People say that, when you're writing villains or antagonists, you have to consider that they're not pure evil or pure sociopathy but that they're people, and they should be written as such.
Only today did I realize that I've never had to consider that. To me, villains are people. They are people in their purest form. That is, I don't have to think about "humanizing" them, because, at least according to my worldview, people are inherently inclined towards villainy and malice and selfishness and evil. It's like writing a description of a room and having someone tell you, "Remember, the place you're writing about is indoors." Yes, I might neglect to mention, in a description of a room, that it's indoors, but I know it's indoors, and anyone who reads it is going to get the impression that it's indoors. They might not consciously think of it and I might not consciously think of it, but it's one of those things that is so obvious to me that it's silly for me to imagine that I'd have to remember it.
I guess some people have to remember it because they think human nature is good, or at least neutral. Or if that's not their specific belief, then at least their belief is not something that leads them to believe that humans are naturally inclined towards awfulness in a way that would make a villain nothing more than an example of human nature in its purest form.
What I'm saying is that, today, I realized that I think human nature makes for a perfect villain, and because of that, every instance of antagonist-creating I've been responsible for was done with the implication that, yes, this person is human. That's what makes him a villain in the first place.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Writing in a closet
I think I'm going to start writing stuff in my closet.
My closet is big enough for me to sit fairly comfortably (there's a box in the corner I can sit on), and there's lights in it, so I don't have to worry about writing for hours on end with only the brightness of my computer screen to light the way. There is, unfortunately, internet in my closet (I guess the wi-fi works even in there), so there's the chance that I'll get distracted, but I'm not used to using internet in there, so maybe if I don't get in the habit of using the internet in there, I will get to the point where I just don't think to do so.
Actually, since I don't really do anything in my closet, I don't have any associations with what I do or don't do in there. So maybe I'll be able to get it into my head that the closet is for writing, and I'll just do writing in there. It'll be my very distinct "writing place".
The only really inconvenient thing about writing in my closet is that there's no comfortable place for me to put my tea. But then again, maybe I don't always need tea when I'm writing. (Or doing things in general. Because I almost always have a cup of tea when I'm doing something but maybe I don't always need tea.)
Yeah. I think I'm going to start writing in my closet. Yeah.
My closet is big enough for me to sit fairly comfortably (there's a box in the corner I can sit on), and there's lights in it, so I don't have to worry about writing for hours on end with only the brightness of my computer screen to light the way. There is, unfortunately, internet in my closet (I guess the wi-fi works even in there), so there's the chance that I'll get distracted, but I'm not used to using internet in there, so maybe if I don't get in the habit of using the internet in there, I will get to the point where I just don't think to do so.
Actually, since I don't really do anything in my closet, I don't have any associations with what I do or don't do in there. So maybe I'll be able to get it into my head that the closet is for writing, and I'll just do writing in there. It'll be my very distinct "writing place".
The only really inconvenient thing about writing in my closet is that there's no comfortable place for me to put my tea. But then again, maybe I don't always need tea when I'm writing. (Or doing things in general. Because I almost always have a cup of tea when I'm doing something but maybe I don't always need tea.)
Yeah. I think I'm going to start writing in my closet. Yeah.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Telemarketers
I have a number of unusual habits that I don't think most people do, and one of the more interesting among them is being very polite to telemarketers. There are people who hang up as soon as they get the faintest inkling that they are talking to someone who is trying to sell them something, and there are people who are outright rude to the people who have one of the crummiest jobs in the world (with "being rude" including just hanging up on them as well as yelling mean things), and I'm just not one of those people. I'm nice to telemarketers, partly because I believe in being nice to people, especially those in trying circumstances, partly because it's interesting to see how they react.
There tends to be a fifty-fifty split between people who, upon realizing that I'm not going to buy their thing, say, "Alright, thank you, have a nice day" and people who, upon realizing that I'm not going to buy their thing, just hang up. I wonder what it is that makes someone have one reaction over the other.
I think it's a difference in how people view their job. Someone who has the former response sees being a telemarketer as working in communication - that is, actually talking to people and having conversations with them. It also might also be that the person who says "Alright, thank you, have a nice day" expected a real response on the other person's part (either rudeness or genuine interest in what they have to sell) and gives a real response themself. Someone who has the latter response, however, doesn't think they're paid to talk to people but rather at them, which admittedly is a realistic expectation of telemarketing. Either that, or they just don't know how to deal with most sorts of responses and hangs up out of inability to respond.
I think it's a difference in how people view their job. Someone who has the former response sees being a telemarketer as working in communication - that is, actually talking to people and having conversations with them. It also might also be that the person who says "Alright, thank you, have a nice day" expected a real response on the other person's part (either rudeness or genuine interest in what they have to sell) and gives a real response themself. Someone who has the latter response, however, doesn't think they're paid to talk to people but rather at them, which admittedly is a realistic expectation of telemarketing. Either that, or they just don't know how to deal with most sorts of responses and hangs up out of inability to respond.
