There is no way to capture the original voice of their authors, not completely, and so they come off as the imitations they are. When the only reason not to come up with your own character - as Lustbader has done in the past - is money, while I can't begrudge an author for taking a pay check (heck, I'd take it), I wish the powers that be behind it would have the good sense not to offer it in the first place.
As the horror cliche says, sometimes it's better to let things rest in peace.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ghosts of Novels Past
I keep a notebook, as any good writer should do. It's there for me to jot ideas in when they occur to me at a time and place where I can't implement them, or simply have no use for them. (I once came up with what I believe is a lovely pastorally poetic line in the little boys' room at a Barnes and Nobles. I haven't used it yet, but it's there.) It's not a fail-safe, as the ideas have to be written down in order to be recorded, and they have to be written so that I can read and decipher them later. A failure on both counts has occurred more than once.
After jotting something down the other day, it occurred to me that I've reached the point where I ought to figure out a way to organize what's in it. Far beyond that point, really, but the easiest solution for me is using different colors. I keep pens of different colors on hand anyway as a holdover habit from my teaching days, and color-coordinating would provide the visual clues I work best from.
Besides, it's pretty.
As I was flipping back through the pages - occasionally scratching my head over an entry - unsurprisingly the bulk of the entries were for what is now the completed novel. (Not my first overall but the first that's worth doing something with.) I spent the better portion of a decade and a half with that book in my head, working on it in various incarnations, so if the notebook - which I've had about half that time - wasn't packed with notes and ideas on that book, it would probably be a sign I wasn't thinking about it enough.
I didn't read through all of it, but I noticed some things that I had once contemplated that were, in the end, left in the notebook. Other items are things that have found there way into the subsequent work, which is set in the same universe. (In a small-scale "world of my own making" meaning of universe. I'm not Herbert or Asimov.) Some of what I had written down was bits of dialog I was trying to make work, or descriptions of items I'd had ideas on in the name of world-building. It was funny to see how something I had reduced to a single, non-descript line to fuel a necessary plot event had at one point taken up an entire page in the notebook.
Though I point out it's a small notebook, 8 1/2 by 5 1/2. It seems a size that suits me, as I use a similar size for my freelance notebooks. Those are one per project though, unlike the writing one which acts as a catch all.
It just felt a little odd to be looking at notes for something which was no longer an active effort, creatively speaking. Sure, I'm agonizing over the query, and hoping like heck I won't have to write a synopsis, but the work itself has sat, largely untouched and unmessed with, since I put it through the editing process and pulled it out the other side. I'm not a tweaker, and once something is done, it's done, and now in it's wake it leaves all those unused notes.
Maybe some of them will be resurrected later, but I suspect most of them will be lovingly packed up and tucked away (metaphorically speaking - the notebook stays out), taken out only occasionally to be reminisced over before being set aside once more. Not all ghosts are restless ones.
After jotting something down the other day, it occurred to me that I've reached the point where I ought to figure out a way to organize what's in it. Far beyond that point, really, but the easiest solution for me is using different colors. I keep pens of different colors on hand anyway as a holdover habit from my teaching days, and color-coordinating would provide the visual clues I work best from.
Besides, it's pretty.
As I was flipping back through the pages - occasionally scratching my head over an entry - unsurprisingly the bulk of the entries were for what is now the completed novel. (Not my first overall but the first that's worth doing something with.) I spent the better portion of a decade and a half with that book in my head, working on it in various incarnations, so if the notebook - which I've had about half that time - wasn't packed with notes and ideas on that book, it would probably be a sign I wasn't thinking about it enough.
I didn't read through all of it, but I noticed some things that I had once contemplated that were, in the end, left in the notebook. Other items are things that have found there way into the subsequent work, which is set in the same universe. (In a small-scale "world of my own making" meaning of universe. I'm not Herbert or Asimov.) Some of what I had written down was bits of dialog I was trying to make work, or descriptions of items I'd had ideas on in the name of world-building. It was funny to see how something I had reduced to a single, non-descript line to fuel a necessary plot event had at one point taken up an entire page in the notebook.
