In Which I Was Disturbed Over a Norse Myth, and What I Did About It

I'm submitting a short story of mine to a literary magazine, and it just made me realize a very interesting place to get ideas for writing - things that disturb you.

And I don't just mean in the sense of "things that scare you". I'm referring to when you hear or see or learn something that bothers you so much that you can't get it out of your mind and it keeps nagging at you and making you perpetually uncomfortable. It can be a real-life concern that disturbs you. It can be a philosophical concept with arguable bearing on real life. It can be a philosophical concept with tremendous bearing on real life. It can be a decision someone (maybe yourself) made that you're perfectly comfortable with except for one small fact. Really, it can be anything.

The thing that disturbed me and inspired this piece of fiction was a Norse myth that I read about two years ago in a class I took on the subject of Norse myths. At least, it was supposed to be a Norse mythology class. It turned into more of a "Why Loki is awesome" class. (I had the privilege of being introduced to the character of Loki through the actual Norse myths rather than the Marvel films, so I am therefore able to appreciate him on a completely different level.) We basically read a bunch of Norse myths (most of which involved Loki) and talked about them.
Now, the day finally came in which we read "The Binding of Loki". The way the teacher introduced it, she made it sound like, "Okay, everyone, the fun is over. Time for something serious and sad." And the way one of my classmates (who was the most knowledgeable about and fond of Loki) reacted to it, he made it sound like, "Oh no, this is sad."

I won't spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it and would like to, but it doesn't end well for Loki. It ends with him in a painful and hellish situation (involving being chained up with a snake's venom dripping over him). It leaves him really unable to go anywhere or do anything and it somewhat brings to mind the end of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (minus the specifics of being turned into a blob of living jelly). He wasn't able to trickster his way out of it. He was stuck there until Ragnarok (and, if you think the Norse myths are true - which I don't, but I frequently imagine stories to be true - then he's stuck there still).

The thought of something like that happening to this beloved character was very upsetting and it stuck with me for quite a while. I couldn't stop thinking of Loki chained up with snake's venom dripping over him, and it all culminated in a short story written at around midnight when I couldn't sleep. It's very...abstract, one might say, and other than the fact that the Loki myth is mentioned a few times in the story (with the narrator comparing himself to Loki) and that the narrator finds himself in a similar position at the end, it really doesn't bear much resemblance to the story at all. However, I needed to get out my feelings regarding the story about Loki, which disturbed me and upset me that much.

What's funny is that, almost as soon as I wrote the story, I felt better about the story. It wasn't that I realized it was just fiction. It was that I did something with the feelings I had. I took the story and made something out of it. Maybe it was because I showed myself that I had power over it - power enough to make something out of it. I'm not really sure why the bad feelings stopped, but the point is, they did, and what's more, I got a story out of it.

It was a silly thing to get upset over. It was a very silly thing to be "disturbed" over, certainly. But the fact was, I was bothered by something, and I made art based on the thing that was bothering me. It was something I'd heard that I could not let go (or that would not let me go - I'm not sure which was the case). And now I have a story to which I am submitting to a literary magazine.

If you ever come across some information or situation that makes you feel viscerally uncomfortably and will not let you go, try making some sort of art out of it. Even if it doesn't make you feel one bit better, you will at least have something to show for it. And not only will that mean you've brought another wonderful thing into the world (because all art is, in its way, wonderful), you'll have exercised some power over the thing because you used it to create.