I had this disturbing revelation recently.You see, I write a lot about caves.
Digging. Dredging. Mining. Boring. Exhuming. Dark, hidden places where things burrow, hide, slumber, or avoid the light. These themes occur often in my stories. Weird, huh?
Don’t answer.
Subterranea is no longer in print. It was a short story, my first real attempt at horror. It’s about a subway project that unearths a burial chamber, of sorts, and awakens an “interested party,” who also likes to dig. Then there was En Route to Inferno in Coach’s Midnight Diner, wherein a group of college kids on an overnight bender, cross the Mexican border in hopes of disproving an alleged healer. Their drunken excursion leads them into a cycolpean underworld, where a “primordial intelligence” awaits. To top it off, next year’s novel The Telling, focuses largely around an abandoned mine believed to be one of nine mythical gates of hell.
Perhaps I’ve read too much Lovecraft.
Then again, maybe I’m really disturbed.
Don’t answer.
A co-worker recently told me about a friend of his who is a graphologist. Graphology is the pseudo-scientific study and analysis of handwriting, especially in relation to human psychology. In theory, someone’s psychological profile can be constructed from just their handwriting.
And here you thought that florid cursive was a sign of your flamboyance. Sorry, killer.
It got me thinking about the graphology of a novel. What does your novel, its style, subject matter, and recurrent themes, say about you? That’s a rather frightening thought, isn’t it?
A debut author recently Tweeted something about the cold realization that her novel was being… read. People’s eyes were on her story. Her characters were being introduced. Her plot was was being unraveled. Her technique was being scrutinized. It’s a weird feeling and, as you can imagine, she was unnerved.
But her novel reveals more than just her story. It reveals… her. Her psyche. Or psychosis.
As if writers don’t have enough to worry about. Forget getting a bad review. Your soul is on display! Suddenly, you’re the subject splayed before so many prying eyes. Your novel is much more than just a story. It’s a blotter test, a mental fingerprint, an echo of your “inner voices.”
It makes me want to write something gooey and blissful and altogether brainless.
With caves.
I love this post. Love it. I have had these thoughts, and my novel isn’t even out yet. But my short stories are. And so many of them carry themes, much like your caves. In mine fire seems to be a dominant theme. And death. I find myself hard-pressed to write a story in which someone doesn’t die or face death in a peculiar way. I have often wondered what it says about me…
I’ve often wondered that. And whether my style is out of style or what. So many seem to like dark and foreboding, and I just don’t get into that much of that. Not that I haven’t ended up writing some of that, but generally I’m not dark, and overall, neither are my novels. Not that it is all sunshine and roses, mind you. People die and bad things happen to them. But it isn’t the overall feel of the novel being dark.
Perhaps it is my appreciation for the Monkees and spoofs that give my “soul” that spin. But I’ve often wondered what people will see as my “voice” and style, and how many really will like that since it doesn’t seem to fit into the prevailing trends.
So true. Hmm, so let me see… I have written about people in strange and extreme situations, plagues, social control, miracles, dystopias, and at times a dollop of steamy-without-naughty. And I have killed people too. Lots of ’em.
Oh, and Ireland. My only claim to normalcy, really, though I make very bizarre things happen there.
Don’t know what all that says, but I do know it’s me in the pages!
“Down to the Central Earth, his proper Scene,
Repair’d to search the gloomy Cave of Spleen . . .” (from Pope’s Rape of the Lock)
You must be splenetic.
Interesting.
From Spark Notes: “Umbriel’s journey to the Cave of Spleen mimics the journeys to the underworld made by both Odysseus and Aeneas. Pope uses psychological allegory (for the spleen was the seat of malaise or melancholy)…”
Bear with me while I come at this blog post from two angles: the viewpoint of a writer and the viewpoint of a mom of a writer.
Wait, that’s not the complicated part.