I genuinely have no clue but it is interesting to be polite to telemarketers and not hang up on them or yell at them.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Mysteries of school unraveled
My sister was doing her math homework and, whilst doing so, rhetorically asked me why she needs to know advanced algebra and other mathematics absolutely no one who isn't a scientist needs to know in their regular life. "I know why you might need to know it in college," she said, "but I'm not even in high school yet. What's the deal with that?"
It was in that moment that I realized it was because of college that you need to know that. The point of college, or so it's been explained to me, is so you can get a degree. It's not necessarily important what you get the degree in, it was further explained to me, so long as you can prove to a potential employer that your skills include doing things you don't like and doing them reasonably well, which is proven in the fact that you've completed your general education. General education entails learning quite a bit of stuff that is neither relevant to your interests nor relevant to life in general. Yet you learn it, you do it, and you pass classes, which allows you to go on to pass classes in things that are relevant to your interests and/or relevant to your life, which is how you get your degree.
You need to learn stuff like that in high school and even before so you can learn it more easily once you get to college. They have to learn stupidly irrelevant and complex things during your compulsory education so you can learn more stupidly irrelevant and complex things during your higher education. The ultimate reason is so you can prove to employers that you can do stupidly irrelevant and complex things, which is exactly the sort of thing they want to know you can do.
I figured it out. I figured out why they make you learn how to find X in big long equations when you're a kid in school. It's still kind of dumb and not the best system, but at least there's a bit of a reason. Mystery solved.
It was in that moment that I realized it was because of college that you need to know that. The point of college, or so it's been explained to me, is so you can get a degree. It's not necessarily important what you get the degree in, it was further explained to me, so long as you can prove to a potential employer that your skills include doing things you don't like and doing them reasonably well, which is proven in the fact that you've completed your general education. General education entails learning quite a bit of stuff that is neither relevant to your interests nor relevant to life in general. Yet you learn it, you do it, and you pass classes, which allows you to go on to pass classes in things that are relevant to your interests and/or relevant to your life, which is how you get your degree.
You need to learn stuff like that in high school and even before so you can learn it more easily once you get to college. They have to learn stupidly irrelevant and complex things during your compulsory education so you can learn more stupidly irrelevant and complex things during your higher education. The ultimate reason is so you can prove to employers that you can do stupidly irrelevant and complex things, which is exactly the sort of thing they want to know you can do.
I figured it out. I figured out why they make you learn how to find X in big long equations when you're a kid in school. It's still kind of dumb and not the best system, but at least there's a bit of a reason. Mystery solved.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
When people call people "perfect"
I recently had an acquaintance call me a "wonderful, imperfect human being". I thanked her because it was a compliment and then told her it was interesting she had called me imperfect. People call me "perfect" very frequently - I don't say this to sound narcissistic but because it's actually true - and this was the first time I could remember anyone calling me "imperfect". Not that I minded it (it was actually quite refreshing) but I just wasn't expecting it.
She explained that we call people "perfect" so often when we just mean "really good", and this is not only inaccurate because people simply are not perfect but potentially damaging when people are people and do something less than perfect.
I thought about that and realized she was quite right, especially on that second point. As we all know, "perfect" and "people" are mutually exclusive, but as a person who is frequently called "perfect", I realized how damaging it can be when you're used to being perfect and then realize you're a person.
I've come to have very high standards of myself, and this is fueled when people call me "perfect". People tell me I wrote a perfect poem, I handled something perfectly, I have a perfect face, I said something perfect. Unfortunately, I believe them.
Perhaps I can't help it; I tend to believe things that are believed by a fairly large number of other people, not because I'm interested in following a crowd mentality or incapable of independent thought but because if I'm the only one who believes something or one of the only ones who believes it, I'm more likely to doubt something. If something's true, it stands to reason that a lot of people would believe it. When something is true and people don't believe it, there tends to be a reason (either they haven't had it proven to them, it conflicts with what they were taught was true, it hasn't entered into their personal experience, etc.) It's not that everything widely believed is true so much as that, if a lot of people believe something, there's certainly something to the idea that it might be true. And if you have no way of knowing whether or not it's true by using your own judgment, or if it's something you'd like to believe, you're more likely to believe what everyone else believes.
I have no way of really judging my own worth or the quality of what I do. Again, very high standards, and I'll never meet them. I'd like to think I'm acceptable, and when people tell me I'm not just acceptable but the pinnacle of acceptability, the most acceptable anything can ever be - because that is what perfect means, after all - it makes sense why I go along with it.
But then I had an acquaintance explicitly tell me that I wasn't the most acceptable thing imaginable but still pretty great, and that was what I needed to hear.
