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My Little Identity Crisis Melodrama, Interlude: When I Was a Child, I Spoke As a Child
R. Alex Whitlock
[Originally posted on the No-Lyfe Journal]
When I was a kid, I played basketball in the junior league. My father was the coach of our team.
One day, I was in the driveway practicing when I got bored. Just to try something new, I decided to intentionally do everything wrong. Dad saw me and came out to ask what in tarnation I was doing, and I explained to him that I would do everything wrong now but in a game I would know not to do it.
That, to say the least, didn't fly.
He explained to me that even though on a conscious level I knew what I was doing was wrong, the more I did it the more I was training my body to do these things and in a game I would do them anyway out of habit.
The lesson to be learned, of course, is that the more you do something, the more ingrained it becomes and that you know it's wrong makes little actual difference when decisions have to be made in a split second, be it in a game or in real life.
I was about 10 at the time. I'm about twice that age now. I no longer play much basketball, but I am a quite prolific writer. Much of it is here and based on the events of my day and whatnot, but a lot of it is fiction writing. Some of that is irreverent No-Lyfe Productions stuff, but a lot of it has gone towards the two novels I wrote over the course of last year.
My novels tend to be more serious than my NLP stuff, to say the least. While I insert some humor to keep the story from getting too heavy, I mostly write character dramas. More than that, I write man-vs.-self dramas in which the characters are, generally speaking, their own worst enemies. They all have preconcieved notions of the way the world should be and tend to bend reality towards those ends. They run into people with different ideas and conflicts occur, but for the most part the characters put up the barriers to their own happiness.
I do not consider myself a particularly dramatic person. I don't seek out drama nor do I view it as a good thing. I am known by most around me for being relatively upbeat. My characters often frustrate me to no end as they continually make different variations of the same mistake until they either start doing right and improve or fail to and don't.
Writing can be an involved process. To write realistic dialogue and action descriptions, I have enter the heads of my characters. I have to see things through the same skewed perspective that they do. I know how wrong the characters are, but I have to think and act like they do when I am writing what they are thinking and acting.
They're morality plays and they either learn from their mistakes or the reader does. But while the point may be that character X is wrong, I have to think like X for extended periods of time. Or character Y or Z or whatever. I also take their struggles and in many ways glamorize it to make the characters more compelling.
But they're wrong and they live the types of lives that I do not wish to lead.
So the question becomes... am I making the same mistake now that I made 14 years ago? Am I not just writing my characters, but am I letting them influence me? By writing drama, am I becoming attracted to it through many of the split-second decisions that I make?
Just one of the questions I've been asking myself.
[
Part Three]
Keywords: RayfordWhitlock
Observations
daniel goldberg @ 12:13PM | 2003-03-17| permalink
Excellent philosophicasl question. I tend to say 'yes', even though I write poetry, and not prose. I think you cannot help but be influenced by the characters you create, regardless of what you do or do not 'know' about them on a purely cognitive level.
Have you ever read anything by Haruki Murakami? His book "Norwegian Wood" is one of the most incredible novels I have ever read in my life (and I read it in translation), and his novels are completely, totally character and dialogue driven (I imagine you would quite like his writing, actually).
In any case, I'm often left gasping, short of breath when I read and re-read his work, and I'm left with the unalterable sensation that he pours himself into his characters. I cannot imagine an author whose work is so visceral and so vivid, not being profoundly affected by the lives of his characters.
I imagine it's dialectical in nature. You pour some aspects of yourself, at least cognitively, but then they pour something into you.
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R. Alex @ 4:56PM | 2003-03-17| permalink
I actually first noticed the tendency last year when I was writing the first Slaughter book. I don't have very much in common with Nick Clayton, the main character and narrator, but I noticed that I developed one of his central problems. Coincidence? Looking back, probably so. It did get me thinking about it, though.
I'm a very involved writer, to the point that I think it demands another post on the subject (especially since its origins may involve Jason).
At the very least, I'm sure it affects me the same way the music I listen to does. Chris Isaak sings excellent bed-time music, but if I listen to his Forever Blue CD for too long, I start feeling, well, blue. Very powerful CD with surprisingly straight, unmetaphorical language. On the other hand, if I listen to They Might Be Giants, it really picks me up.
Of course, it's more complicated when you're a driving force behind the character. Except in many ways I'm not. When I'm plotting I tend to draft out the characters from start to finish, put them together, and see what happens. In many ways, I'm as much an improv actor as I am a storyteller.
In that vein, I probably should write more upbeat material. After all, recent posts aside, I'm hardly a dour and unhumorous person. I novel-writing for me just tends to bring out my more serious side.
I also sketch out plays and movie scripts, and with one jarring exception, they tend to be much more upbeat.
They do always have a serious side, though, just as my novels always include humor (often right before or after something serious happens).
I'm not familiar with Murikami's work, but it definitely sounds up my ally.
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daniel goldberg @ 11:11AM | 2003-03-18| permalink
Kafka is my favorite writer (which is an understatement), and I know much of his personal life. His life and his art were never separate, Alex. For example, he was convinced that having a wife and a family was the Utmost a man could accomplish in this world. Yet, he believed that his writing took everything he possessed, all of his mental and emotional equipment, such that he could not both write and raise a family. He felt his writing consumed him, so in order to write, he forsook a family.
What did he die of? Consumption. Of course.
And if you've read much of his work, it's relatively easy to see how his writing consumed him. He poured all of himself into his work, and sooner rather than later, he had no life force left.
One of the many reasons I love Kafka.
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R. Alex @ 1:06PM | 2003-03-18| permalink
Kafka was a genius. When I was writing primarily short stories, he was my role model.
He's was also the only writer from my Human Situation course that I kept reading on my own volition. The Penal Colony was one of my favorites and I draw on that frequently in many of my ideas. The Judgment was also a favorite.
I've read some about the man (and we talked about him in class) and he also serves as a cautionary tale. He wrote great things, but at a higher cost than I'd personally like to pay.
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daniel goldberg @ 10:50AM | 2003-03-20| permalink
Actually, I more than love FK, Alex. I'm a little obsessed with him. Sooner or later I'm going to get around to gaining reading fluency in German, so I can read his writings in the original. One of my goals in life is to purchase a first edition of one of his stories (I have not decided which, yet).
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