Trial, Trauma, Fantasy-- Find Your Themes

One of the things people never realized about me in my early life was that reality was always as much in my head as the world I share with everyone else. I was teased for being genuinely terrified in haunted houses, clamping my ears as fireworks exploded in light and sound around me, and not really believing that fairy tales weren't real (even if magic didn't exist now, perhaps it was more historical than fantasy). Over time, my head wrapped around these distinctions somewhat, but not from lack of people I thought I could trust forcing me to lay down clear lines between fantasy and reality, lest my own trauma be dismissed as overactive imagination. It hurt that no one saw how I cringed when my abuser hugged me, that no one questioned why I couldn't sleep without a light on. In time, I began to think that maybe they knew but I just wasn't important enough to defend. The illusion that children were protected was never one I got to enjoy. I was meant to feel sorry for a parent whom was a best friend at best, someone I parented or was used as entertainment by at worst. Yet no such forgiveness was available for the child that stumbled through life confused when mistakes were inevitable but unacceptable nonetheless. I reached a resolution with my childhood woes late into adulthood. The apology was made but the damage was done.

Fortunately, as a child, I already possessed an internal world that captivated me. It's possible that without that early trauma, I might not have retreated into myself as I did. I didn't write or draw as an outlet, at least not on any conscious level. I've said before that those places are ones I can't really access in my darkest moods. Drawing and writing became a playground, not just for what I wanted to see, but what I wasn't able to face at full force yet wouldn't allow to haunt me. Either way, I had to reflect on it when the full force of trauma was not new. Extremities are incoherent for me in their throes. It even took me decades to learn to explain how I was gaslighted by a psychopath. They can literally convince you you're crazy and that you don't remember what really happens in your own life.

lol I know-- that got dark fast. I won't apologize, but it gets less morbid. The fantasy genre, after all, was a natural start. I could face darker realities under the cover of fiction. But I could also play in places of whimsy and innocence. And innocence lost. Rather than go into anything too deeply, I'll start hopping around on the themes I care about.

I won't cover mythology/gods, sex, time travel or topics I've covered before. I'll aim for something unique to my usual ramblings (but again, as much as I blog, you'll have to forgive repetition).

Castles- not unique in terms of being loved but new to my topics. Castles and palaces, realistically, were not that cozy of luxuries. In fact, drafts are a problem you hear repeated when it comes to one of its many downsides. Not to mention, very few were of modest size. If the upkeep itself wasn't too expensive over time, then getting from one side to the next was tedious enough. It wasn't uncommon for even wealthy castle owners to huddle into a single wing during harsh winters or even only keep up outside appearances yet opt to only use a small portion of it. Let's call them what they are: displays of wealth and fortresses meant to intimidate. Architectural marvels but I'd need some serious downscaling and modern amenities to make it livable. As a child, there was no practical obsession, only the romanticism of spires, drawbridges, moats and knights on armored horses. While Scotland and Germany have ones I'd realistically love to see, the use of castles in my stories is never romanticized very long if at all. Building do receive sort of personalities in my work, often related to how people envision them. Rather than just a rich vs. poor perception, buildings do have the potential to subtly show the mentality of the observer.

Princesses- historically, we all realize there were really few realities more rotten than that of a princess. I get that, with present dreams of wealth at any cost, the why is lost on many people. Yet princesses were not only property but public figures. They were never given agency nor encouraged to love and privacy was almost impossible. They were groomed and sold for the greatest gain, some not even educated let alone allowed consent with their own bodies. Even more progressive times have never given princesses much choice and even then, it was a slim list rife with expectations. Movies like The Princess Diaries make light of 'choosing a prince' as if age and looks were ideal. It was just as likely a princess would have to marry an abusive old widower with five children older than her or even her own brother. But hey, as a kid, nothing was more romanticized than Disney Princesses, if only for their perfect demeanors and dresses. We were willing to forgive that Beast terrorized Belle and that Snow White was indebted to the prince who kissed her. But true love, amirite?

