Thursday, December 13, 2007
I Bought My "Bitch" Hat at Office Max
Generally, I’m the easy-going type. I get along with most other people and I generally don’t get into any sort of confrontation. This is due to my tendency to apologize immediately if I feel like I’ve accidentally insulted someone. Like most women, I probably apologize too much. But, I don’t like people not to like me. I’m sort of a “can’t we all just get along” type. That is, in my real life.
In the fictional world I create on paper (read: Word doc), I am the bitchiest of pirates. I break people up, just to get them back together. I wield my sharp sword (read: pen, er… read: keys on my keyboard) and slice happy families apart. I wreak havoc among perfectly laid plans, messing up perfectly comfortable lives, all in the name of telling a great story.
The bitch hat (it's a figurative hat, of course) is my greatest writerly supply. Because, that part of me is what helps me tell good stories.
If I sat at my computer and happily allowed my perfectly contented characters to move about in their perfectly comfortable lives (or even their not-so-perfectly comfortable lives), then what kind of story would that be? It’d be the perfectly boring story that no one would want to read. We live to see people overcome obstacles. It’s what keeps us reading, so we can see how it all works out.
But, sometimes being this bitch hurts the sweet, can’t-we-all-get-along part of me that wants everyone to like me. At times like that, I have to ignore the characters in my head calling me names (“You big meanie!”) and pull my bitch hat down over my ears so that I can continue to slice and hack away at their lives.
It’s hard for me. My heart hurts for them. However, I know it will all work out in the end. I know that when the time comes, I’ll be able to hang my bitch hat next to my computer and let the romantic part of me that is dying for everyone to be happy write everything perfect again.
Thank God for my bitch hat. My computer, my post-it notes, they pale in comparison to how important it is to my writing. I’m not sure how I could have the tough love to do what I need to do to these fictional people without it.
I always wonder about writers who don’t let their characters get their happy endings because they never get to take off their bitch hats.
I’ve read all sorts of stuff in my English major/English teacher lifetime. I swore that American authors, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, wouldn’t have known a happy ending if they fell in one. People who write horror, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, never get the satisfaction of HEA, at least not the way I write it. I picture them writing “the end” and then going off to therapy or to their priests, complaining about the darkness of the world.
I’m so glad I get to spread a little light.
If you’re a writer, how do you feel about causing turmoil in your characters’ lives? Are you of the yay, free therapy school or are you (like me) of the “when can I get to the HEA” school? How do you approach writing conflict in your stories, as I’m certain my “bitch hat” method isn’t the only one out there?
In the fictional world I create on paper (read: Word doc), I am the bitchiest of pirates. I break people up, just to get them back together. I wield my sharp sword (read: pen, er… read: keys on my keyboard) and slice happy families apart. I wreak havoc among perfectly laid plans, messing up perfectly comfortable lives, all in the name of telling a great story.
The bitch hat (it's a figurative hat, of course) is my greatest writerly supply. Because, that part of me is what helps me tell good stories.
If I sat at my computer and happily allowed my perfectly contented characters to move about in their perfectly comfortable lives (or even their not-so-perfectly comfortable lives), then what kind of story would that be? It’d be the perfectly boring story that no one would want to read. We live to see people overcome obstacles. It’s what keeps us reading, so we can see how it all works out.
But, sometimes being this bitch hurts the sweet, can’t-we-all-get-along part of me that wants everyone to like me. At times like that, I have to ignore the characters in my head calling me names (“You big meanie!”) and pull my bitch hat down over my ears so that I can continue to slice and hack away at their lives.
It’s hard for me. My heart hurts for them. However, I know it will all work out in the end. I know that when the time comes, I’ll be able to hang my bitch hat next to my computer and let the romantic part of me that is dying for everyone to be happy write everything perfect again.
Thank God for my bitch hat. My computer, my post-it notes, they pale in comparison to how important it is to my writing. I’m not sure how I could have the tough love to do what I need to do to these fictional people without it.
I always wonder about writers who don’t let their characters get their happy endings because they never get to take off their bitch hats.
I’ve read all sorts of stuff in my English major/English teacher lifetime. I swore that American authors, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, wouldn’t have known a happy ending if they fell in one. People who write horror, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, never get the satisfaction of HEA, at least not the way I write it. I picture them writing “the end” and then going off to therapy or to their priests, complaining about the darkness of the world.
I’m so glad I get to spread a little light.
If you’re a writer, how do you feel about causing turmoil in your characters’ lives? Are you of the yay, free therapy school or are you (like me) of the “when can I get to the HEA” school? How do you approach writing conflict in your stories, as I’m certain my “bitch hat” method isn’t the only one out there?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Books by the Crew
17 comments:
Love your premise. In my current wip, I have been diabolical with my heroine, so much so that I believe all of chapter 13 needs some sparkly rainbow fairy dust to make it publishable. Of course, chapter 13 is my favorite, LOL.
I need to get me one of those hats. Though I'm getting tougher on these victional people who live in my head. I can tell you my heroine is not happy that I have put this infuriating (but hot) man right across the hall from her. And she's going to be so mad when she finds out she has to work with this (really hot) moron. That's just going to send her over the edge.
Then, when she actually starts to think he's not all that bad (see hotness), I rip her heart out. I feel awful but I have to do it. Then she has to grovel to Mr. Hotness and I can just see her hating me for sure then. LOL!
The HEA is what has made me a nearly life-long reader of romance. It is also what persuaded me that I would never be successful writing literary fiction since, with rare exceptions, an unhappy or ambiguous ending seems to be a convention no one in the literary establishment is willing to admit to. I don't think I could keep writing about my characters' pain if I didn't know the HEA was assured.
