November 2nd, 2004
Back in 1991 I wrote a novel called, The Theory of Accessibility. In it, I featured a man named Rob Mackie who grows ever more childish and crazy (in about that order) as he and his girlfriend drive across Canada (from West to East and back again). It was written in the form of a journal, edited by his older, much more square, brother (who added occasional comments) and when I was finished and showed it to some friends and family, they were all certain that it was an autobiography.
Well, they were wrong, of course. The big tip-off in that should have been the fact that Rob kills himself at the end of the journey :-) but just try getting notions like that out of peoples' heads (proving a negative is impossible, of course).
I had a -er- friend at the time who was more than a little jealous of the fact that I had written a novel (no matter how bad it was). She seemed to feel that being wistful and envious would somehow change the fact that I put in the effort and the hours and she didn't. I mean, if you want to write, you just sit down and write, right?
Well, that's perhaps a little facile of me to say so, since, these days, I haven't finished a story I started six months ago. It's not as though I am having difficulty with it. I mean, I don't get writer's block ever ... I just write about smaller and smaller details.
(For example, let's say I can't think of what my character would do or say next ... so I will describe his hands. If I can't think of anything to say about his hands, I describe his fingernails, perhaps making up a tale of how one got smashed when he was a child, etc. If that still doesn't work then I discuss the dirt underneath one of those fingernails ... and "discover" that there is red clay there from the time earlier in the day when my character was digging in his garden out back ... and he discovered ... a child's doll that's been buried there for decades. And it reminds him of his sister that died when he was 11, and the way his mother and father were never the same--especially after his father started drinking again, and ...)
Well, that is how it works for me. I can't ever seem to run out of things to write about, even if they are very tiny in the Grand Scheme of Things. You may have noticed (if you read my stories) that the size--the "scope"--of my stories is small and detailed. I don't write about intergalactic hyperships carrying hundreds of millions of colonists to a new planet from the dying solar system of its origin ... but I may write about a single man who enjoys his little corner of that world ... and isn't sure that there is any point to overcoming his mostly self-imposed solitude ....
So, anyhow, where was I? Oh, yes: I haven't been productive in my writing lately. I'm not worried in the slightest; I mean, I've been writing these rants (though they are not the same as creative writing). And I've been working a lot at work and at home. And so what? I have a story that's on the go, I just haven't been doing much to it lately. As long as the gears haven't ground to a complete halt, I am happy with the situation.
I have a friend who once asserted to me that writing BASIC computer programs was every bit as creative as writing a novel or short story!!!
I guess that, deep beneath the surface in the roiling sub-strata of his senses (common or otherwise), he felt somehow challenged by something I could do that he couldn't, so manufactured the above-described silliness out of his urge to be as good as or better than me, and convinced himself it was true so that he could defend his ridiculous notion with all his misplaced convictions. He does that sort of thing from time to time. He's quite typical of a lot of men--yes, me included--in that he often has trouble admitting there is something he doesn't know or something that he can't do, and so creates the silliest of convictions to present himself in a "better light". (He is also the strongest proponent of the Safe World Theory that I know, but that's off-topic.)
I, of course, had a good laugh at that, but he continued to maintain it was true. How can you argue with someone like that? There is a saying: "You can't argue with an ignorant man." It's true, it's true! For both men and women it's true: The less we know, the more vehemently we defend ourselves.
Which reminds me of a few people I've worked with in the past: They are of that certain brand of stupidity that cannot distinguish betweeen a conversation and a personal attack. You try to discuss something, and they grow ever more defensive.
And so these people go through life thinking that they have to constantly present themselves to you. They pose, they over-explain, they tell you how wonderful they are either through long stories of their magnificence or simply by telling you outright. And if you start to discuss anything at all that is even peripherally related to them, they instantly jump on the topic and tell you everything they know about it plus 20% bullshit-padding. And if a single tiny thing you say contradicts what they say ... or even if it is the exact same idea but in different words, then they start talking at you long and loud as though a) you personally attacked them, and b) the more they say the more you will listen. (Even at my jaded age I still cannot believe that there really are people out there who honestly believe that the more they talk the more people will believe/listen to them!)
Which, believe it or not, brings me back to The Theory of Accessibility. In it, my character Rob develops the theory to explain why the bad things that happened to him and to his brother (mother killed in an accident, and father died just recently of cancer) affected him and his brother differently. He thinks that his and his brother's behaviour are the result of both nature and nurture in about equal parts. His brother turns into a long-winded but ultimately ostrich-like idiot who is convinced that if people would just do things his way the world would be a better place (CF: The people I worked with). Meanwhile, Rob himself just plain loses it.
The irony--and this is what I was not skilled enough to bring out in the original novel, so I can only describe it here and now (instead of showing it back then)--is that the creativity and interest of both characters dwindles and wanes as they become more and more separated from each other. It is almost as though they started out as one person, and the trauma of losing their parents when they were in their late teens and early twenties has separated them into two flat, uncreative, and thoroughly unlikable people. (That, by the way, is probably the biggest complaint people had of the novel: All of the characters are unlikable, so the reader has no one to side with.)
Well, be that as it may, the novel was not executed very well ... it was my first attempt at something that large and complicated. As I said before, my writing style tends to focus on the small and the detailed. And yet that is not possible for an entire novel. It just gets too boring after a while. So I introduce drama and tension with Rob's girlfriend. I introduce a couple of other little silly things that were designed to keep the readers' interest (e.g., the song, "I'm the Tractor Man"), and I widen the scope somewhat, so that things actually happen during the course of the days in the novel.
But it was my first time with such a large and unruly project, and I don't think it worked out very well. I thought I had destroyed all copies of it, but I came across a copy of it a few weeks ago when I was cleaning out my bookcase. The ink has faded so much that I think it is unreadable (and a good thing, too, if you ask me!) but maybe some day I will pull out the CD containing a soft copy and take another look at it ... for posterity only, of course!