Seas- not all of my books go into my love of oceans, but when they are present, I am drawn to their potential. Starting at my childhood fascination, most people who know me would think that Myrtle Beach is the origin. Yet my true love started with the deepest unexplored places, namely learning about the Mariana Trench. If it has ever been explored, I admit I don't really want to know. The idea that there might be creatures or secrets where my imagination can run wild is reason enough to accept blissful ignorance. You could try to ruin that for me but in my head, there will always be mysteries worth exploring. Raising African cichlids could be part of it. Even though they are freshwater fish, all fish navigate through water in a way that never fails to fascinate. Seas are places where I might be limited in movement, but there are so many ecosystems and life that dominate it in a way we can only dream of (and I do in a future book, Piscine).

Martial Arts- this isn't something you'll see me get carried away with in writing but every bit of choreography does stem from inhaling Kung Fu movies as a kid. Like some chess players romanticize the sequential movement of pieces (Amy Tan does this a time or two in her books), the names of stances, kicks and styles are my cup of tea. While Jean Claude Van Damme made a stinker with Street Fighter, one of my all time favorite movies was the Quest, a campy movie with a solid plot that makes a real show of different fighting styles. Who can forget Bloodsport? And Jackie Chan's Drunken Fist! I could go on and on but one thing is certain, I'm not a stranger to the beauty of a well written action scene. I try to do better every time it's worth exploring. There a beauty to martial arts equivalent to dancing. Even in Drunken Fist, Jackie Chan managed to make stumbling look like calculated grace.

Magic- magic is easy to tear apart. Without limits or logic, it always seems to fall apart at the slightest nudge. In Harry Potter, Alohomora seemed like a snazzy trick and Avada Kedavra a fearsome one, but what really stops a wizard from opening any door, even if all wizard doors could enchant against it (sucks to be you, muggles)? The only thing stopping Avada Kedavra from being used is... Trust and morality? We're so fucked! The same goes for hiding everything from the muggles. This seems like a really easy rule to rebel against. Hell, even Harry fucked up on accident. I suppose Rowling probably amended this later, pretending she'd already thought it out to save for Pottermore. Or maybe because it was young adult, it was fine to gloss over it. Yet try telling a Star Wars fan that you don't need to explain everything because it's 'kid's stuff' and them's fighting words! Maybe it was just a lovely pothole to slam us out of imagination. Regardless, it makes me consider how I formulate my own magical worlds. Now, as far as childhood goes, what kid doesn't dream of magic in any and every form?  Magic is a tough sell for most adults who do pick apart the mechanics but I also don't find it necessary to explain everything. However, the mechanics shouldn't be big enough to crash Ron's dad's car into. (I can't fault Rowling for her imagination -- big stories can get away from anyone and few are as dedicated as she to reworking the details, even to the point of maddeningly fucking with her own canon.)

Women Who Aren't Born Strong- I feel like this is something that speaks to me most. I rarely have even seasoned or old characters that always seem to have the right tool for every situation. I absolutely do see a need for strong women in fiction, but not bulletproof. Smart women can make dumb decisions. Beauty can make them dull and dependent. The heroines I connect with are the ones that often have to make the most important decisions without experience or help, so I don't make them infinitely lucky nor does 'knowing better' automatically mean they are immune to it when it comes in a different box. In reality, kind women sometimes let people hurt them the same way many times because they try hard not to become bitter or judgemental and think all people are the same. My strong women doubt themselves, sometimes get their ass saved by a man, sometimes finding strength in the wisdom of what they are best and worst at. I can't lift a big TV like my dad can. I have CPS, for one, and even doing yoga, I learned my wrist strength and flexibility had peaked well below even some of my friends that didn't work out. A strong woman doesn't need to be good at everything. A strong woman is a well-rounded woman who makes the best of herself. And sometimes fucks up. Even if you give her the most wretched traumatic past, making it have only a superficial bearing on her perfection in your tale will assure I won't even bother to finish it.

