Not That Deep

So this guy rides up on a white horse today.

I suppose whether or not you believe me depends solely on what the context is but generally, in the real and mundane world we all inhabit, you would say ‘yeah, right’ or something along those lines.

Okay so not a white horse then.

It’s really not something you see everyday, especially when you work on an industrial estate.  Much more likely to encounter idiots in BMWs.  I'm not saying that all BMW drivers are idiots, just that all idiots seem to be driving BMWs.

Don’t take my word for it, look around.

Moving on.

If a guy was going to arrive in something white its much more likely within the confines of an industrial estate that it will be a white van.  Less likely that he will be wearing a suit of armour.  There again, if he’s not on a horse and exposed to the elements, he probably doesn’t need one.

I feel you frowning.

Did you really not see where I was headed with the guy on a white horse thing?

Okay, looking for a modern day hero to ride up and rescue the trapped princess from the prison she has inadvertently found herself, in a building of torture and pain.

What's that?

As this is a modern day story, why can’t she rescue herself?

Aha, this is the interesting part - she doesn’t know it’s a prison.  She has willingly entered this place because it was shiny and bright on the outside, and offered smiles of sweet wealth on the inside, but once she entered it, there was no escape.

She is even allowed to leave for short periods of time, to make her think that she is free of it and can go whenever she wants, but she must return and pay for her time.

Who could rescue her?

Who could convince her that she needs to be rescued?

Desperate times call for desperate measures and she needs to be shocked out of her inertia.  Guy on a white horse not looking like such a stupid idea now, is it?  Come to think of it, perhaps a white horse is not enough.

Maybe it needs to be something more awesome than that.

And I do mean awesome in the true meaning of the word, not the Americanised version where everything is ‘awesome’ and it really seems to have lost its’ clout.

Okay, how about he parachutes in a-la James Bond style, lands perfectly on the white horse, and then rides up to the front door, entering the building and stunning everyone with a flourish of his mighty sword (ahem, minds OUT of the gutter please), then locating the trapped princess and sweeping her off her feet.

Sounds good, in theory.

But then what?

She says ‘put me down you weirdo’ and goes off with the guy in the BMW, while the hero is left to consider how to carry a parachute on the back of his horse.

So what is the moral of the story?  Well, it could be that …

Nah, don’t do morals.

I’m just not that deep.

To Be Scared

Is it wrong to be drawn to something that scares you?

I’m not talking about genuinely scary things like big hairy spiders with far too many eyes and huge monster teeth, or scratching noises in the walls that could be big hairy spiders…  Okay that's enough of that visual image for a while.

I’m talking about the unknown.

As a writer I cannot help but be drawn into the realm of the unknown, whatever it is I happen to be writing.

I can prepare all I want to and have my characters waiting patiently, or sometimes not so patiently, to be called into action, but when it starts to happen I have little idea what will happen.

Indeed, my characters seem to take a perverse pleasure in doing the opposite of what I think they will do, or what I plan for them to do, that I am fortunate if the scene ends up in the place it should be, and if even half of the plot points have been covered.

As such it is a place of the unknown.

This is not entirely new to me.

Every book I have ever written has never ended up where I thought it would.  There are things that were supposed to happen which didn’t, characters died who were not supposed to, and others lived when I had planned their gruesome deaths in intricate detail.

Every time I enter a scene with my characters, it’s a toss-up whether the scene will turn out as planned, but I’ve discovered that if I get to know them well enough, I can plan a little better than when I set things up and let them go.

Like wind-up toys with no direction and little more than surface entertainment value.

If I get to know them too well, though, doesn’t it remove the possibility that something unexpected could happen?

Removing the unknown?

As a fan of the suspense genre, it is those forays into the unknown that cause such nerve-tingling fear (see above re: big hairy spiders in the walls) in us mere readers, ensuring that we have to sleep with the light on and can only drop off once the daylight has appeared from the wrong side of the night.

And yet we keep reading them.