Though I point out it's a small notebook, 8 1/2 by 5 1/2. It seems a size that suits me, as I use a similar size for my freelance notebooks. Those are one per project though, unlike the writing one which acts as a catch all.
It just felt a little odd to be looking at notes for something which was no longer an active effort, creatively speaking. Sure, I'm agonizing over the query, and hoping like heck I won't have to write a synopsis, but the work itself has sat, largely untouched and unmessed with, since I put it through the editing process and pulled it out the other side. I'm not a tweaker, and once something is done, it's done, and now in it's wake it leaves all those unused notes.
Maybe some of them will be resurrected later, but I suspect most of them will be lovingly packed up and tucked away (metaphorically speaking - the notebook stays out), taken out only occasionally to be reminisced over before being set aside once more. Not all ghosts are restless ones.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
People I Thought Were Already Dead
As we're coming down to the end of the year, it's time once again to remember all those who died during the past 11 months. There will be heartfelt tributes, moving montages, and plenty of weepy moments.
Just not in this blog.
Nope, this is about those people who, when reading through such lists, I discover had only just died, instead of having been long dead and gone as I presumed them to be. Like Andrew Wyeth. Don't ask me why I thought he was dead, because the best I can say is that he's an artist, his pictures hang in museums, ergo he was probably dead. Plus I had this impression that he'd been painting around the turn of the 20th Century, which made it even more likely that he was long since dead. Shows what little I know about modern American art. Or just modern art in general.
Ditto with John Updike. Though in his case it was primarily because as a child I remember seeing the Rabbit books on my dad's shelves - and they already looked pretty dusty and old. If I'd thought about it, I would have remembered that Updike had just published something not too long ago, but again, this was a case of seeing his obituary and thinking, "He was still alive?"
In both cases, it's an instance of having formed certain impressions early on, which were for one reason or another never dispelled. I took an Art History class, I know Wyeth was in there, and I'm pretty sure - though I didn't look it up to be sure - that they didn't list him as dead. Yet, just about everyone else in that book was dead, so at the time it seemed a logical enough assumption.
You have to have just a certain level of celebrity to get away with this. Clearly it was not going to happen with Michael Jackson, even if he'd lived to be a hundred and two. His death would always have been big news (unless in the next fifty years we revamp the way we look at what is and what is not newsworthy... but that seems unlikely). So you can't be so famous that your passing is automatic headlines. It also helps not to go before your time, assuming that's a valid concept to start with. I've always found it to be a bit of an oxymoron, though I get the sentiment behind it.
No, you have to have just the right amount where your passing gets noted, but not with a lot of hoopla, so that someone like me can be forgiven for just assuming they missed the news. You also can't have done anything to attract a great deal of attention, at least not recently. As mentioned, Updike had recently published, but I don't think that was this year. Or even last year. And his biggest claim to fame, the Rabbit novels, were with one late exception mostly penned long before I was old enough to read them. (It would also have helped if I'd ever read them at all. I knew when Tony Hillerman died, after all.)
So it helps to have faded some from the immediate public awareness. Which, although I've never achieved it myself, would I think be a worthy goal for most who do achieve celebrity. You shouldn't have to spend your last years being hounded by the press, and aside from Paris Hilton I don't know of anyone on the celebrity A list who wouldn't enjoy having their private life back.
I suppose there's a certain ignominy in being presumed dead when you are not. Being dead, though, I also suppose they're probably beyond such concerns anymore. It might also help with that late in life anonymity as well. I have to wonder what Mark Twain thought about the rumors of his demise, given the famous quote on the subject. You could probably either be bitter about it, or wryly amused, and which way you went would say a lot about you as person.
I'm sure this coming year will bring a few more people whom I thought were dead into the realm of the actually dead. And I will, as before, scratch my head - metaphorically - and reflect on why it is I thought they were dead when in fact they weren't. Yet.
Just not in this blog.
Nope, this is about those people who, when reading through such lists, I discover had only just died, instead of having been long dead and gone as I presumed them to be. Like Andrew Wyeth. Don't ask me why I thought he was dead, because the best I can say is that he's an artist, his pictures hang in museums, ergo he was probably dead. Plus I had this impression that he'd been painting around the turn of the 20th Century, which made it even more likely that he was long since dead. Shows what little I know about modern American art. Or just modern art in general.