The last point doesn't really have a category, just a personal preference. Just... fuck sadness. I avoid sad movies and entertainment period. I'll take violent, sexy, and sure, throw in some sad moments, but I don't do sad endings and if I spend too much time sinking, I'll jump ship. I can hang with dark to a point. Dark humor can be one of my favorites. I don't like endings that are too saccharine either, so it's not some weird demand that people keep me happy. Yet I've been fooled by enough movies and dramas labeled romance that were just fucking sad and telling me something is sad will guarantee I won't bother. Yes, I write sad here and there, but it's never been a place to leave a final ending. Sadness makes me feel like an abused masochist for pain. I've endured enough to know that I would never choose to feel it if I don't have to. I don't need sad to feel alive. In fact, it can take me to a place of not wanting to be alive.  If you love sad (and this tends to be one of those quirks that women most often embrace), good on you. However, I'll take a rousing, exciting, suspenseful tale.

Just a side note-- I'm not vague about my past because I'm avoiding it. I exercise privacy because I don't have some sick need to hurt other people who could be affected by it. I don't want to poke rabid dogs either. I don't have the means to run if my honesty turns my world inside out. They are a part of me that I do talk about with a very limited audience, but they inevitably bear some weight on who I am and how they feed into my work.

If you are someone who is still struggling with the pain of trauma, please know that there are many numbers to call for help. If you're a close friend, you already know I'm always available and your pain doesn't inconvenience me at all.

Let it be known that my pain does drive me and I have learned to manage it. It's not perfect, but it doesn't get to trigger me as it has become wisdom, caution and valuable for introspection once I've learned to twist damage into something useful. I am not grateful to those who hurt me or give them any credit for making me stronger. That part is in each of us from the start and only you get that fulfillment.

The Glass Left Behind

I vaguely remember the time I first saw writing referred to as bleeding on paper. I'm fairly sure my swollen bleeding brain was drawn to the possibility of giving the excess blood somewhere to go, even if that's probably not what most people seem to think it means (going by the context around it). When people say it, it always sounds as if they are just using a more violent means of 'going for the gusto'. It sounds like a risk you take when you've already given blood or you're anemic, that you're giving something that may be more than you were initially willing to, perhaps. I do know that the concept didn't make me uncomfortable, but I was certainly on edge. It's not giving my blood that scares me; it's drawing the sharks that want more. Very likely why some writers hoard their precious red gold.

Let's skip context for a second and start by saying that it's very difficult to explain emotional abuse to someone who has no experience with it. Even harder to explain to many people that blood doesn't make you immune and some of the worst offenders can be family (and largely because many societies cannot even perceive of disloyal family or that they could even do anything unforgivable-- this give the offenders a dangerous blind spot to exploit). I've seen some books do it well enough, able to plant sufficient terror and unease into the 'beloved' villain that torments the protagonist. To show what it's like to be the hostage when other people see only the luxury of your life. To have people judge you as ungrateful, jealous, lazy, even childish when you're being overwhelmed by someone who becomes more likable the more they tear you down, like their charisma is fed with your destruction.

To survive, I suppressed a lot of both the strengths and weaknesses of those experiences. I've tapped into the surface of those incidents to write in the past, but it's been a trying week to dig them out in preparation for the third book of my series (yes, UnSung is about 5/6 done, but since each book leads into the next, I have to make the lead-ins more fluid). I'm giving one of the characters more of my blood than I've ever allowed before. There are some differences between her and I, but if we sat down together and talked about family and friends, we'd have a great deal in common. Do I kill her or give her some story of triumph? Part of the reason I'm not making her 'me' like some writers do is that I don't want that to be a certainty, an emotional parallel that determines the story. I don't want to make her a Mary Sue or paint her as some kind of victim. Her importance is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Even though I'm dancing around it, the bleeding in the brain is the central theme. My brain as a youth, and my heart besides, was something I left to open air to absorb everything. I liked running around barefoot too, just to strengthen the idea. I never really saw a need for filtering, in a time before trauma could issue the need for caution. Perhaps why most bravado comes off as the trait of someone who bluffs or hasn't been tested yet and rarely through actual triumph under fire. But, experience; I could pick out what I liked and throw the rest back, right? It would be nice if a contaminated brain could just get tossed out and replaced, but instead, it's more like a wineglass shattering next to it and try as you might, you just can't pick out all the pieces. No matter how whole and neat you thought your mind, the broken things find all the imperfections. You settle it back in place, tilt your head to test it and everything seems like new. You probably pat your back, puff up with pride and start to swagger into the day.

