I’ve been seriously thinking about how much my own tastes influence my fiction. The other day, my characters were in a restaurant and I purposely made them order something I, personally, wouldn’t eat.
It occurred to me that maybe I’m thinking about this too much – micromanaging my story. But the fact is, they’ve gotta eat. And I find it boring and not really credible that they’d like ALL the same things I do. If for no other reason than every character in every story I ever write always eats the same group of foods, I feel like I have to change it up once in a while.
Is this something you’ve put any thought to? If you’re a vegetarian, do you ever have your characters eating a nice juicy steak?
How else do your characters not reflect your tastes? (Human characters, that is.)
I read once, when my kids were very young, that a baby who laughs when it is startled is a baby who trusts his or her mother. It’s something that I found followed through to their toddler years and beyond. I joked with my kids that I was going to do horrible things with them; cook them and eat them for dinner for instance. They’d laugh, knowing I would never do such a thing, because they trusted me.
There was one instance that I will never forget and I try not to regret for the simple reason that it taught me something.
I was leaving the pool where Alex was, at the time, doing physiotherapy. He wasn’t walking yet at the time, so he must have been less than five years old. I carried him out of the building, loaded with purse, swimming clothes and Alex all in my arms. I remember it was cold. I put him down on the curb in front of the car but to the side where I could see him, so I could wrestle my car keys out of my coat pocket. Had a car come, I was prepared to stand in front of it to prevent him being hurt. I proceeded open the doors and put the bags in. Then I waved goodbye to him and pretended to get into the car, expecting him to laugh. He knew I would never leave him there by myself. But instead of laughing, he smiled at me and waved back.
Whether he didn’t understand the joke or not, the vision of that tiny little boy sitting bundled against the cold, waving goodbye to me with a trusting smile on his beautiful, innocent face, still brings a tear to my eye.
Our children live in the world we construct for them. Whether they are healthy or sick, they can learn to be happy from us as parents because they trust what they see – the example we set. Alex spent the first eight months of his life in the hospital. All he has ever known, from birth, is pain. To this day he wakes up almost every morning with reflux, trying to vomit past an operation he had at six months of age called a fundoplication – basically, a knot was tied in his esophagus to prevent anything coming up. And yet he is the happiest child I’ve ever met. Other people observe this and ask me if he’s ever unhappy. It’s all he’s ever known. He sees me deal with his morning time retching with ease and he is reassured that it’s normal.
One day I know he will find out that it’s not. Will he stop trusting me at that point? I have no idea. It’s for sure that I’ll have the task of assuring him that even if it’s not something everyone experiences, it’s just the way he is, and that’s okay.
The point I’m trying to make I suppose, is that our children are our sponges. They take from us what we show them, and whatever that is, they trust it, because from the very beginning, we are all they know. I hope, for my own part, to preserve that for as long as their personal experiences away from me will allow. And that they will continue to laugh all their lives.
I just typed three words into a new post. I saved it. It counted two words. This post counts twenty eight. There are actually twenty nine. Check it out.
Write what you know; write what you know; yes, yes, okay we get it already. But have you ever wanted to write who you know? Fictionally that is.
When I write, I write characters. Plots in my stories, are secondary. I take, for instance, a scenario, ask ‘what if?’ and off I go. Once I have a character in place, they decide what happens in the circumstance I put them in.
I know a few people very well. Family, friends – I can’t help but know them. The people I don’t know very well, I study. I watch the way their expressions change when they talk about certain topics that they love or which scare them… you get the picture, right?
But there’s that saying again. That rule. Write what you know.
Now say, for instance, I was to write about someone I adore. They probably wouldn’t mind. They’d be able to hold my bestseller up high and say, ‘This is about me!’ and they’d be proud to do it. But what if I wrote about someone who I don’t respect? Or someone whose personality is less than scrupulous? I wouldn’t use their real name, of course. And the story would not be the one they lived in real life. But they’d know. And I’d know that they knew. And then I’d have to wonder; are they planning to do something devious to smite me? After all, they aren’t the most the most pleasant person to deal with in the first place. How far will they go?
Write what you know. I know very little about ‘things,’ but I know a lot about people. About characters and what makes people tick.
Have you ever ‘written’ someone you know, fictionally? How would you feel if someone ‘wrote’ you?
: luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for
: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also: an instance of this
The above is according to Merriam-Webster online.
The most notable instance of serendipity in my life was the meeting, for the second time, of my children’s father.
Luc and I first met when we worked together in Aurora, a small town just north of Toronto. He came into my workplace and asked for my boss. The first time I laid eyes on him I remember thinking to myself, “And what the fuck do you want?” It had been a hectic day, or so I tell myself twenty-eight years hence. I was, hours later, to find out that he was my new manager, and I thanked the heavens above that I hadn’t said out loud what I was thinking. We’ve laughed about it many times since.
Months passed, and he and I got along well. He’s a nice guy. Then he was transferred. A few weeks later I found out that he’d broken up with his girlfriend. I, too, had broken up with my boyfriend and was looking for a roommate. I offered, he refused. Shortly after he decided to go back to Montreal, to be close to family and we lost touch completely.
Seven years down the road found me living close to Ottawa. I’d been there for a couple of months and was heading back home to see my mom near Aurora and I stopped for gas. Luc was there, working at the pumps. It was serendipity – fate, if you will. A year later we moved into our own house and I was pregnant with our first son.
Three kids plus a few years later another seemingly serendipitous event occurred in my life. As it turned out, it wasn’t so lucky and my relationship with Luc ended. Perhaps it was fate, but if it was, I haven’t seen many benefits from it. I am single, yet again.
This all comes to mind because I met someone online, a couple of days ago, with whom I have a great deal in common. Whether it will continue into a lasting friendship or fizzle into nothing as these things sometimes do, remains to be seen. But for now it feels like fate.
We never know what fate will drop in our laps in the next instant. We can only hope to have great serendipitous events, that brighten our outlook, that give us hope for the future, and that help us to believe that maybe there is such a thing as good luck.
Serendipity can take us to important periods of our lives, which may seem to have been fated to happen. On the other hand it could be some little thing, like losing and then finding a piece of jewelry. Just about everything leads to something, right?
What is your best serendipitous event? I’d love to hear about it. If it’s really wonderful, why don’t you blog about it? Just please be sure to put a link in the comments here, so I don’t miss it.
I find myself saying ‘If I could only just…’ a lot.
If I could only just find more time to write…
If I could only just have more money…
If I could only just find true love…
It goes on, ad infinitum. But all these things denote that I’m not content, when for the most part, I am. I have my children here with me, we have a roof over our heads, the air inside is warmer than outside, and there is food in the fridge. And I’m keeping up with my writing quite well, although sometimes it’s a struggle to do anything else.
So what is it which makes me wish for more? Is it simply the human condition to keep striving? It’s hard, for me at least, to keep my mind from going, from wandering, and from wondering what it would be like if I had just a little more.
Now if only I could consume nothing but coffee and chocolate and wine and cheese …. then I’d be happy.
It’s been a week since I posted Getting Views is Like Pulling Teeth in which I complained that since the reader went all to hell my view count has gone down, so I thought I’d post a follow-up on the conclusions I’ve come to.
As Chris McMullen (http://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/) pointed out, the new pop-up window in the reader does seem to provide us with what counts as a view. I know this because I’m now getting as many views as I am ‘likes.’ This is something they’ve fixed recently, obviously, because last week when I posted, I wasn’t. I’d be happy to know if anyone else is finding the same result.
But at the same time I’m finding my views per visitor as dropped substantially and I think this is really where the problem lies. While it’s great to have lots of views for the post we just published, the pop-up window still discourages people from visiting our sites, from following, and from seeing what else we have to offer. It’s especially damaging for those of us who are selling something on our websites, particularly if we’ve paid for the site in order to do just that.