It’s fun to be scared sometimes, to enter a world not under our control and see what happens when we become a willing part of it.  Until things go wrong and then it becomes a choice between the written down fears within the pages, or the ones created inside the mind once the pages are closed.

I thought that once I started writing, I would finally be the one in control of that world, of its' characters and events.

I know, naïve right?

The only thing certain is that I am entering the realm of the unknown whenever I construct a new scene, and it is with a sense of trepidation that I go into that world to see what will happen, what will befall those I have put there, including myself.

I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know who I will encounter there, or what the end result will be.

But that’s part of the fun.

If I knew exactly what was going to happen all the time, what would be the point?  Why would I enter a world where everything was planned out in detail, where I would feel no sense of excitement about going back there?

It’s what keeps me writing.

Once everyone is in the right place at roughly the right time and events are set into motion, it is the desire to find out what will happen next that keeps me wanting to take it further.

I go back to see who will live, who will die, and how they will get themselves out of the trouble I throw at them.  And trust me, there is never any shortage of that.

They never fail to surprise me.

It is the surprise, the excitement, that fuels a desire to return to the land of the unknown and see what lies there, beyond the next door.

It’s why I go back there, as a writer, and as a reader, to face what is unknown and therefore scary.

But is it wrong to be drawn to it?

Not from where I’m sitting.

It’s fun to be scared.

But It Helps

They are all around the house - lurking in dark corners as little beacons of light.

Sounds like the beginnings of a ghost story doesn’t it?

The truth is less terrifying than that.

Probably.

I write little notes and leave them all around the house, where they will do the most good.  Sometimes they are there to inspire, sometimes to offer comfort, and sometimes they even work.

Every writer knows how hard it can be to keep going.

It’s not like being the member of a band, where even if it takes them half a lifetime to reach the platform they were striving for, they are there for each other, offering a helping hand when they need it, ready to be the voice of motivation and inspiration.

Writers have something similar.

We have social networking, book events, writers festivals, and the like, but when we go home at night, it’s just us - the empty rooms full of furniture, and the darkness.

This really is beginning to sound more and more like a ghost story.

Hopefully, a good one.

But not too good.  I have to go to bed soon, and do not want to be up all night with the light on.

I digress.

Those empty cluttered rooms are a great place for padding around in while I collect my thoughts, and it’s useful to look around and see something that helps.  Even if it’s just a few words on a battered post-it note to keep me going, or to help me re-focus when my mind is wandering.

Which, you may have noticed, happens rather a lot.

Over the years they have built up into a little collection all their own.  I sometimes wish they had dates on them, but I know better.  Those dates would lead me off down a path of forgotten thought I can ill afford when I'm in padding mode.

The point of having them there is not to send me further off inside my own mind.

And usually it only takes one to bring me back.

Two at most.

Then the other day I began to notice a pattern forming.

Yes, you’ve guessed it.

They had been arranged into a meaningful symbol on the seemingly blank wall, spelling out a message from beyond the grave…

Kidding.

But there is a recurrent theme, and one  I was not consciously aware of until I saw them all together.  Each one was there to reassure the solitary, tangled writer, that she chose this life for herself.  And that she was right to do so.

Taking about yourself in the third person again?

Really?

That’s just weird.

It is true that I chose it, and that I continue to seek a solitary state of being when and where I can, so I can think and write without interruption or disruption.

There is a reason why the solitary, tangled writer lives in the middle of nowhere, on top of a lonely windswept hill, with little more than sheep as her company.

Little much, don’t you think?

You have plenty of neighbours around you, and willing to help you out should you ask, but it is your choice to close the curtains and hide inside your world.

And that third person thing really is weird.

Even weirder than the noises that come in the night, the scratching in the walls, the eerie sounds that pass by in the darkness, the creaking of floorboards in the empty attic above your head…

Thanks.

That’s just what I need.

Yes, what I really needed to help me sleep tonight was another round of ‘Guess the Noise’ when my logical brain has gone to sleep, my overactive imagination has taken control, and sounds that make sense in the light of day, somehow gain a new and unknown resonance in the darkness.

Alone.

But by choice.