The pain is blinding. Your eye twitches, an impossibly fast shadow just out of focus. Your foot turns and you hold your breath, relieved that you don't wrench your ankle at least. A lingering sense of vertigo remains and you shoot a quick sidelong glance, your ego recovering enough to hope no one saw what looked like forgetting how to walk.

You tilt your head like you did the time before, only this time, it's cautious. Before you can meet the same vigor of your first test, the splitting pain strikes again. Damn. You're out now; you can't just go home, root around for the glass again. So you get through the day, recovering from every stab with a sudden smile, every stumble with a silly dance, every whimper with a tuneless hum.

When you can finally get around to it, it's gone too deep. You can't be sure if it had already been too far even before you felt it or not, but you tell yourself that you should have looked harder, been more careful. You frantically look for it anyway, only now it's not just glass, but the dirt under your fingernails, the errant hairs floating around, the dust, the icky sticky bugs...

It's bad enough when you have only yourself to blame. Sometimes your glass was put in by a surgeon and it will take a surgeon to get it back out. Yet you swear you know yourself better than anyone and don't want just anyone rooting around in there.

People suffer in silence for reasons that outnumber the sands on this earth. The problem with something getting in is that it has little to do with a fault of strength. We get sick when we need to eat but sometimes we miss the signs that the food was prepared wrong. We get sick when the invisible germs travel by air when we take a breath or nibble on a nail that touched the contaminated door handle. Sometimes we'd rather show up to work barely able to stand rather than admit we aren't invulnerable. Some fault is seen in our life choices, how we take care of ourselves and we are never allowed to blame anyone because all fault is supposed to begin and end with us. There's often more to lose than gain and it's easier to pretend things are handled.

Sometimes we are only so sick because we just tell ourselves it's glorious to be broken. No life is without struggle, but perhaps it is only so bad because the generic band-aids that are in fashion are only making it worse.

People might think our smiles and show of strength and optimism are signs that we're onto some secret of happiness that they covet. There's almost a societally acceptable amount of misery that must be worn to be invisible to this scrutiny or at least not attract the psychopaths that can't tell the difference (or don't care even if they can).

As you can see (or have even done before), it's not difficult to find the analogies, the physical reactions and defenses behind the psychology but it's a very different beast to dissect the psychology, form the characters and the subtlety of the situations. Experience is still limiting since, like my abusers, they were very much counting on the trauma to make it difficult or even impossible for me to find aid or peace. Even parts of my childhood have been eaten away. Your brain sometimes takes more than it needs to, just in case.

I want this for my story though. I can't bear the thought of what hell a memoir would open so I don't even entertain it as non-fiction. What this woman goes through, I won't even dare to assign the same offenders by relation to her lest the comparison be damning, but I'll Frankenstein my experience into this theme because if I don't, I'll make it too sterile and safe. If this is what they mean by bleed, it comes mixed with pain and relief but also the apprehension that I'll have to let it go before it festers. Which means if I write it, I'll be itching to publish it just as much.

But hasn't that always been the case?