Ditto with John Updike. Though in his case it was primarily because as a child I remember seeing the Rabbit books on my dad's shelves - and they already looked pretty dusty and old. If I'd thought about it, I would have remembered that Updike had just published something not too long ago, but again, this was a case of seeing his obituary and thinking, "He was still alive?"
In both cases, it's an instance of having formed certain impressions early on, which were for one reason or another never dispelled. I took an Art History class, I know Wyeth was in there, and I'm pretty sure - though I didn't look it up to be sure - that they didn't list him as dead. Yet, just about everyone else in that book was dead, so at the time it seemed a logical enough assumption.
You have to have just a certain level of celebrity to get away with this. Clearly it was not going to happen with Michael Jackson, even if he'd lived to be a hundred and two. His death would always have been big news (unless in the next fifty years we revamp the way we look at what is and what is not newsworthy... but that seems unlikely). So you can't be so famous that your passing is automatic headlines. It also helps not to go before your time, assuming that's a valid concept to start with. I've always found it to be a bit of an oxymoron, though I get the sentiment behind it.
No, you have to have just the right amount where your passing gets noted, but not with a lot of hoopla, so that someone like me can be forgiven for just assuming they missed the news. You also can't have done anything to attract a great deal of attention, at least not recently. As mentioned, Updike had recently published, but I don't think that was this year. Or even last year. And his biggest claim to fame, the Rabbit novels, were with one late exception mostly penned long before I was old enough to read them. (It would also have helped if I'd ever read them at all. I knew when Tony Hillerman died, after all.)
So it helps to have faded some from the immediate public awareness. Which, although I've never achieved it myself, would I think be a worthy goal for most who do achieve celebrity. You shouldn't have to spend your last years being hounded by the press, and aside from Paris Hilton I don't know of anyone on the celebrity A list who wouldn't enjoy having their private life back.
I suppose there's a certain ignominy in being presumed dead when you are not. Being dead, though, I also suppose they're probably beyond such concerns anymore. It might also help with that late in life anonymity as well. I have to wonder what Mark Twain thought about the rumors of his demise, given the famous quote on the subject. You could probably either be bitter about it, or wryly amused, and which way you went would say a lot about you as person.
I'm sure this coming year will bring a few more people whom I thought were dead into the realm of the actually dead. And I will, as before, scratch my head - metaphorically - and reflect on why it is I thought they were dead when in fact they weren't. Yet.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Why I Will Survive the Apocalypse
I am apparently well equipped to survive the Apocalypse. I say this not because I have a storm cellar stocked with dry goods and water (though I do know a guy who has such supplies) nor because I possess some unique skills such as the ability to grow crops, hunt game, fashion my own clothes or fly a rocket ship. No, apparently, I possess these skills because I am a writer. Or at least, so Hollywood tells me.
Mind you, I've not seen this latest parable, but according to the plot summaries I've read, in 2012 John Cusack's leading character is a writer. This follows a long line of rather ludicrous and unlikely heroes in Hollywood. I remember one reviewer commenting on Will Smith's lawyer in Enemy of the State. But that was Will Smith, so a certain leeway applies. As much as I like John Cusack, however, I have trouble believing any of the writers I know are equipped to survive the end of the world.
(With the possible exception of Stephanie Meyer who has clearly made some sort of deal with demonic powers. There's no other explanation for it. Then again, maybe that just guarantees she'll be among the first collected.)
This is not to say I haven't learned things that might not be useful in my writing career in the event of the impending end of the world. But there's a wide gap between researching something to write about it, and actually doing it. I wrote a couple of short articles on edible plants, but without the guides I used as a reference in my backpack, I'm as lost as the next guy. Maybe a little less lost, having been a Boy Scout, but even then there's a limit to my abilities.