That’s what the little sayings and notes scribbled in moments of blind inspiration say to me, from their deliberately random places around the house.

You chose to be on your own because you understood that in order to give yourself the time and space to write, particularly when you have to work a full-time day job to pay the bills, you have to give yourself…

...well, the time and space to write.

The solitary, tangled writer had to see if she really was a writer, with the passion to write her words every day, or if for her it was just a hobby, one that would peter out with the wide open space of freedom for her mind.

Okay, that third person thing is really weirding me out now so I’m going to go and read something nice and calming, then perhaps I will sleep later.

M.R. James perhaps.

Or a little Edgar Allan Poe.

Hey, if I’m going to be up all night, might as well make it worthwhile.

Remember, you don’t have to be alone to be a writer…

But it helps.

Never Tell Me

It’s the question every writer is asked, whether they look forward to waxing lyrical about their own work, are unsure about what their work is really all about, or balk at the audacity of the question itself.

So, what’s this book of yours about, then?

I’ll talk in generalities about the characters and plot, then get caught up in telling the story, complete with physical gestures, until the person asking the question stops nodding, looks confused and utters a non-committal ‘Oh’ while presumably wishing they hadn’t asked.

Not the answer they were looking for.

What is it really about … Life and death?  Love and loss?  Pain and pleasure?

Still too vague.

What they’re really asking for is a shortcut.  A succinct sentence that will tell them everything your novel is about without them having to read it, because life is too short to read them all.

And they are looking for the answer.

So am I.

It’s why I read and, I assume, why I write.

I want to uncover that one book in billions that will give to me the one answer I seek and when I am finished reading it, I will know the truth at last.

Every book I read gives me answers, sometimes to questions I had not even considered, but inevitably it leaves me with more to know, more to understand, more to seek out and uncover.

I may never read it.

I may never write it.

Perhaps it is hidden across many books, each with a piece of the puzzle, and when they are all added together, the whole becomes an answer to the sum of its parts.

It’s the journey that has me.

For every answer I receive, and the resultant nine questions it always brings, I feel the glow of knowing, and the excitement of not-knowing.  I know what is newly known and also know that there is more to be known than what I know, you know?

I think I lost myself a little there.

What I meant to say is, I don’t want a shortcut.

Of course life is short and the only thing you know for sure is where you’ll eventually end up, but how you get there is an act of sheer will and discovery, as you make mistakes, happen upon unexpected friends, or find yourself in the right place at the right time to experience something amazing.

So if someone tells you exactly what will happen and when to expect it, doesn’t that diminish the moment from being all that it can be?  Doesn’t that lessen your experience of it?

Say you listen to your favourite song because it exactly reflects the best moment in your life, does it help you to know exactly what every phrase means, what the songwriter intended to say, how they wanted you to feel when then wrote it?

I don’t think so.

The truth of what the songwriter intended can only, at best, confirm what you always believed it was about.  At worst, it can destroy the meaning you layered over the lyrics, and make you feel like you got it wrong.

It’s one of the few downsides to seeing your favourite band live, as they sometimes insist on telling you exactly what every song is about before they play it.  If you’re fortunate, the feedback will eat up their words or the people around you will be shouting to cover their voice.

I was not so fortunate.

A song I once loved has now become merely one I enjoy listening to, purely because I did not see its political meaning within the words, and when this was pointed out to me, it made me feel, quite frankly, stupid.

When I listen to it now, I can see what its' intended meaning is to those who wrote it, but it has lost its’ meaning for me.

So I prefer not to know.

I recently started watching a series called Songbook where great songwriters talk about their music and the song-writing process.  Being slightly musical and slightly writer-ish I find their processes fascinating, but am always wary of them revealing the meanings of their songs to me.

Thankfully, most of them seem to understand that their greatest songs have as many meanings as listeners, and refuse to divulge the true meaning despite protestations from fans and interviewers.

Quite right, too.

Never tell me.

What's in a Name?

A rose by any other would smell just as sweet.

Oh really?

The name we are given to last us our entire lives completely shapes our destiny and don’t you forget it.