I've said many times before, but there is no need to assume all writers are only coming from a place of damage and depression and torment. Sure, for many of us, it's a fact of life, but one thing that is certain is that that mindset is useless to me when I work. Yes, useless. This is inherently why I go through a vulnerable planning phase, to take notes and tap into the messy parts then fortify myself to be the observer to work, to dive back in with the experience, the plan and the narration ready to make sense. I did this as a musician and I do it as an artist. How well do you think I can play flute when the music sneaks up on me and makes me sob? How well do you think I can draw when I'm trembling with emotion? Those things are a complete nuisance to the actual process so finding the mastery to interpret them will never work when I'm in the mindset to work and end up blubbering on my keyboard (the silicone cover on my keyboard is for possible coffee spillage, not my tears).

I know that many people are emotional writers. It's not that I'm not at all, but I can't say that I actually keep the resulting mess of that. It's just not where my stories work.

If only to defend my method, I can't tell you how many times people are surprised when they find out authors like JK Rowling and Sherilynn Kenyon started their famous books in the thick of depression. It doesn't really show, does it? They weren't looking to be locked in that stagnation but to turn magic on it. How many comedians turn their pain into laughter? This obsession with the idea that creatives are locked into this tunnel of only focusing on their real problems is just myopic.

In a sense, you could romanticize their shards of glass as prisms of transcendent light. Can't say I haven't tried to look at it that way. However, I think the glass still cuts sometimes. Life is what we do with the pain.

... Scratch all that. I think I've found my newest writing method.

The World Can Always Use a Hero

For better or worse, fantasy is often whittled down to where heroes (and villains) fall in the grand scheme of things.

In my experience, it's never that simple.

I grew up as a gamer where heroes and villains were always clearly defined. The most visible instances of either were things I could start attributing to the people closest to me at any point in my life.

As I have mentioned before, I like to hop on Quora sometimes and lately, I've seen the plight of psychopaths, assuring the rest of us that they aren't all bad. Maybe you have also seen the movie Unbreakable, where the theme is that everyone has a natural nemesis.

For someone who has come to terms with where they are on the sociopathic spectrum (and we aren't all bad either, for the record), psychopaths ARE the natural nemesis. I'll leave it to you if you want to go do some research on sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies, but to make a long story short, here we go. Sociopaths are very honest, to the point where we come off as blunt, bossy and insufferable. I know it and I do try not to, but I'm a horrible liar where social situations are concerned. Even for my own sake, I do not see manipulation or flattery as possible weapons in my repertoire. If you are charmed by me, chances are you've caught one of my rare passionate moments where I feel both secure and enthused to talk about something I am confident about. On the flipside, psychopaths have that side of themselves on constant point. While we both share a limited sense of empathy, psychopaths are not above using charisma to manipulate or flatter, creating a security that they can exploit, not considering those they hurt. I would not say that all psychopaths do this, but that particular exploit is a sure weapon against the credibility of any sociopath.

I will defend my position with facts and over time, you will realize I am right and trustworthy. A psychopath, however, will immediately win you over with their charisma and you will be more tempted to believe them in that moment, only seeing the truth of the deception when they are well out of reach of the consequences of it.

If I haven't lost you in the aside there, then you better understand what more often makes the theme between heroes and villains. You may have heard it said that actions define the hero or villain. However, the supposed hero is often the charismatic favorite with a dark side you aren't seeing, which makes them very probably a villain at any given moment. The same goes for the villain, where they might just be unpopular or misunderstood, but given access to the red button, they're actually the ones that save all of us ungrateful bastards.

The world needs a hero, yes, but often we are not equipped to know who the heroes are. I am easily both at any given time, so neither put me on a pedestal or lock me away underneath it. This goes for everyone you meet. Be prepared to find your heroes in unlikely places.

In case I've been too distracted to say so, this week has largely been about helping my nephew with his science fair project, although I did get some writing done (woo hoo!). I'd like to resume cover work ASAP next week since there hasn't been a good window for much else outside of organizing some rough templates for them. Nonetheless, it's been a busy week (all the good ones are) and I hope to get back into more intense sessions as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading and keep writing! Hopefully, I can dig up some new tips for everyone.