The bulk of the things I have written on I just can't see being any help should an asteroid strike, or a supervolcano explode, or nuclear war break out, or any other number of doomsday scenarios occur. Though I might possibly survive the invasion by a large lizard type critter that breathes radioactive fire, based solely on Orson Wells surviving Godzilla. But as I don't live in Tokyo - or for that matter within five hundred miles of the nearest oceanic coast - somehow I foresee my having plenty of time to get out of the way should something come ashore. (Nothing ever comes ashore in the Great Lakes, not even in Hollywood. ... Okay, there was one exception, but I challenge anyone to name it.)
None of which matters to Hollywood. I'm not sure there's a reason why the main character in the latest disaster flick is a writer. Part of me suspects there's a jar someplace where Hollywood writers reach in and draw out a random career for the hero. How else do you explain Arnold as a kindergarten teacher?
Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on the part of the screenwriters, attempting to get themselves on that doomsday list in the event of the end of the world.
Either way, should we reach that point in my lifetime, I will cling to the hope there's a reason for it, and that whatever reason it is will be made manifest when the time comes. Which beats cowering under my desk, which is most likely where I'd really be.
Mind you, I've not seen this latest parable, but according to the plot summaries I've read, in 2012 John Cusack's leading character is a writer. This follows a long line of rather ludicrous and unlikely heroes in Hollywood. I remember one reviewer commenting on Will Smith's lawyer in Enemy of the State. But that was Will Smith, so a certain leeway applies. As much as I like John Cusack, however, I have trouble believing any of the writers I know are equipped to survive the end of the world.
(With the possible exception of Stephanie Meyer who has clearly made some sort of deal with demonic powers. There's no other explanation for it. Then again, maybe that just guarantees she'll be among the first collected.)
This is not to say I haven't learned things that might not be useful in my writing career in the event of the impending end of the world. But there's a wide gap between researching something to write about it, and actually doing it. I wrote a couple of short articles on edible plants, but without the guides I used as a reference in my backpack, I'm as lost as the next guy. Maybe a little less lost, having been a Boy Scout, but even then there's a limit to my abilities.
The bulk of the things I have written on I just can't see being any help should an asteroid strike, or a supervolcano explode, or nuclear war break out, or any other number of doomsday scenarios occur. Though I might possibly survive the invasion by a large lizard type critter that breathes radioactive fire, based solely on Orson Wells surviving Godzilla. But as I don't live in Tokyo - or for that matter within five hundred miles of the nearest oceanic coast - somehow I foresee my having plenty of time to get out of the way should something come ashore. (Nothing ever comes ashore in the Great Lakes, not even in Hollywood. ... Okay, there was one exception, but I challenge anyone to name it.)
None of which matters to Hollywood. I'm not sure there's a reason why the main character in the latest disaster flick is a writer. Part of me suspects there's a jar someplace where Hollywood writers reach in and draw out a random career for the hero. How else do you explain Arnold as a kindergarten teacher?
Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on the part of the screenwriters, attempting to get themselves on that doomsday list in the event of the end of the world.
Either way, should we reach that point in my lifetime, I will cling to the hope there's a reason for it, and that whatever reason it is will be made manifest when the time comes. Which beats cowering under my desk, which is most likely where I'd really be.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Death of a Character: Resurrection
The dead don't always stay dead. This is a lesson I learned early on in fiction. I read Sherlock Holmes, who may not have been the first hero to die only to be resurrected, but was surely one of the most famous and probably one of the first instances of the "fans" keeping something alive. (There are a few other parallels with Star Trek I could mention, but those will keep for another time.)
For those who don't know, Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of his consulting detective after the initial run of short stories. Feeling the character was at an end, he crafted a suitable ending for Holmes, letting the detective meet his end locked in mortal combat with his nemesis, Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls. Having penned and published the story, Conan Doyle moved on to other projects. The fans would have none of it, and eventually Conan Doyle caved in, resurrected his hero - who it turned out had only faked his death - and went on to write more stories. Holmes wasn't done yet, and did eventually earn his retirement as a beekeeper in Suffolk (or was it Suffix?), England.