She told me she was trying to stop referring to Simon Pegg (an actor she's come to really like) as "a perfect human" and instead call him "fantastic". Even if she doesn't mean she thinks he has literally nothing wrong with him, she's still saying it, and she's so used to saying it because people are so used to saying it. Realizing the implications of what you're doing and figuring out how to remove those implications so they're more in-line with your intent is a good way to make things better.
Maybe when people call me "perfect", they don't mean I'm literally flawless so much as they use the word because they've heard it so often and think it's an acceptable thing to say when they think someone or something is good. Reminds me of when C.S. Lewis said, "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." Don't say "perfect" when you mean "good". Otherwise, "perfect" will become a word that just means "good" and what'll you do when you realize that none of the things you were calling "perfect" were perfect after all?
I thanked my acquaintance for the compliment and her explanation. It's not all the time that someone gives you a compliment and a good piece of wisdom at the same time.
She explained that we call people "perfect" so often when we just mean "really good", and this is not only inaccurate because people simply are not perfect but potentially damaging when people are people and do something less than perfect.
I thought about that and realized she was quite right, especially on that second point. As we all know, "perfect" and "people" are mutually exclusive, but as a person who is frequently called "perfect", I realized how damaging it can be when you're used to being perfect and then realize you're a person.
I've come to have very high standards of myself, and this is fueled when people call me "perfect". People tell me I wrote a perfect poem, I handled something perfectly, I have a perfect face, I said something perfect. Unfortunately, I believe them.
Perhaps I can't help it; I tend to believe things that are believed by a fairly large number of other people, not because I'm interested in following a crowd mentality or incapable of independent thought but because if I'm the only one who believes something or one of the only ones who believes it, I'm more likely to doubt something. If something's true, it stands to reason that a lot of people would believe it. When something is true and people don't believe it, there tends to be a reason (either they haven't had it proven to them, it conflicts with what they were taught was true, it hasn't entered into their personal experience, etc.) It's not that everything widely believed is true so much as that, if a lot of people believe something, there's certainly something to the idea that it might be true. And if you have no way of knowing whether or not it's true by using your own judgment, or if it's something you'd like to believe, you're more likely to believe what everyone else believes.
I have no way of really judging my own worth or the quality of what I do. Again, very high standards, and I'll never meet them. I'd like to think I'm acceptable, and when people tell me I'm not just acceptable but the pinnacle of acceptability, the most acceptable anything can ever be - because that is what perfect means, after all - it makes sense why I go along with it.
But then I had an acquaintance explicitly tell me that I wasn't the most acceptable thing imaginable but still pretty great, and that was what I needed to hear.
She told me she was trying to stop referring to Simon Pegg (an actor she's come to really like) as "a perfect human" and instead call him "fantastic". Even if she doesn't mean she thinks he has literally nothing wrong with him, she's still saying it, and she's so used to saying it because people are so used to saying it. Realizing the implications of what you're doing and figuring out how to remove those implications so they're more in-line with your intent is a good way to make things better.
Maybe when people call me "perfect", they don't mean I'm literally flawless so much as they use the word because they've heard it so often and think it's an acceptable thing to say when they think someone or something is good. Reminds me of when C.S. Lewis said, "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." Don't say "perfect" when you mean "good". Otherwise, "perfect" will become a word that just means "good" and what'll you do when you realize that none of the things you were calling "perfect" were perfect after all?
I thanked my acquaintance for the compliment and her explanation. It's not all the time that someone gives you a compliment and a good piece of wisdom at the same time.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Why I stopped writing my last novel and why this was an important mental health decision.
I'm writing a new novel.
I had gotten about 50,000 words in on what was my last novel before giving up. Well, I didn't give up so much as put it on hold in favor of things I thought were better ideas for the time being, but the point is, I got rather far on it before saying, "No, I'm going to do something else, regardless of these 50,000 words."
I had told people that I was not going to give up on this one. "I'm going to complete this one," I said. "I'm actually going to do it." I had explicitly said I wouldn't do things like the thing I am doing now.
I still think this was a good decision, though. And you know why?
It's because I value my mental health.
Let me explain. I was writing a certain scene in the novel that made me rather uncomfortable for whatever reason. After taking the time to get through writing it (and being not a little bit uncomfortable, both whilst writing and whilst doing my regular life, during this time), I realized it was because of some of the things that were going on in that scene. They included but were not limited to manipulation, toxic relationships, people trying to become close to each other but not succeeding, and antagonistic characters with worldviews similar to twisted versions of my own.
This was very good to know, but I thought further and realized that my whole novel was like this. This was not exactly good for me. These things, while important and worthy things for people to write about, make me uncomfortable, and while I can get into the world of a story that features these things, I'm not exactly in the best mental health while being in such a world.