I mean, who would you rather be?

Jack the saviour of the world (and take a moment to think of just how many heroes there are called Jack, by the way) or Cecil the saviour of…?  I’m struggling to think of anything Cecil could actually be the saviour of.

And no, I don’t have a problem with the name Cecil (you can insert your own least-heroic name in here), it just doesn’t evoke the kind of visual image I want to project when I think of someone who will do what it takes to win the day, then let his feelings out later when he is home, crying in the arms of the woman he loves.

Would a Jack actually do that, or would he cry alone?

I digress.

The name we are given is the one we have to live with our entire lives and is in no small part responsible for not only how others see us but how we see ourselves.

Personally I always wanted a name you could do more than one thing with, like Elizabeth or Roberta though I guess it's easier with a name a like Mary - harder to get wrong.

And so much fun being called Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.

So much fun.  And the chanting.  All that chanting.

It doesn’t make me want to kill people at all.

Definitely not.

Seriously.

Where was I?  Oh, right.

So there are reasons why crime writers become crime writers (instead of murderers, but that’s a definitely a subject for another day) and how the names we are called  affect how we see ourselves and who we turn out to be.

I know for a fact that I cannot truly know someone unless I know their name and this is doubly important for characters, whom I cannot truthfully write until they tell me theirs.

Or, and this is closer to the actual process of naming my characters, they allow me to guess.

It’s the one thing guaranteed to bring me to a complete standstill in the middle of a sentence, and leave me stuck there until I can identify the new character by name.

They’re no help, of course, but stand and wait for me to identify their name like some twisted version of Guess the Guest.

And for someone who is traditionally ‘bad at names’ it’s a particular problem.

It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, and now I have a store of names put aside for just such an occasion, so I at least have somewhere to start.

Well, it’s a single sheet with a few names jotted down on it, but you get the idea.

Once their name is pinned down it’s there for the duration.  There are some I don’t particularly like or resonate with, but that’s usually because there’s some hidden aspect to their character that hasn't yet been revealed to me.

Sometimes they are shy and don’t want to tell me their secrets, sometimes they think it's more fun for me to guess, but the name they nod their heads in agreement with is the one that truly represents who they are.

I haven’t as yet come across a character who actively changes their name to fit who they think they are, I mean, even the undercover agents keep their first name in whatever persona they happen to find themselves working in.

What I mean is someone who is born with one name.

Then they change it and become someone else because they aren’t who they think they should be.

They spend their lives constantly changing it and recreating themselves, until they finally grow to accept the name they were born with, realising it’s who they were meant to be all along.

Deep.

Very deep.

Or quite possibly bull-crap.

Not entirely sure I’ve made up my mind about that one, which is probably why that character has yet to appear.

When they finally do, it will be interesting, of that I have no doubt.

And what will they be called?

After all, what’s in a name?

A Place to Hide

I know it is a place to hide.

It may not be the happiest, or the shiniest of places to be at times, but it is mine to go to whenever I am in genuine need of escape from this world.

For years I made up different places, other worlds, casting them with characters from the world around me, people I know and people I don’t, those I imagine from pictures I have seen, and stories felt from songs I have heard.

With myself as the central character.

Obviously.

Whatever happened would revolve around me, particularly in the early days, when life was a lot more simple and I could bring the characters from my favourite television shows into my world, then have them act out roles I chose for them.

The likes of Dick Turpin mixing with the likes of Starbuck, and yes, I am talking about the original series.

I’ll let you work out the maths for yourself.

Regular characters came and went as teenage years, and the plots that evolved within my world became more complex and confusing, much like the real world, so confusing that I sought the realms of other writers to transport me completely out of my too-rapidly changing body and mind.

Entering the dark worlds of Koontz and King gave me so many more places to explore, where the blackest of dreams were not just allowed, but encouraged.

When eventually I found their worlds too frightening to stay inside for long, I sought refuge in my own, where those I had ignored still waited for me.

But my world had changed.