Sometimes, characters just won't stay dead. Comics are notorious for this, Spider-man's parent company Marvel in particular. No one stays dead in the Marvel universe, not for very long anyway. Which, in my opinion, has lead to some rather silly things and has robbed death of much of its impact. Yeah, they killed Captain America. Whatever. You knew they were going to bring him back eventually. Heck, they brought Bucky back. (And if that makes no sense to you, consult the Wiki gods.) So if you do this in your story-telling, you run a very real risk of boring your readers. They know their beloved character isn't really dead, after all, so it's all kind of ho hum.
You can't even keep the shock value of a good death going if everyone knows it's not going to stick. (Even if it should, Marvel comics being an example yet again of having brought back a few people I thought should have stayed gone.)
I think there are times when death and resurrection serve as appropriate motifs. Sometimes a role just isn't the same when another person takes up the mantel, say in the case of the new Batman. (Though I am reserving judgement.) You run a storyline with someone filling in, but eventually that runs it course and the main act needs to return. Achieving that return is tricky, and can be as alienating as the original death if either of them is handled badly.
All that said there are moments when the sacrifice of a character serves a need of the plot, as well as their return. I think in those moments it's important to have the character come back slightly different. You don't get to die and come back unchanged. Gandalf's demise in the first part of the triology still has tremendous impact on me, even though I know every time I read/see it that he's going to return. In part it's because Gandalf the White isn't quite the same as Gandalf the Grey, and so something was lost in that death.
Of course, if you right in the right genres, death never needs to be permanent. There are always clones or zombies.
Though I don't know that anyone has ever done zombie clones, or cloned zombies. Might be something to consider.
For those who don't know, Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of his consulting detective after the initial run of short stories. Feeling the character was at an end, he crafted a suitable ending for Holmes, letting the detective meet his end locked in mortal combat with his nemesis, Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls. Having penned and published the story, Conan Doyle moved on to other projects. The fans would have none of it, and eventually Conan Doyle caved in, resurrected his hero - who it turned out had only faked his death - and went on to write more stories. Holmes wasn't done yet, and did eventually earn his retirement as a beekeeper in Suffolk (or was it Suffix?), England.
Sometimes, characters just won't stay dead. Comics are notorious for this, Spider-man's parent company Marvel in particular. No one stays dead in the Marvel universe, not for very long anyway. Which, in my opinion, has lead to some rather silly things and has robbed death of much of its impact. Yeah, they killed Captain America. Whatever. You knew they were going to bring him back eventually. Heck, they brought Bucky back. (And if that makes no sense to you, consult the Wiki gods.) So if you do this in your story-telling, you run a very real risk of boring your readers. They know their beloved character isn't really dead, after all, so it's all kind of ho hum.
You can't even keep the shock value of a good death going if everyone knows it's not going to stick. (Even if it should, Marvel comics being an example yet again of having brought back a few people I thought should have stayed gone.)
I think there are times when death and resurrection serve as appropriate motifs. Sometimes a role just isn't the same when another person takes up the mantel, say in the case of the new Batman. (Though I am reserving judgement.) You run a storyline with someone filling in, but eventually that runs it course and the main act needs to return. Achieving that return is tricky, and can be as alienating as the original death if either of them is handled badly.
All that said there are moments when the sacrifice of a character serves a need of the plot, as well as their return. I think in those moments it's important to have the character come back slightly different. You don't get to die and come back unchanged. Gandalf's demise in the first part of the triology still has tremendous impact on me, even though I know every time I read/see it that he's going to return. In part it's because Gandalf the White isn't quite the same as Gandalf the Grey, and so something was lost in that death.
Of course, if you right in the right genres, death never needs to be permanent. There are always clones or zombies.
Though I don't know that anyone has ever done zombie clones, or cloned zombies. Might be something to consider.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Loss
It's funny the associations the mind makes between things. How you can be going along about your day, and then out of the blue you come across something. Something that stirs up a remembrance, stirs up memories, and suddenly the years strip away. They say time heals all wounds but I don't think that's true - I think time just dulls the nerves. The wounds never go away.
