The morbid child

When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about the end of the world.

Now, by "fantasize" I don't necessarily mean I giddily planned for the eventuality of the Apocalypse the way I giddily planned for my future as a rock star/movie star. My thoughts were more along the lines of... contingency planning. What would I do if zombies took over my hometown, or aliens invaded the planet, or I got forgotten at the mall overnight? (Ok, that last one might have involved some giddiness.) If I got lost in the desert, or dumped in the woods like Hansel and/or Gretel, which creatures would I avoid and which would I eat? Would I have the mental fortitude to bean a cute little rabbit if I had to?

I was not raised by survivalists. Maybe I was innately morbid. Maybe I had watched too many late-night horror movies. Maybe I was just born a control-freak who has to plan for every possible scenario. (To this day, I carry a Swiss Army knife with me, although I'd be hard pressed to cut down even the scrawniest tree with the wee saw at my disposal. Mostly I use it for cutting the tags off of just-bought shoes that I want to wear immediately.) Or maybe my youthful mind was writing stories before I was calling it that. Morbid stories, but stories nonetheless.

The first "story" I can remember coming up with involved a little girl who'd been forgotten by her parents, who then had to fend for herself in the wild. I remember that the story made me cry as I recited it in the hallway of our apartment, to an audience of none. I know I was was about three years old because it was before my brother was born. It's a good thing no one else heard me, I guess. It's probably pretty disturbing to hear babies talking about scavenging in the ominous dark. Other stories involved people being eaten by giant squid and sharks. Maybe I was just morbid.

In other, more light-hearted news, I'm working on a fun little side gig. I'll be able to post about that soon, I think, barring any Apocalypse or zombie attack.

The Age of Reason

Even as a kid, I had a mind for reason. My reasoning didn't necessarily result in factual accuracy, mind you, but it was a logic of sorts. For example, I thought that people didn't like Friday the thirteenth because there had been a scary movie called Friday the 13th. Given the information available to me at the time, it's not a bad conclusion. I also thought people ate fish on Fridays because "Fri" must have had something to do with fish. Fri... fry... fish fry!

Anyway, I have to reason things out and I've always been that way. Sometimes it gets me into trouble when writing because something will pop out on the screen that gives me pause. A character will say something that surprises me (even though I'm the one typing) and I'll start wandering off on a tangent to reason out what so-and-so meant and why. And how. And where. And before I know it, I'm acres and acres away from where I started out. This can be a good thing that adds depth and richness to a story but a bit inconvenient if you're trying to meet a deadline. Or if you've been living in denial over what your story is really about.

A couple things got me thinking about reasoning and wandering and so on. One day when I was about six, I was looking into the back yard through the window after a soft, late afternoon rain. The leaves on the ground were shiny-wet, dark, and thick from lack of raking. As I watched, I saw little fleshy, pink things darting through the leaves. They looked for all the world like three-inch-high people. As far as I knew, I only saw them that one time and even my reason-loving mind couldn't think of an explanation. Tiny humans? Nah. Elves? No, elves lived in trees and made cookies. Aliens? Hopefully not.

Well, recently I was walking my dog in the early evening and I happened to see one of those little fleshy pink things darting under the leaves of a Devil's Pothos. Two things happened simultaneously: One, I recognized it as a Mediterranean Gecko, and two, I recognized it as one of my three-inch-high "people." Why hadn't I ever made the connection before then? I've known about Mediterranean Geckos for several years now but my normally reasonable mind didn't realize until a few days ago they were most likely the mystery creatures of my youth. I'm a little sad to have that one solved. Maybe that's why I subconsciously resisted making the connection for so long.

But it got me thinking about something else I didn't want to acknowledge: A couple of minor characters are taking over the novel I'm trying to write. For years, they were in the back of my mind, not really speaking up, until one of them said something that I just had to investigate. "Why'd he say that? Why does he feel that way?" And off I went to figure it out, and now I realize theirs is the story I want to tell. Took me long enough.

It's a long road, travelled by storytellers and small pink lizards.