I know my debut novel will reveal parts of me. (No, I’m not the debut author Mike referred to, but I understand what she’s thinking.) But I put certain aspects into my story–things my characters struggle with, ask questions about–because I either have been challenged by those same things or have watched others face those struggles–and win or lose.
My adult son is also a writer of urban fantasy. There have been times when I’ve read a short story he’s written and asked him (this is a direct quote): “What dark corner of your mind did that story crawl out of?”
And then I wondered if I needed to offer to pay for counseling. Or ask him not to use a pen name if the story got published. (Some have, some haven’t. He doesn’t use a pen name.)
Sometimes more than your soul is on display … you’re dragging your family’s collective souls into the spotlight too.
Of course, I can always remind everyone how much my son is like his father.
Works for me.
I, of course, meant that I asked my son TO USE a pen name. Pardon the typo. LOL.
Thanks for commenting, Beth! You’re right about your “family’s collective souls” being on display. I have more than once asked what my mother would think about something I’ve written. But I wonder if your son’s stories aren’t part of his “therapy.” At least, he is giving vent to “dark things,” rather than holding them in. Which is one reason I am so suspicious of feel good storytellers. I can’t help but think they’re hiding something…
i agree w/the therapy part. my daughter writes from her soul, and when it hurts me (times esp when she writes about the divorce), i know it’s very theraputic for her to get it out of her, to define it, not to hold it in. i also love seeing into her soul.
Couldn’t agree more. If writing is therapy for me at times, why shouldn’t it be therapy for my son. I need to go re-read his stories … LOL.
Personally, I think that’s the real power of writing, and it’s those writers I love the most…the ones who I really sense are letting themselves “bleed into their stories”.
At the risk of talking about being too self-referential, I think this is why I’ve not sold a lot of short fiction. Too many of my old shorts were in someways very manipulated, “genre” or “monsters” pieces that relied a little too much on cliched tropes, and not what really harnessing what you’re talking about, Mike.
One of my Borderlands instructors, Mort Castle, told me this recently, when I was asked for advice about developing my short fiction (after he’d rejected several of my pieces for one of his anthologies:
“The real stuff, the stuff that lives and lasts, comes out of late night conversations with your very own self.
I love this post, Mike, because I’m trying to do it more and more. Seems like – for me, anyway – that kind of fictions writers purer and true than anything else.
“At the risk of talking about being too self-referential”
Wow. Someone hasn’t had their energy drink yet…
“when I was asked”
when I was ASKING…
You gotta balance self-analysis with the inherent themes/details of your chosen genre. It makes perfect sense to include scarey places – say, caves – in horror novels and to have guns,explosions and car chases in action stories. I’m not saying there aren’t clues about the authors, just that some of it is deliberate and consistent.
Besides, we’ve all played Freud with other people’s work; did we think our own would be exempt?
LOL! And writers are just neurotic enough to make that their big worry (on top of all the other ones).
Mike, what a great post. My debut novel is coming out soon and already those who have read it and know me as a person ask where did all that blood and darkness come from? My main character is violent with fits of rage and I’m not like that at all. Really, I’m not. I said I’M NOT LIKE THAT!!!
Okay, calming down. You like caves. I like blood. Lots of blood. Puddles and rivers of blood. So, I have to be careful. I’m a doctor, not a phlebotomist!
[cue McCoy voice] Darn it, Jim – “I’m a doctor, not a phlebotomist!”
Is that a Star Trek – Original influence I hear?
lol – I’m a trekkie from way back. not sure McCoy can be called ‘cute’!
“Cue” not ‘cute’
my dyslexia again … now that makes sense!
There’s a Star Trek besides the original? *-)
Logic clearly dictates that it is a reference to the original Star Trek. My fascination with blood is therefore, a lot of tribble for me!
Next Generation?
the family thing is a big deal for me. i’ve been told more than once over many years i should write my ‘story’ in a book for others, but the reason i choose not to do so is that my story is not just about me. there are too many others involved, not the least of which are my children. i have thought about letting someone else write it and changing enough of the personal info for privacy while still providing the story that would help others.