Loss is an odd thing. It creates a blank spot inside, a place where you used to fill that blank with someone's presence, only they're not there anymore. Yet the space remains. You get used to it, over time, and it never feels as badly as it did that first time you knew that person was gone. It couldn't, I suppose, because that first time, even when it comes as something expected, is always still a moment of shock. Of realizing that this is it, they're gone, and that you are not. After that, it's just a question of getting used to it as much as you can.
Only with the big losses, I don't think we ever really do get used to it. We push it to the background, we deal with it (if we can and we're smart) or we don't (often with unpleasant repercussions), and our lives go on. You don't ever get rid of it, no matter how long you manage to go on. It's always there, sometimes stronger, sometimes not, but it never ever quite leaves. And it comes back in unexpected moments, with unexpected triggers.
Sometimes I think those moments are harder than the initial moment. They aren't, really, having been through them I know from experience the first is always the most difficult. Especially the kind of losses than can take you off your feet, either literally or figuratively, and leave you wandering around in a bit of a daze. But, because those later moments can come at you unexpectedly, and always when you aren't prepared for them, it can be almost as difficult. The only saving grace about them is that they are almost always shorter in duration. A moment's pause, a moment's reflection, and then they pass until the next time.
But they never really go away.
Loss is an odd thing. It creates a blank spot inside, a place where you used to fill that blank with someone's presence, only they're not there anymore. Yet the space remains. You get used to it, over time, and it never feels as badly as it did that first time you knew that person was gone. It couldn't, I suppose, because that first time, even when it comes as something expected, is always still a moment of shock. Of realizing that this is it, they're gone, and that you are not. After that, it's just a question of getting used to it as much as you can.
Only with the big losses, I don't think we ever really do get used to it. We push it to the background, we deal with it (if we can and we're smart) or we don't (often with unpleasant repercussions), and our lives go on. You don't ever get rid of it, no matter how long you manage to go on. It's always there, sometimes stronger, sometimes not, but it never ever quite leaves. And it comes back in unexpected moments, with unexpected triggers.
Sometimes I think those moments are harder than the initial moment. They aren't, really, having been through them I know from experience the first is always the most difficult. Especially the kind of losses than can take you off your feet, either literally or figuratively, and leave you wandering around in a bit of a daze. But, because those later moments can come at you unexpectedly, and always when you aren't prepared for them, it can be almost as difficult. The only saving grace about them is that they are almost always shorter in duration. A moment's pause, a moment's reflection, and then they pass until the next time.
But they never really go away.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Nostalgia
They say you can't go home again. It's not true, of course, as evidenced by the massive numbers of travelers during the holiday season, many of whom are going home. On the other hand, "they" probably don't mean that literally. It's probably meant in some figurative sense, about how even though you can return to the place you once called home, once you've moved out and moved on, it's never quite the same. After all, living with your parents again as an adult with children of your own is far, far different from when you were growing up in their house.
There are other things in your past that you can't recapture either, and sometimes this has as much to do with our own personal journeys as it does with circumstances beyond our control. You can revisit your old elementary school, for example, but if they've torn down the playground where you used to dangle and swing, no amount of nostalgia is going to let you revisit that experience. Nor would it be the same, even if you could (I, for example, get dizzy a lot faster than I did when I was eight. Which takes a great deal of the fun out of the playground merry-go-round.)
You can wander around the old school, you can let your hands wander idly down the railing for the stairs that used to seem so much bigger to you, you can drive aimlessly around because what used to be a parking lot has been turned into a green space and you can't get there from here anymore... Okay, that last one was literal, not metaphorical in my case, but it works as a metaphor, too, I think.
I think some of the stories I've written are like that, too. I've come across some old short stories, and even an old MS that as I began to look through them I realized that whatever concept had motivated them in the first place, I couldn't go back and finish the story I had started writing all those years ago. It wasn't so much that the ideas were no good, though one or two of them I recognize now as being more than a little trite, a little too derivative, as it was that I'm just not the person who wrote them anymore.
If I sat down and finished the one or two of them that are there, mostly done, and ready to go, it would read as if two different authors had worked on it. I'm not even sure that, assuming I could recapture the voice that started those works, that I'd even want to. I can go back, start from the initial idea, and start the story over again, and there are one or two that I think are worth the effort... but that's like playing on the new playground equipment in your old park. It's the same spot, but a different experience.
