On choosing to work the dark side…

Hubby brought this article to my attention over at Crooks and Liars. Smile When Your Heart is Breaking…Yeah Right was written by another anonymous writer who is complaining about America’s cultural desire to ignore reality and keep wearing rose-colored glasses even in the worst of times.

You should read the whole thing, but I wanted to point to one part in particular because it resonated with a recent memory. Still it will help if you know how this quote fits in with the context of his article. And before I get started, I should warn you that this is a long post that goes to some very dark places in my past.

His quote and my rambling follow after the cut.

From “Nonny Mouse”:

‘Nobody wants dark books,’ my agent admonished me in our last conversation. ‘It’s not a good time for gloomy stories. People are struggling with their own lives, they don’t want to read about other people in the same sinking boat. Readers want to escape from their miserable existence right now – they want upbeat escapism and happy endings, they want fairytale historical romance, they want lightweight fluff to read on the beach – think you can write that?’

‘Guess this means the murder mystery with the Neo-Nazi serial killer paedophile as a pharmaceutical lobbyist anti-hero is out of the question.’

‘Quite.’

I wanted to highlight this quote because not a month ago, I pitched an idea to hubby about a story where a serial killer was slaying kids, and one of the victims links back to a guy with a history of having underage “girlfriends.” With the exception of his current girlfriend, his past relationships were not sexual. He isn’t a pedophile, but his recent behavior makes him look like one. So he and his current girlfriend must track down the killer to clear his name.

Hubby listened to the pitch, and then he shot the idea down. Summing him up, he didn’t like that so many of my stories are written with the intention of exploring people with unlikable character flaws. With the pitch above, the unsavory trait is obvious. It’s also a similar flaw for Jarred Collins in Little Monsters, and hubby was unhappy to discover that one of my long term characters was physically abusive and emotionally domineering with their companion.

Which is how it should be. My intent is not to convince you to like an abusive person. But I do want to tell their stories, and no, I don’t believe I should make an abusive person more charming and likable just to keep you reading. That way lies accusations of “glorification” or “promoting the lifestyle.”

In truth, I write cautionary tales about the consequences of running afoul of society. It’s just that in some people’s cases, it isn’t justice that punishes them. It’s karma that smacks them down instead, and that can take a lot longer than some readers are willing to wait.

Well if you want happy stories and instant gratification, you probably want another writer. Probably someone who does it for a living.

It isn’t so hard to run afoul of society as you might think. You can abuse food and become too fat. You can barf food and become too skinny. You can abuse drugs, or people, or pets. You can abuse power, or become a cop and abuse authority. You can sleep with people who are “too old” for you, and you can sleep with people who are “too young.” And by sleep, I mean sleep. But somehow, for a lot of people in America just sleeping with a minor is becoming synonymous with “baby rape.”

But folks, you don’t know what baby rape is, and you don’t want to meet a former victim in person. Even if I claim I can write about anything, this is one topic I wouldn’t think of touching. But I have met a former victim, and her life experiences have been a major influence on my writing.

Months after we’d first met, we traded the worst examples of abuse from our pasts, and she alone was the only person who beat me in this kind of morbid contest. The saddest thing about her past is that after she got saved from her parents, her next of kin were just as abusive. The state didn’t check back up on her. She didn’t fall through the cracks, either. The system intentionally dropped her, repeatedly.

Her step-father violated her almost nightly from the age of 3. Her grandmother killed her cat when she was 5 and forced her to eat it raw. The same woman pimped her out to a school counselor. She let a pair of dobermans attack her grandchild, so that even as an adult, her body was patterned with bite marks.

This abuse was daily, constant, and unrelenting. It came from all sides, even from the adults who were supposed to be there to help. Instead, they took advantage of a free shot with a minor.

She won the blue ribbon in the shock contest. Before her, I thought I was a monster for my minor crimes against society. I was a shoplifter, scam artist and sexual predator. But I would never abuse anyone so badly.

Because of some things that happened between us, I checked her into a mental hospital. I asked her to tell them what she told me because I wanted them to help her. But they didn’t listen, and they heard an entirely different story than the one I did. We heard the same story, but they interpreted it differently.

Instead of seeing a lifelong victim of abuse, they called her a bug chaser and a menace to society. They doped her up and locked her up for a few weeks. Then they dropped her off on my door with a new addiction to prescription pills and a new abusive boyfriend who swore up and down that he “wasn’t like that” before he hit her. Gee, thanks state of Texas. You sure helped her out with that treatment plan.

After that, things went downhill for her even further. She burned bridges with people by stealing money or drugs from them. She stole from me, and then she blamed me in front of our other roommates for taking my own rent money.

I let her do it because I couldn’t hurt her. I let her hurt me in the worst possible ways, because I couldn’t risk causing her a flashback. I couldn’t tell her to leave and go be homeless. I was bound and determined to be the one person who didn’t turn a blind eye to her problems. But nothing I did could save her, and when she realized she couldn’t shove me away or make me hurt her, she took off.

When she was gone from my life, I missed her. I still do. She’s the worst possible person for me to be with, but I cannot stop thinking about her. I can’t stop thinking how the people whose job it is to listen heard not one word of her story as she told it.

And because of her treatment, I started thinking about every person who had ever looked at me with an embarrassed expression while they told me their past. They were ashamed of little things because all too often, their attempts to talk were rebuffed. People talked to me about dysfunctional families, or crimes of shoplifting and drug abuse. They had early intimate relationships where they got caught and were told that they’d gone too far, or that they were sick for what they did.

That shame from childhood still carries with them. They need to get it off their chest and confess to people, because it eats at them not to. But they are rebuffed time and again for “being weird.” They were usually relieved to tell me their story and not be judged, so I decided that I wanted to write stories with them in mind. I wanted to make up stories where the narrator was objective. The narrator wouldn’t judge people, only reporting the scenes as they happened.

That’s the experience I draw upon when I write. I mix the histories of all these people with my studies in mythology. I mix in my reading habits from multiple fiction genres. No matter what themes I’m working with, I aim to make the stories dark.

I’m writing what I know, so no, I can’t write about nice people. It may mean I’ll never sell my stories with a publisher, but I can live with that. I’d still rather write these stories. I want to show that these characters are worth reading about. I can’t write feel-good stories about overcoming all odds and getting the girl and saving the day. Sometimes it might be about getting the girl and you’ll wish I wouldn’t go there. But I do because it’s the path less traveled.

I choose to write about unpopular characters because I think someone should. There isn’t much money in it, sure. The other night, I was talking to my dad over a voice chat program, and one of my brother’s friends walked in. So my dad introduced me thus: “I’m talking to Zo, my daughter. She writes books that nobody wants.”

And, this is true, if you consider my track record with novel publishers. I write books that no publisher wants to buy. Meh. I can at least comfort myself knowing that I make stories that challenge readers with unusual and authentic perspectives. In fact, I challenge readers so much that many will bail out early and seek lighter pastures.

That’s okay with me. Rose tints your world, keeps you safe from your trouble and pain. But I see the world, and I want to paint it black.