I thought even further and realized that the vast most of my writing is like this. That is, I naturally gravitate towards writing stories with themes like manipulation, toxic relationships, mental illness, alienation - things that, while important and worthy things for people to write about, make me uncomfortable and do not exactly put me in the best of mental health.
In fifteen minutes, I came up with no less than seven detailed examples of stories I had come up with that featured things like these. I then wondered if there were any themes that pop up in my writing a lot that aren't inherently unpleasant or detrimental to my mental health. In fifteen minutes, I came up with two. They were 1. the idea of places (like houses, spacecraft, planets, etc.) having souls or personifications, and 2. odd or whimsical occurrences happening for no apparent reason, especially in the same place.
The revelation that there are only two things about which I frequently write that don't inherently take a toll on my mental health was disheartening to say the least, and I think it says a lot about who I fundamentally am as a person. However, the bright side is that it didn't take me long to formulate a story idea featuring these two themes, and after making some notes about such an idea, I came up with something and I've begun writing it. (I've made a pretty good amount of progress in a relatively short amount of time, and the writing itself is not only tolerable but even enjoyable.)
The even brighter side is that, now that I've identified the problem, I'm going to make steps towards a solution. I know what I write about that makes my bad mental health even worse. I'm figuring out how to not write about them, or at least how to write something that isn't fundamentally based around them. Maybe, after I'm done with a project that demonstrates my ability to write something that isn't fundamentally based around these things, I'll find a way to write something that incorporates my typical themes and still isn't detrimental to my mental health. I have no idea how this would be even possible, but that's part of the process - figuring out how to make the impossible possible.
So that's why I'm abandoning (at least temporarily) a project on which I had come so far. I realized it just wasn't good for me and that most of my writing wasn't good for me and it was time to make a change. And so far, this change has been working really really well. I'm glad I made it.
I had gotten about 50,000 words in on what was my last novel before giving up. Well, I didn't give up so much as put it on hold in favor of things I thought were better ideas for the time being, but the point is, I got rather far on it before saying, "No, I'm going to do something else, regardless of these 50,000 words."
I had told people that I was not going to give up on this one. "I'm going to complete this one," I said. "I'm actually going to do it." I had explicitly said I wouldn't do things like the thing I am doing now.
I still think this was a good decision, though. And you know why?
It's because I value my mental health.
Let me explain. I was writing a certain scene in the novel that made me rather uncomfortable for whatever reason. After taking the time to get through writing it (and being not a little bit uncomfortable, both whilst writing and whilst doing my regular life, during this time), I realized it was because of some of the things that were going on in that scene. They included but were not limited to manipulation, toxic relationships, people trying to become close to each other but not succeeding, and antagonistic characters with worldviews similar to twisted versions of my own.
This was very good to know, but I thought further and realized that my whole novel was like this. This was not exactly good for me. These things, while important and worthy things for people to write about, make me uncomfortable, and while I can get into the world of a story that features these things, I'm not exactly in the best mental health while being in such a world.
I thought even further and realized that the vast most of my writing is like this. That is, I naturally gravitate towards writing stories with themes like manipulation, toxic relationships, mental illness, alienation - things that, while important and worthy things for people to write about, make me uncomfortable and do not exactly put me in the best of mental health.
In fifteen minutes, I came up with no less than seven detailed examples of stories I had come up with that featured things like these. I then wondered if there were any themes that pop up in my writing a lot that aren't inherently unpleasant or detrimental to my mental health. In fifteen minutes, I came up with two. They were 1. the idea of places (like houses, spacecraft, planets, etc.) having souls or personifications, and 2. odd or whimsical occurrences happening for no apparent reason, especially in the same place.
The revelation that there are only two things about which I frequently write that don't inherently take a toll on my mental health was disheartening to say the least, and I think it says a lot about who I fundamentally am as a person. However, the bright side is that it didn't take me long to formulate a story idea featuring these two themes, and after making some notes about such an idea, I came up with something and I've begun writing it. (I've made a pretty good amount of progress in a relatively short amount of time, and the writing itself is not only tolerable but even enjoyable.)
The even brighter side is that, now that I've identified the problem, I'm going to make steps towards a solution. I know what I write about that makes my bad mental health even worse. I'm figuring out how to not write about them, or at least how to write something that isn't fundamentally based around them. Maybe, after I'm done with a project that demonstrates my ability to write something that isn't fundamentally based around these things, I'll find a way to write something that incorporates my typical themes and still isn't detrimental to my mental health. I have no idea how this would be even possible, but that's part of the process - figuring out how to make the impossible possible.
So that's why I'm abandoning (at least temporarily) a project on which I had come so far. I realized it just wasn't good for me and that most of my writing wasn't good for me and it was time to make a change. And so far, this change has been working really really well. I'm glad I made it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)