And in some spots they make me wistful for the writer I was. He was more than bit naive, and certainly under-experienced, but like my school-age self there was this whole set of possibilities I saw out there at that age, and life and my writing career have taken a much different turn than I expected.
At least for now, because even though you can't go home again, with a little effort you can make a home of where you are.
There are other things in your past that you can't recapture either, and sometimes this has as much to do with our own personal journeys as it does with circumstances beyond our control. You can revisit your old elementary school, for example, but if they've torn down the playground where you used to dangle and swing, no amount of nostalgia is going to let you revisit that experience. Nor would it be the same, even if you could (I, for example, get dizzy a lot faster than I did when I was eight. Which takes a great deal of the fun out of the playground merry-go-round.)
You can wander around the old school, you can let your hands wander idly down the railing for the stairs that used to seem so much bigger to you, you can drive aimlessly around because what used to be a parking lot has been turned into a green space and you can't get there from here anymore... Okay, that last one was literal, not metaphorical in my case, but it works as a metaphor, too, I think.
I think some of the stories I've written are like that, too. I've come across some old short stories, and even an old MS that as I began to look through them I realized that whatever concept had motivated them in the first place, I couldn't go back and finish the story I had started writing all those years ago. It wasn't so much that the ideas were no good, though one or two of them I recognize now as being more than a little trite, a little too derivative, as it was that I'm just not the person who wrote them anymore.
If I sat down and finished the one or two of them that are there, mostly done, and ready to go, it would read as if two different authors had worked on it. I'm not even sure that, assuming I could recapture the voice that started those works, that I'd even want to. I can go back, start from the initial idea, and start the story over again, and there are one or two that I think are worth the effort... but that's like playing on the new playground equipment in your old park. It's the same spot, but a different experience.
And in some spots they make me wistful for the writer I was. He was more than bit naive, and certainly under-experienced, but like my school-age self there was this whole set of possibilities I saw out there at that age, and life and my writing career have taken a much different turn than I expected.
At least for now, because even though you can't go home again, with a little effort you can make a home of where you are.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Bad Endings
Sometimes, no matter how much I like a book, or a movie, it's undone in the last few moments when the author or director flubs the ending. It's never the intention to do so, mind you, and I'm sure the director or author would quibble with my interpretation of their actions, but I have discovered more often than not that when this happens it was done to give the movie or book that added little twist, that extra punch.
It's like spiking the last sip of punch at a party and expecting it to improve the already consumed bowl of bad punch. Or even good punch, because it generally annoys me most when, up to that point, I had actually been enjoying the book or the movie. It might be a twist that makes no sense given the plot to that point. Or it might require the characters to act, well, out of character. Or it just might be a shock ending that's simply there to shock, and so even if it makes some semblance of sense, it just doesn't fit.
Like the frozen head of Adolf Hitler. (Which, in a side note, was what I was originally going to title this post. Then I thought better about it, given the weirdos out there on the web. I expect the various people that might hone in on that title are as computer savvy as the rest of us.)
But I'm not kidding about the frozen head. It was a suspense book, one of those conspiracy-driven plot things that, by and large, I have stopped reading in my later years even though at one point my bookshelves were lined with Ludlums and Ludlum wannabes. There's another blog entry in that change of tastes, but I read the book in question here shortly after I got to China. So it was a case of beggers not being choosers.
It was an entertaining enough yarn up until then, and although the eventual premise behind it - namely being able to graft someone else's head onto someone else's body - was, in retrospect, rather ludicrous, it had been presented with enough gravitas that it wasn't causing me to not enjoy the book. Then, in the climactic scene in the Alps, the author pushed the envelope just a hair to far with, you guessed it, the frozen head of Adolf Hitler. Under glass, no less. It made "The Boys from Brazil" seem almost like a documentary by comparison.
