BURIED EMOTIONS!!!

A friend of mine has the gift of being able to instantly sense the state of emotions in any room that she enters, no matter if these are overt or suppressed. She has often received grief from her friends and family for always trying to delve into the emotions and affairs of others, but she says it is as easy for her to ignore her friends’ emotional and mental states as it is for her to ignore one of them suddenly turning up with an amputated limb. I recently met with her for an afternoon and after we had been talking for a while she suddenly narrows her eyes and asks:

‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ I ask ‘Nothing.. Why do you ask?’

Well, you look kind of unhappy.. unsettled in some way..’

‘Really? That's odd. I don’t know of any particular reason I would be unhappy.. I mean there are a couple of things that I feel below the surface, unresolved things, but I am not aware of being unhappy as such.’

‘I don’t know,’ she says ‘I mean for instance you have been frowning since you sat down, or else giving me strained smiles’

‘Hmm...’ I frown – this time I am aware of it - and think about what she is saying.

I hesitate to argue with her because not two days earlier, another friend of mine had asked me how I felt about some people close to me with whom I currently have a strained relationship. My immediate response was that beyond a general feeling of disconnectedness with them, I only felt a little worried about their well being and maybe mild irritation whenever we had our never ending disagreements. Further questioning by her however revealed that in fact I feel deeply hurt, misunderstood, unsupported and confused - a FAR cry from what I had thought!! This gave me pause at the time, and now it came back to me, so I decided to think more deeply about what might be manifesting so clearly on my face and in my demeanor that my friend had been able to pick it up straight away.

Today morning (two days later), I am sitting in the University library completely absorbed with reading some books on the craft of writing short stories and the biographies of famous short story writers when the thought comes to me (not for the first time either): ‘I do not want to be teaching in my faculty, I REALLY do not!! I want to be getting my business off the ground. I want to be writing fiction. I want to be watching people on the street and making up stories. I want to be creating something new. I do NOT want to be teaching in my faculty!!’

The dissatisfaction with my job has been a recurring theme over the last four months or so; I was sure I had resolved it in December, but then following some new considerations in January, I reneged on my previous decision but obviously my subconscious is trying to tell me that I have not resolved the issue to its satisfaction. This weekend my friend and I also discussed the importance of following one’s bliss, and maybe when my subconscious receives these kinds of information (and it receives them on a daily!), it factors them into its evaluation of my decisions. On a conscious level I know that the see-sawing over the decision to quit stems mainly from one thing: WHERE and HOW I will I do my PhD. Being employed by a university all through one’s PhD study, or at the very least at the time one completes one’s application brings with it such advantages that it is currently unthinkable for me to quit. If I could only find a way around this, life would be MUCH better!! I have thought and thought and THOUGHT about how to get around this, but I am coming up completely blank!! No wonder I had buried the whole business.

Ah well, my friend’s observation has at least forced me to look at this problem again, and I think I have clarified it further – if I can find a way around the PhD problem, then I will, if not, then I will look for ways to make the best of a bad situation; at the very least I will relive my poor spirit from the burden of unresolved problems.

LEARNING TO WRITE FICTION:

I am reading a book on how to write fiction (and think about it) and I am really enjoying it! The good news is that I have already been doing a lot of the things that a writer in training should do to build fitness, such as writing regularly, keeping journals, going around with a notebook in hand to record thoughts and observations, reflecting on my dreams when I wake up, and reading, reading, reading... The bad news is that looking back at some of my own writing (which has drawn a lot of praise from people who read a lot and with whom I share reading taste), I find that it is riddled with some of the more common mistakes that beginning (or BAD) writers make!! This led me to thinking that either:

1. My writing is not all it is cracked out to be – and that therefore my assessors and I are no good

Or

2. Reading these kinds of books (on how to write well) is going to make me sooo critical of my writing, that I’m never going to be able to produce anything that I think is worth publishing!

If the latter is true, then woe is me!! :-/

Ah well, on the bright side, I have such a passion for writing, that very little can truly discourage me - that is surely a plus. Secondly, it turns out that one of the best ways to train as an aspiring writer is to read, and God knows I love to read; moreover,I have read A LOT! Thirdly, I am a quick learner; and what’s more, a reflective one This means that I can only get better if I apply myself! I am sure writers, no matter how gifted, still need to learn how to express themselves and this does not happen overnight. Fourthly, this self criticism can only drive me to better performance; I cannot imagine a bigger obstacle to learning than thinking one is already good enough!