Their frightening worlds were so vivid and so real that I struggled to remain locked inside my own without theirs pushing on the boundaries, trying to get in

 I hid further and deeper inside, but still they would not go, so I began to create guardians that would keep them out.

Fuelled by the worlds of other writers, particularly Whedon and his quest for strong characters to take on the night and win, a new breed of character emerged within my own world, one that could face the dark ones but could even take them on.

As the boundaries became more secure, my world expanded again to include characters with greater depths, acting out their roles and allowing their dramas, both big and small, to be brought forth.

Without me.

I saw them play their scenes out, an observer now of the characters and their lives, sometimes taking part in the action, sometimes content to sit on the sidelines and watch from a distance, always engrossed with their events.

I have visited this ever changing and constantly evolving world for so many years now, with the characters who live and die there, who sometimes just want to dance or sing, and other times want to conquer the mountains or slay the monsters, that it takes little for me to return there.

Yet I am still surprised.

In the middle of writing a chapter, knowing that I need to bring in a necessary character to create tension, to bring intelligence and the sharpness of mind required for the part I need him to play, while understanding that I have done nothing by way of preparation for his character, in he comes.

He walks confidently into the scene, bringing every quality I need him to have, and a few more for good measure, fully-formed, as if he has been there all along, standing in the wings, waiting to be called.

It surprised me.

So much so, that it made me wonder where on earth he could have come from, without any preparation or decision-making on my part, other than selecting his name from a list.

Perhaps once his name was on that list, it was enough to spark a seed in the subconscious and create him from scratch so I would know how he looked, walked, talked, and took his coffee.

Black, if you’re wondering, with two spoons of Demerara sugar.

In fact, he came through so strong that I wondered after I had written him in, whether I should write him out and give him his own series of books.

Can’t have him stealing the spotlight, after all.

But my point, if in fact I have one, is this.

I have never truly understood before how necessary the world I have created is to me, not just in terms of having a place to hide, but also in being a place of making characters and understanding their stories.

Where characters are waiting to be called.

And no-one has to hide.

The Bad Man

You create him.

You conjure him up from the very depths of your imagination, breathe life into his dark mouth, give him a name, set him free on the page, and watch what happens as he cuts his bloody path through your story-world.

 The others of your creation have no idea who he really is, what he truly represents for you, they just know there's another monster to deal with, someone who has to be challenged, gotten the better of, captured, even killed.

But first they must understand him, and for them to understand him, so must you.  Plumbing the depths of his depraved mind, to see what makes him tick, what turns him on, the images inside his head, of the things he has done, the things he wants to do, needs to do, would do to you.

Given half a chance.

The thought of it repels you, makes you back away from the page and send in your most fearless warrior to challenge him.  But just as you sought to understand the monster within the man, your warrior begins to see the man behind the monster, the world from his point of view.

The darkness inside them both.

As they journey into the depths together, allowing you to tag along, do you stop to look around at where they are taking you, or do you race to keep up, running as fast as you can, desperate to stay with them in case they leave you behind.

Were you meant to go this way?

When your fearless warrior seems lost to the darkness, to the man behind the monster, you send a team in to fetch her out.  But were you both so caught up in the journey that you let them get too far, go too deep, beyond the reach even of those who could have brought them back.

If you let them.

You catch up with them at the end of their path, in the dark warmth of their own night-time, giving in to their desires, encouraging each other to take what they want from anyone around them, including each other.

Have you have only just come to know this man, to see him for who he really is?

Or did you know him all along?

The darkness is not bottomless, you have just never been deep enough before.  Is it only in the blackest depths that a light can truly shine?

When your warrior shows you just how true she always was, and takes the life of the monster you have both come to love, do you feel the tears that she cries as she kills him, or is it just the release of your own shared darkness?

As you carry each other upwards to the surface, a piece of you is left down there, in the cold, in the black, in the darkness that is as it always was; a place for no-one to dwell.

One day you will return to retrieve that piece of yourself, when the loss has been blunted by time and you are ready to make yourself whole again.

When you can accept the true identity of your creation.

The Bad Man.