Other works have lost me at the end, too. Like "Hannibal." No, not the book, where the ending, though ludicrous, was still somewhat satisfactory. No, I mean the movie, where Lector, who has, through both movies (there were only two at that point) demonstrated that he is nothing, if not in control of his situation, somehow finds himself handcuffed with no other recourse than a meat cleaver. This is *not* the Lector we've been watching unto this point, because that Lector would not have left the handcuffs lying around unless he had the key for them in his pocket. Made no sense at all, and was there strictly for shock value.
Likewise some B-list movie I saw once with Adrian Paul, of "Highlander: The Series" fame... Well, ok, he's done other things, and I first saw him in "War of the Worlds" which should, I think, firmly cement my geek credentials here. I don't remember much of the movie in question, other than it was some sort of puzzle flick... and that the ending, clearly done just to be a "twist" didn't fit at all. Moreover, I didn't like it, and it ruined what had been an otherwise enjoyable little film up unto that point.
What's an author to do about it? Well, for starters, it's made me vow never to do anything like that with my own works. Secondly, from time to time it gives me ideas about where to go and what to do and those lead to little gems that, eventually, find their way into stories. Most of the time with no resemblance to their starting point.
(As a final aside, I don't quibble with "The Natural" or "Jaws." One deviates from the source - okay, both do, but one more famously so - and the other was just, on the face of it, kind of silly. But even knowing that, both endings fit the films they are in, and make them work, and we as the audience don't question them.)
It's like spiking the last sip of punch at a party and expecting it to improve the already consumed bowl of bad punch. Or even good punch, because it generally annoys me most when, up to that point, I had actually been enjoying the book or the movie. It might be a twist that makes no sense given the plot to that point. Or it might require the characters to act, well, out of character. Or it just might be a shock ending that's simply there to shock, and so even if it makes some semblance of sense, it just doesn't fit.
Like the frozen head of Adolf Hitler. (Which, in a side note, was what I was originally going to title this post. Then I thought better about it, given the weirdos out there on the web. I expect the various people that might hone in on that title are as computer savvy as the rest of us.)
But I'm not kidding about the frozen head. It was a suspense book, one of those conspiracy-driven plot things that, by and large, I have stopped reading in my later years even though at one point my bookshelves were lined with Ludlums and Ludlum wannabes. There's another blog entry in that change of tastes, but I read the book in question here shortly after I got to China. So it was a case of beggers not being choosers.
It was an entertaining enough yarn up until then, and although the eventual premise behind it - namely being able to graft someone else's head onto someone else's body - was, in retrospect, rather ludicrous, it had been presented with enough gravitas that it wasn't causing me to not enjoy the book. Then, in the climactic scene in the Alps, the author pushed the envelope just a hair to far with, you guessed it, the frozen head of Adolf Hitler. Under glass, no less. It made "The Boys from Brazil" seem almost like a documentary by comparison.
Other works have lost me at the end, too. Like "Hannibal." No, not the book, where the ending, though ludicrous, was still somewhat satisfactory. No, I mean the movie, where Lector, who has, through both movies (there were only two at that point) demonstrated that he is nothing, if not in control of his situation, somehow finds himself handcuffed with no other recourse than a meat cleaver. This is *not* the Lector we've been watching unto this point, because that Lector would not have left the handcuffs lying around unless he had the key for them in his pocket. Made no sense at all, and was there strictly for shock value.
Likewise some B-list movie I saw once with Adrian Paul, of "Highlander: The Series" fame... Well, ok, he's done other things, and I first saw him in "War of the Worlds" which should, I think, firmly cement my geek credentials here. I don't remember much of the movie in question, other than it was some sort of puzzle flick... and that the ending, clearly done just to be a "twist" didn't fit at all. Moreover, I didn't like it, and it ruined what had been an otherwise enjoyable little film up unto that point.
What's an author to do about it? Well, for starters, it's made me vow never to do anything like that with my own works. Secondly, from time to time it gives me ideas about where to go and what to do and those lead to little gems that, eventually, find their way into stories. Most of the time with no resemblance to their starting point.
(As a final aside, I don't quibble with "The Natural" or "Jaws." One deviates from the source - okay, both do, but one more famously so - and the other was just, on the face of it, kind of silly. But even knowing that, both endings fit the films they are in, and make them work, and we as the audience don't question them.)
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