They have already addressed the issue of my initial complaint, (not to me personally) which was to please put the word count back in the reader for each post. If you click on the word count, now that it’s back, you bypass the pop-up window and go straight to the original site. If you click on the title of the post, you get the pop-up window. However, if the post is short and doesn’t have any more words than fit in the reader preview, it’s obviously not an option – you just get the pop-up.
I did change my reader view to “Read full post…” and I believe that has helped my view count at least. You can do this by going here, and I quote: “In your dashboard go to Settings/Reading and then scroll down to “For each article in a feed, show”. Select either Full Text or Summary.” Thanks to mewhoami (http://mewhoami.wordpress.com/) for this tip.
Anyone who is still following this thread and is still interested in this topic, I’d love to know if you’ve made or seen any changes in the past week and have come to the same conclusions, or if you plan to write and mention your dissatisfaction with this awful ‘improvement’, in the forums. I think the more we talk about this issue with Word Press, the more we’re likely to have something done about it.
Thanks very much for being on board with me on this. 🙂
I read in the paper the other day about a man in Northern Quebec who is whining about the fact that people don’t want to bring their kids to his daycare. He advertised locally, with simply the name of his business, his address and his phone number. Parents showed up to check the place out, seemed happy, but then declined his services once they found out he would be running it and actually be the one looking after their kids.
Now, while this may, on the surface, seem like gender discrimination, the fact is that people want their young children cared for by women. It’s not a matter of ability, necessarily, but more a matter of instinct. YES, men have most of the instincts required to look after children, but many parents don’t see it that way. Then there are the stories in the news of men (what is it, 1% or less?) who have been known to abuse children in their care, in some way or another. I wish it wasn’t true, but every major city has had these stories.
The article about the daycare brought up in my memory another occupation which I found out doesn’t welcome men. At the dry cleaning business on my paper route there is a wash and fold service. They will not hire a man to do this job. It makes sense – many women wouldn’t bring their clothes, particularly their underwear, in to be washed and handled by a man. Does it make sense? No. Panties are inanimate objects. Even if the guy behind the counter is sniffing them, they don’t care. But women, like parents, are sensitive to some things.
Would you take your kids to be looked after all day by a strange man? I wouldn’t. Ladies, would you take your underwear to be washed by a strange man? …depends how strange he is.
Is it fair that men are discriminated against in these cases? Maybe not. But it makes sense.
Warning: The following my cause you to spit coffee out of your nose. Please read with caution.
Do you ever have so many things go wrong at once that you wonder if you’re on a sitcom and nobody told you? I had one of those moments at 6:30 this morning – far too early to start wondering who started the cameras rolling.
So there I was, standing at the counter in my kitchen, painstakingly crushing my son’s chewable vitamin with the blunt end of a knife as I do every morning. He won’t chew it – I have to stir it into his yogurt.
Anyway, there I was with this fine fine powder on the counter when my cellphone alarm went off in my pocket. I reached for the phone and pulled the crushed pill off the counter – all over the floor.
So I go to the broom closet, take out the broom and drop the dustpan. Bend down to pick up the dustpan, the mop falls and hits me on the head. Stuff the mop back in the broom closet, go back to the kitchen. Sweep up the mess, almost knock an opened bottle of wine on the floor with the broom handle.
Yes, there was a stopper in the bottle; no, I don’t drink wine at 6:30am, though I’m not sure why not.
All this happened in the space of about ninety seconds. One of those mornings when I just wanted to go back to bed and start again, you know?
In all honesty, I have to say I don’t believe Candy Crush Saga is a procrastination tool. It’s a way for me to escape my story for a few minutes and do something mindless that allows my imagination to wander.
When I’m not hungry but I get up to get myself something to eat anyway, that’s procrastination. Candy Crush Saga keeps me in my chair.
When I check my WordPress stats or my email, that’s procrastination. Candy Crush Saga takes far less time than that, especially if I have comments on my blog.
When I post a new blog to ask other people what they do to procrastinate, that’s procrastination.
So, how do you procrastinate?
Oh look, I have a new life on Candy Crush Saga! Gotta go.
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