My Friend

Just a brief post today. My friend, the author, Rachael de Vienne asked me to write a guest post on her blog. I had hesitated because I couldn't think of a worthy topic. Last night it struck me to write about her. I wrote about how I met her and how our friendship has grown.

Go to Who Said Pixies Are Rational Creatures and read my post.

Don't stop there. Read her blog and discover why I am so enamoured with her.

Let me give it one more whack.

A wonderful friend of mine is a writer, a published writer. Rachael de Vienne wrote Pixie Warrior and has co-authored a book of religious history. I have read just about everything of hers that I can find on the web. She suggested that I take part in Coyote Con, the online writers conference of speculative fiction and fantasy, and has been encouraging me to write my own stories.

I had the bug when I was younger. When I was a teenager I wrote and illustrated my own comics. My neighbor from across the street wrote comics too and we were characters in each others works. But when high school ended so did the comics. The writing didn't though. I kept producing short (very short) stories that always ran out of steam before I could reach a conclusion. My one attempt at a novel (insert polite giggle here) stopped after the title and a few vignettes of scenes. I knew how the story started, but I had no idea how it would end.

Anyhow that is all past. I have gotten that itch again. I have the need to put words on paper and try to tell a story. The most common piece of advice I have heard over the years is to write about something you know. The second most common one is to do your research.

I am trying to take those things to heart. There are two things I am concerned about right now. One is my own mental health and the other is my experiences in Second Life. My wife and my therapist would probably agree that they go hand in hand.

What if a person is depressed? He has been depressed for most of his life. He is withdrawn,  with a low self esteem despite the fact that he is often very good at the things he does. He is in therapy but has hit a wall of sorts. He can't get to the root of his problems and overcome them. He reads about an experimental project, where using a newly designed digital interface a person can go into a virtual world without the necessity of a computer keyboard, monitor and headset. It is too memory intensive for most computers and requires very high bandwidth. A disturbing side effect is that the players have experienced simulations and characters in the virtual world that were not generated by other players, but by their own brains.

Our man sees the possibilities of going into a virtual world to hunt and face his inner demons. With the help of the program's developer and his therapist, who act as online chaperones, he goes into a small virtual world using the digital interface. His two companions follow along using a standard browser. At first his lets them follow along, but he discovers that he must evade them to pursue his demons.

In the end he meets and learns from an alternate personality of himself what was the cause of his insecurity from childhood and begins the journey to happiness with himself.

I've started the research and I've started sketching out the characters. The virtual world will be based on my experience on 2 different grids and I may explore others before I am done.

A great Quote

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - William Somerset Maugham

I started my 'great American novel' over forty years ago and I wrote less than one chapter. It was called A Man With Clumsy Hands and although it was not autobiographical, the main character was me. At 19 I was a kid in his first year of college who desperately wanted friends, particularly a girlfriend, and wanted to fit in with everyone else.

For reasons that I have never understood, I was sort of popular in an awkward way. I had casual friends, and I got along with my roommate. (We hitchhiked to Newport News together to join the Air Force in December 1968.) Plenty of girls talked to me and bummed cigarettes off me. I finally got it through my head that most of my 'popularity' came from the fact that I always had cigarettes and money in my pockets.

In the year and a half before I dropped out to join the service, I never had a girlfriend. I didn't leave one waiting for me at home either. My unfinished novel was about a sad character who didn't know how to relate to girls, one who had been hurt so often that he would rather be lonely than risk having his heart broken one more time. The conflict involves a girl who, in my imagination, is very interested in him, but she can't get past his defenses. He keeps pushing her away. At the same he is attracted to her, but is afraid that he will ultimately be rejected once again.

Forty years ago, a young inexperienced writer was stuck because he could not imagine a suitable ending to his story. He wanted a happy ending (don't we all), but could not find a way to weave the tale to a conclusion.

Forty years later I am in the same fix. I still don't know how to find that happy ending. I still don't know how to make and keep friends. The friends I have... well I always feel deep down that I still don't fit in, that if I disappear overnight I would not be missed.

Like the character in the book I never wrote, I sit and stare at my clumsy hands. Hands that never made anything worthwhile, never could hold on to anything good. Clumsy, useless hands.