Writing group thinks I should write a fictionalized account of some things that happened to me. I brought an essay I wrote about a relationship I was in and they thought it would make a good subject for a novel. I haven't really written about my life or ever tried to fictionalize real people in stories. Not consciously, anyway. I like creating characters who are new and I get to create a whole backstory for. Putting a fictional gloss on reality never appealed to me as much. I always thought, that's why it's fiction. You make it up. But it might be interesting to explore this. Maybe I'll dip my foot in with a short story and see how it goes.
Mary Beth said Nancy is like a funnel and I'm like a megaphone. Nancy takes larger subjects and likes to break them down to more and more specific details, and I take details and interpret larger and larger possibilities from those details. Very interesting theory. I learned long ago to have great respect for MB's interpretations.
The story I'm writing now, although set in a contemporary realistic setting, is about a slightly fantastical figure whose world I'm having to dream up entirely. I mean his psychological world. It's not a place I'm familiar with. So I've hit a snag as I write. I need to figure out more of his background, his motivation, his family, so I know what I'm dealing with. Even if the reader doesn't get to find out all that, I need to know. I'd like to discuss it in more detail here but I have an instinct which tells me not to. You only write a story for the first time once, and I don't want to write it here.
I was disgusted with The Bachelor after this week's episode. They had women from many different past seasons talk about what made a good bachelor. Every single one, except for one, talked exclusively about physical attributes. Are you kidding? It's more important to have someone tall, dark, and handsome, with "nice hands," than someone intelligent and funny whom you have good chemistry with? I amazed in general how little either the women or Jason on this season have talked about wanting someone intelligent or compassionate or, say, in touch with who they are, who have a perspective on their place in the universe and where they fit. Instead Jason, for example, talks about how "amazing" someone is or how great her eyes are or how she's "fun." Maybe it's not surprising so few of the show's relationships have worked out if the main criteria people have for each other is looking good in a bathing suit and if they're "fun." This is the person they are talking about marrying! Not much about marriage really revolves around bathing suits. Interestingly, though, the woman who had the greatest spark of life and intelligence about her (who got canned last episode) seems to be a fan favorite and might be the next bachelorette.
The one who I think Jason is going to pick is Melissa, who he said reminded him of both his ex-wife and DeAnna, who he proposed to in The Bachelorette and who chose the other guy. Although I like Melissa, I'm worry a little he's fixed into this type which he's inevitably drawn to and which never works out. People are more than their type, though, so maybe it will be okay. Time will tell.
DeAnna pops up again next episode, apparently to beg him to give her a second chance, which throws a wrench into the whole "getting ready to propose to another woman" plan of the finale. I wonder if they knew she wanted to talk to him and delayed it until the end to get the maximum dramatic effect. If so, it was plain cruel. I'm very curious to see what she has to say. I could have told DeAnna it was futile (if that indeed was her plan) and not to humiliate herself on national television, but the last-ditch impulse of the romantic brain is hard to circumvent. Sometimes we want to throw ourselves on a stake for love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment