Peregrination #3

I’m beginning to notice something that shouldn’t surprise me, but does rather. Now, I know that a lot of my stories are very introverted—they’re the story of one person, one experience, internal and thought-driven. That in itself doesn’t surprise me in the least. I am, after all, an introvert. I don’t quite know how to think in any other way, but I also know that the richness and depth of what’s inside my head doesn’t translate well and on the outside I just look like a ditz—which I’m mostly okay with, really. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. It just means that one of the reasons I have trouble with dialogue in stories is because I have trouble with dialogue in real life. So my characters think things instead of saying them out loud to someone else in the story because that’s what I do.

As I say, I knew that. I wouldn't be surprised if EVERYONE knows that. Here's the thing I'm surprised by: somehow I hadn’t noticed how often what I write has to do with the hidden, the secret. Things that appear to be on the outside, but are not truly on the inside. And I’m guessing that’s why they so often seem to come out creepy or vaguely horror-like, even though I don't intend that at all. Because we like to be able to count on what we observe. When we can't, we fear it.

This was mostly brought to mind when I noticed a quick little sentence I’d dashed off in reaction to a story prompt. The prompt said, “Finish this sentence: ‘Evening was the time for…’” My sentence ran, “Evening was the time for movement, buoyancy. Daytime was the cowering time.”

I suppose this is also an indicator that I like to turn things upside down. I like to see what happens when the opposite of the expected steps in. I like to discover the effects of showing that the things most people find safety in are the things that have no safety at all for one character or another. Does this make them mad or the truly sane? What if a whole world is turned inside out from our expectations? What if night is safe and day is dangerous? Doesn’t that somehow take all our normal, deep-seated fears of the night and make them exponentially worse because they happen in the light that should be safe?

I love the idea of this exploration into what trips our psyche, but I don’t know that I’ve ever REALLY connected it with my writing before. I hadn’t noticed how pervasive that is in my stories. I’m not entirely sure what it says about me. I would say something like, “Writing about it helps me conquer my own fears,” but I don’t think it would be true. I think what I hope is that I can share this fear with someone who might not otherwise by tormented by it. The whole “misery loves company” schtick, I guess. Except I'm not miserable. I'm also not as sadistic as it makes me sound.

Maybe I just want people to understand why I fear. Because everything can twist when you’re not looking. But that also means that even the dead can become beautiful, the mundane can become extraordinary, and the harshest experience can be the most moving. It’s not all fear. It’s also the essence of hope and wonder.