Friday, June 08, 2012

The Werewolf Principle, Part Two of Five- The Electric Air




The full moon is coming.

The highway leading to your creative world comes alive with crackling energy.

You pace, you grow irritable.

You don't want to be around other people.

You want them to stay away so you can write.

The full moon is coming and there is creative electricity in the air you breathe.

You're about to change from that nice person everyone knows into a rather frightening individual.  You're going quit thinking about writing and actually write.

Writers are different than most people.  Beneath our outward humanity, we create dark mysteries, brutal crimes, brooding killers and futuristic worlds where the judicial systems are manned by automatons and humanity itself is on the run.  And fantasy, well, that's a very dangerous world to explore.  All this before we take on the current rage "50 Shades of Gray."

How many times over the years have you wondered what kind of person created the suspense thriller you've been reading?  The paranormal romance?  The sword and sorcery novel that's been keeping you up nights?  Or how about that erotic masterpiece you read when no one else is paying attention?

Would you know the writer if you stood next to them in a checkout line?

They look like everyone else.  Did you really think Stephanie Meyer or Tom Clancy or Stephen King or H.K. Rowling looked different than you and I?

But they are different.  They, too, like you are linked to the waxing and waning of the moon.  They, too, become different people when they write. Is the fact that they are more successful to you in any way linked to the fact that they actually allow themselves to slipper deeper into that new identity?  That they allow themselves to be more completely transformed?  And are you not completely letting go of the reins of your day-to-day identity when you write?

Answer me this, but think about it first:  Are you really the same person when you're writing?  Don't get defensive.  The things you make your characters say- they're not really coming from you.  You wouldn't say those things and mean them.  It's just a story.

I think we do transform on those nights when we really write with power.  I think we become different people.  It's a curse of course, which is something we very much share with werewolves.  And we can't help it, we love the power flowing through us when we write.

How about you- do you become a different person when you write?

11 comments:

Bonnee Crawford said...

I become more fearless when I write. I'll write whatever I want, even though it's usually not something I'd ever say out loud or do in reality. :)

Rick said...

For a writer, that means you're normal, Bonnee. :)

Another writer told me once that the Transformation was the empowerment of our personality, which I thought was interesting because for a werewolf, the Transformation is an empowerment of their physical being.

BernardL said...

I don't change when I write. I become LEGION. :)

Charles Gramlich said...

I used to become a different person when I wrote. Then one day the change became permanent and I'm the same all the time. Were-Gramlich

Neurotic Workaholic said...

Sometimes it's hard to remind myself that it's just a story, especially when the story freaks me out. That happened when I read one of Stephen King's stories, because they really are that scary.

Travis Cody said...

I think I do transform when I write. And maybe that's a little scary. And it could be why I'm not as prolific as I used to be.

Becoming a werewolf...that's a classic loss of control, a descent into madness, and a divesting of humanity. Sure, some of the change is about empowerment. But it's not a harnessed empowerment...physical at the expense of emotional and rational.

And the transformation back...guilt laden at what you did, if you can even remember it. Or maybe that's the point? Writing with abandon something you might not try if you were in control and completely rational.

Rick said...

Somehow I knew you were going to say that, Bernard!

Rick said...

Were-Gramlich is a scary, scary thought...

Rick said...

that's a good point, NA. Does the reader transform as well under the influence of the narrator's voice?

Rick said...

I think that is the point, Travis. What we do as fiction writers really requires the transformation and the self-questioning afterward.

G. B. Miller said...

I like to think I do.

I know that when I sit down in front of my computer to work on a story, either original or rewrite, I usually become whatever character I'm writing about. And I certainly write ideas/concepts that in the real world I wouldn't even remotely think twice about doing. I simply wouldn't do them.

It does make it tough sometimes when people who know me have a hard time reconciling me as a person with me as a writer.