Degree of Separation

January 26, 2012December 22, 2014 / Lisa / 4 Comments

I belong to a mystery book group on the Shelfari website. We just finished a discussion on Val McDermid’s book, The Mermaid’s Singing. One of the discussion points was around the difficulty of reading scenes of torture. My response has continued to nag me, so I’m going to broaden the response, here.

I read the book, and also watched the television show based on it. For the discussion group, I said that reading a torture scene troubled me a lot more than watching it on TV. I felt it was because watching something allows a greater degree of separation than reading.

Reading allows no separation between the reader and the story. We’re up close, physically and mentally. Our imagination allows us to be more deeply involved because we picture everything the way we need or want it to look. We have the tactile experience of holding that story in our hands, either in print or within an e-reader. The outside world is held at bay because we are within our own mind, even though we are reading the words of another.

With television, we have the physical separation, nothing to touch but the remote, and distance between the couch and the box. We are also not so intimately involved because there are others around us in the form of the actors. We are observing only, not engaged because our imagination isn’t needed. The scene, setting, and characters are chosen for us. And the emotions conjured by the scene are only those emotions the actor shares with us. In contrast to the emotions a character is given by a writer, that I, as a reader, can project on to and picture the way I want that emotion to look.

So, watching a torture scene in a thriller on TV may be disturbing, but reading it, for me anyway, was so unsettling I considered not finishing the book. I love Val McDermid’s writing, and a testament to her strong skill is her ability to raise very strong reactions and emotions in me. This is one example of her skill. She pulls me into her story and eliminates all barriers between me and the characters.

Television just isn’t the same.

Brief Weather Post

January 18, 2012 / Lisa / 8 Comments

Last week a friend posted a beautiful piece on snow at http://sparksinshadow.wordpress.com/. Her words made me long for snow, as up until that day, our winter had been mild. I even commented on how I was looking forward to the predicted snow we were supposed to get within a few days.

That was before a nightmare trip on the highway that took hours of negotiating spun out cars, trucks, and buses, driving sideways in the road in my own truck, and seeing trees come down. That was also before spending three days with no power, running the generator, feeding the wood stove, watching more trees come down, and chainsawing our way out. I regretted my comment on that blog.

Only momentarily.

Because today I did not have to run a child to school, do laundry, and run errands. Instead, the snow has given me a whole day to write. How wonderful is that?

The photo below doesn’t show the depth of the snow that much. We have three feet right now and it’s still snowing. I’m going to see if I can find a way to send it back to the sparksinshadow blog. After I finish writing, of course.

Why Write?

January 12, 2012 / Lisa / 13 Comments

The owner of a bookstore is offering a course on writing and has asked myself and two friends to host it. Of course we said no.

Right. Of course we greedily jumped at the chance. We will be meeting soon to brainstorm ideas, and here’s where my mind has wandered off to. Let’s see. Plot, character arc, dialog, setting, to outline or not to outline. Blah, blah, blah. How many times have we listened to people discourse on those topics?

It seems like eventually a writer ends up talking about their individual writing process. And believe me, I’m not one of those who says a writer has to write my way or they’re doing it wrong. Which then makes me wonder, why talk about my process if it is simply what works for me? And who cares?

See how easy it is to talk yourself out of feeling like you have anything valuable to offer? But seriously, how can you make such a course fresh and interesting? Well, of course it depends on the skill level of the audience. Brand new writers are going to be excited to talk about any of those topics. Writers who have been in the business a while, however, might want more.

That all sounds fine, but I still want a flash-bulb idea. I want to walk along the story river and find a rock of an idea that’s never been turned over.

I want to have people leave excited to write. That, to me, is more important than talking about whether to outline or not. So then the question is, how do you create and share that excitement?

I guess you talk about the love of writing because really, that’s why we write isn’t it? We don’t love writing because we get to plot or create a synopsis.

So help me out here. Why do you love writing? Or creating any art form for that matter?