I read Jenny Crusie's essay "Romancing Reality" (http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/romancingreality.php) when I need inspiration. I particularly love this passage about her discovery of romance fiction: "For the first time, I was reading fiction about women who had sex and then didn’t eat arsenic or throw themselves under trains or swim out to the embrace of the sea, women who won on their own terms (and those terms were pretty varied) and still got the guy in the end without having to apologize or explain that they were still emancipated even though they were forming permanent pair bonds, women who moved through a world of frustration and detail and small pleasures and large friendships, a world I had authority in. By the end of the month, I’d skimmed or read almost a hundred romance novels and two life-changing things happened to me: I felt more powerful, more optimistic, and more in control of my life than ever before, and I decided I wanted to write romance fiction. Anything that did that much good for me, was something that I, as a feminist, wanted to do for other women."
I don't know what happened to the Crusie URL. Here's the full address:
http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/
romancingreality.php
I'm known as the angst queen in certain writing circles:) I live to destroy my characters lives and bring them back together in a HEA.
I live out a lot of frustrations with my characters, and I can guage my writing on the type of day I've experienced. When the stress level is high the emotional meter is in overdrive when I sit down to write.
I, like Terri, think I need to get me one of those, Marnee. I think you and I must suffer from the same ailment! I do NOT like conflict. At least in my RL. Now in my story I know I need it but it's hard for me to be the "meanie," or I'll go a step farther - to create an unlikable character. That seems to be my mountain I'm climbing at the present time. I want everyone to like my H/H, but I know I have to give them flaws.
I definitely couldn't do this if it weren't for the guaranteed HEA! That Crusie quote was awesome, Janga. It's very true. Resolving issues gives one a real sense of empowerment and hope.
I love drama and mayhem between my characters. Anything I can think to do within the realm of reality, it gets done. Drug abuse, rape, near death, lost love, lost hope- I love it all. Of course all that is harder to fix in the end but it's the ride that counts. The HEA isn't necessary for me at the end (though I will admit I need HEA's in movies as Hellion can attest to, lol) but I need that emotional attachment to the characters. If I get that then all is good.
Great blog Marnee!
I need a hat. But I want a Captain's hat with big plumes and gold gilt trim. Something that sets off my really nice jacket...
OH.
And I hate conflict. LOATHE it. Will avoid it with every fiber of my being, to my own detriment, actually. Funnily enough those who avoid conflict at all costs don't usually succeed in avoiding the fallout, it seems.
I hate torturing my characters, but at times I do find it rather therapeutic. Especially if I can write a HEA I never got for being in a similar situation. Plus there are a couple nemesises (nemesi? Why do people assume you only have one nemesis?) whom are very fun to torture. It will actually be more of a trial giving them a happy ending...
I don't typically avoid conflict in RL though I do try to avoid drama as much as possible. But I have found that if it's a service, like I have my hair done or something and don't like it, I don't tell the person. I had my hair done for my party last weekend and I hated it. Wanted to cry. I looked like a character out of the movie Hairspray. HUGE!
I just paid and left and freaked out. I was going to wash it and do it myself but was able to brush it into a smaller shape. My mother and a friend said I should drive right back there and tell the girl I didn't like it but I couldn't. I have no idea why.
Oh, and Janga, great quote. I love the idea of romance as empowering. Love the idea this is "a world I had authority in."
AMEN!
in my 'real' life, i'm involved in counseling. so i tend towards seeing both sides of the story, meaning i have very few characters who are totally evil. mostly the antagonists have one really big flaw, but enough good qualities that the protagonists still like them on some level
Morning Guys!!
Maggie - Isn't it funny what we drag our poor, defenseless characters through. (poor them....) LOL!!
Ter - She'll only hate you until you get them together, then she'll be all "Yes, yes YES!!!" LOL!
Janga - Thanks for the link! I will have to check this full article out. I always tried to avoid the downers when I was in college. It was hard. "Quality" literature is littered with sad endings and women who try so hard to get ahead and fail. It's sorta sad. Glad I don't write that nonsense.
Lissa - give em hell! I'm sure they deserve it!! (Only if you promise to make it right though)
Irish - hang in there! Reach deep! Get in touch with your inner nastiness!
Sin - I am actually the opposite. I can deal with movies that don't end well, but I can't deal with books that don't end well. That's weird, huh? Anyone wanna psychoanalyse that?
And Cap'n - that fallout part is sooo true. In fact, I think us conflict avoiders are magnets for fallout.
Oh, what a nice place you have here, um, for a bunch of, em, very very fearsome pirates! I happened by Miss Anna's place (hullo, Anna!) and noted this and had'ta say hi.
Anna, I'd like for you to design a Bitch Hat for me, please. there are oh so many times when it'd come in handy in my line 'o work. Of course, I think I'll find from wearing it, at the end of every day my husband remarking, "hmmm, bitch hat hair, again, Michelle? Shocking."
Anna, I adore you, and am so pleased you work so hard to "work the conflict." It pays off; your novels are marvelous.
Ciao!
We have a real life, blog-world/Romancelandia celebrity in the house!
Hello, Michelle. So lovely to have you drop by.
Woohoo, Michelle's in the house! (P.S. Michelle--I got the box of books you sent me and I'm loving them! They're wonderful!)
Off Topic
I just wanted to be sure y'all saw Nora Roberts's pirate comment in the Dec. 10 issue of Time.
Question: Why should people read romance novels? —Mahtot Teka, Addis Ababa
NR's Response: They are a celebration of relations, finding love, overcoming obstacles and making commitments. I think that is something very worthy of respect. They're not just about naked pirates, although what's wrong with a naked pirate now and again?
Here Here, Nora!!!
I did read that but I forgot. Nothing wrong with naked pirates I say. Or Scots. Or Dukes. Or Earls. Or football players. Or CEOs...
Post a Comment