So anyway, reflecting on what I have been reading, I am particularly intrigued by two processes: characterisation and plot. In the case of characterisation, I have always wondered how writers make up completely fictional yet wonderfully believable characters, and was always sceptical about that disclaimer that they include at the beginning of the book that the characters portrayed were completely fictitious and any resemblance to actual living or dead persons was not intentional. As it turns out, or according to this book anyway, it is perfectly possible for these kinds of characters to actually be 'born' within the writer's subconscious!! Obviously, just like babies, they will bear a resemblance to their parents and other relatives (read the people with whom the writer comes into contact), but just like children, they will have a personality all of their own nevertheless.

I found this so intriguing that all day today I have been trying to imagine the response of different characters to different stimuli: in the book they ask you to imagine the reaction of a passenger in a non-smoking compartment of a train to another person who walks in, sits down and lights up. I immediately pictured a non confrontational and self effacing woman, and compared her possible reaction to that of an irritated, overworked, underpaid civil servant for instance. Immediately the possibilities for creating characters opened up to me! Before that, I had worried that I had not interacted with enough people, did not know enough of human behaviour etc. But now that I think about it, maybe reading all those books on behavioural psychology was preparation for just such a time!! Not to mention all those books on religion, politics, the law, feminism, geography, and heaps and heaps of fiction of all genres (except horrors!!) In future these should help me flesh characters out and organise plot.

Speaking of plot, the book says that writers generally use one of two approaches: either they will plan it all out from the beginning, or they will write whatever comes as it comes to them - the end might even get written first, so that the writer writes backwards.. Either way, the one who starts out by laying it all out is likely to force himself into a box, otherwise he will wander away from the plan by all means. This for me was a source of great release - I tend to try and know the end from the beginning; failing that, I often cannot even begin to write a story!!

All in all, comforting thoughts.

(This is an opportune moment to stop I think, writers are advised not to write beyond the end of the story. As it is, the conflict that I started out with is resolved, and the reader (I hope) feels like they have closure. It is also important that the reader does not suspect the writer of cheating - you know like how in a book or a movie, conflict is resolved by highly unlikely people or circumstances - like aliens coming out of no where to rescue the captives; or someone suddenly rising from the dead a la South American soap opera)

A last note: I hope I am not going to fall into the habit of analysing everything I write to death!! That might a bit boring..

bOy mEt gIRl

Skiving off work today, I watched this really useless movie called ‘Wedding Wars’ (worryingly, I’m watching a lot of useless movies of late!!); such an attractive title, and so even more of a let down for it! It is about a guy whose only brother is openly gay, and is about to marry the only daughter of a conservative governor during election year. The straight brother asks the gay brother to be his wedding planner and during the course of events the governor is forced to make his stand against gay marriage, which he is NOT for, which stand the straight brother comes out and admits he shares; the gay brother lays down his wedding planning tools (so to speak) and goes on strike by picketing outside the governor’s house, blah, blah, the brothers reconcile, the day is somehow saved the movie ends!! Lame beyond words.

Anyway, turns out it was not a complete waste of time as I fell to day dreaming after it was over. This was the continuation of a daydream that I drew my sister into one hot afternoon during the Christmas holidays to kill time.. (interesting expression - kill time!! Would't that literally be like burning money? Anyway) In this daydream, we were going to be organising my future wedding. Since I am not dating at the moment, I thought this would also be a good exercise in visualisation and creation. My sister interns with an architect and they have this client who wants to develop 10 acres of land beside the River Nile. We are told there are masses of land on sale around this place as well so it had occurred to me to go and check it out while it was still cheap.

Any how, I decided to have this riverside place as the venue of my daydream. Lazily, we floated off on our day dream – quite a pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon I’ll tell you. At the end of it all, I wondered if I couldn’t look for land specifically to set up a wedding venue for people – especially for those who want to hold garden ceremonies! I would have the place permanently gazetted, build a gazebo right out by the river, build an open walled tented structure with a floor where one could set tables or dance, a place to store food and beverages, enough sockets for all the lighting, video, music, refrigerators… Two or three bandas for the bride and their party to stay over on the wedding night (bed and floor of bridal suite littered with flower petals as an extra), the works!!! Anyway, watching this movie really helped me visualise this!! It may have been weak on coherent storytelling, but it did not hold back on the colour!! I could have chairs and tables for hire, I could put guys in touch with decorators, photographers, transporters, caterers, name it! Heck, I could get them a wedding planner if they wanted!! My business would be called: bOy mEt gIRl - cool eh?

Ahhh, what a nice daydream!! I went back the office eventually but the better part of the afternoon was spent - killed? Gosh, I won't let myself even enjoy a day dream!!