***
the revealing of your person is one of the reasons i do not let my girls (ages 13 and 11) read a lot of what i write. being divorced, i do not want to give them any information that i might not want their dad to have b/c i don’t want them to have to choose whether to share it with him or not. it’s not their burden.
***
in reading The Resurrection, it took awhile for me to stop thinking about the author behind the words and just read the story (which i greatly enjoyed).
Yikes! Most of my writing so far has a fair bit of infidelity or multiple partnering. I’ve been asked a couple of times at author events if my work is autobiographical in any way and my answer is a resounding NO.
I also like dark themes, digging up old bones and relics, and a bit of blood and guts. Does this mean I’m psychotic?
We should write what we know, but on the other hand, we obviously aren’t always writing from personal experience.
The topic of pen names and not writing things that family would find questionable has come up here. I guess a pen name is an option, but people are going to know who you are anyway …
Tracy, you wrote, “The topic of pen names and not writing things that family would find questionable has come up here. I guess a pen name is an option, but people are going to know who you are anyway …”
I began writing vignettes and scraps of memories about my very dysfunctional family maybe twenty years ago, largely for therapy but also because I felt like someone out there needed to know about this side of me. What I mean is that a specific someone didn’t need to that but that I needed to be able to tell that stuff to someone or other–besides a psychoanalyst.
About three years ago, I showed a sample to a pro at a writing conference. She encouraged me to find an agent.
Well, you know, my family has all passed on. In many ways, I would still like to get this stuff out into the world. I still want someone to know about it all. But I would definitely have to use a pen name & change lots of details. Even the states in which it takes place. I would never want anyone–including my dearest friend–to know some of this.
Lately I’ve been reading some older Dean Koontz paperbacks, and the last one I finished, The Bad Place, is a corker. It’s a mishmosh of genres–science fiction, horror, comedy, tragedy, suspense, even a Christian subtext–but somehow he pulls it all together, and the result is a mindbending roller-coaster ride that’s not for the squeamish.
In his updated afterword he addresses this very topic, Mike. Everyone from his close friends and loved ones to his editor and agent all said essentially the same thing to him: “Dean, for God’s sakes, what dark corner of your mind did you pull THIS one out of?”
Therein hangs the tale. I think every man-jack (and woman-jill) of us puts some of our “real selves” on the page, whether we set out to or not. The truly scary part, as others here have touched on, comes when strangers read our works and judge not only the writing, but–quite possibly–the fevered brains that produced it.
It’s all of a piece, though, and unless one is writing math textbooks, I don’t see any way of us avoiding a little literary nudity.
If there was a “LIKE” button for this comment, I’d be clicking it repeatedly…
This is disconcerting to me as well. I’ve rarely written anything that’s really light, with the exception of one unpublished story. And I couldn’t write humor if someone were tickling my feet with feathers. (Could -anyone-?))
My first fantasy has serious conflict, involves seemingly “insurmountable odds”, and depicts several deaths.
Things really get dark in the second one.
A friend & I used to trade manuscript extracts & crits by email. He was involved in the whole first book and the very beginning of the second one. A few days ago he wrote that he was reading the second novel and has passed the halfway point. He said, “This is really dark, isn’t? This is much darker than what you wrote earlier.”
He and other fellow authors who have remarked on the same thing are absolutely right. What most of them don’t realize is that my beloved grandmother died halfway through the first draft of the second book. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, everything that I was feeling flooded into my writing.
Now on a lighter note, I have often wonder what my “voice” is. I feel like I don’t have one but maybe everyone thinks that about their own voice?
Interesting post, Mike. I’ve noticed themes, if you will, in my writing as well. Both of my novels deal with unusual things that happened in the character’s past, and the long-lasting power of parental abuse.
Honestly, when I first set out to write a few book ideas a few years ago, this was something on my mind, since a lot of elements of my own life were in my stories. At first, subconsciously, then I noticed them and started to wonder about that part of writing stories.