Suspending disbelief

One of the most important tricks of fiction is getting readers to suspend their disbelief.  Most of the time readers are happy to do this.  Delighted, even.  Let's be honest.  We're not swarming to the latest super hero movie or reading The Hunger Games because we're desperate for some gritty realism.  We don't expect it to be factual or even necessarily plausible.

When author Richard Ford was on The Colbert Report he argued that novels are better than lies because "novels can actually aspire to be the truth."  I think that because novels are freed from reality, they can reach for a truth that is higher than a simple recounting of facts.

However, this may simply be an attempt to justify spending a large percentage of my life reading books that are chock full of nothing useful.

Anyway, I do think it's funny how inconsistently we as readers and viewers are able to suspend our disbelief.  My last blog post (can you remember back that far?) was about distractions in literature and how these distractions often ruin the story for us.

Jacob and I were discussing it in reference to the NBC television show "Grimm."  I like this show because it is filmed in and around Portland.  I've even seen them shooting.  If you haven't watched it, you should, if only because I want TV stars to keep hanging around my neighborhood.

One of my favorite episodes this last season was "Leave it to Beavers."

SPOILER ALERT

Near the end of the episode, Nick "sends a message" by shipping the severed heads of a couple of reapers back to Germany from whence they came.

Jacob didn't like this.

"What?  You didn't think he should have chopped the heads off?" I asked.  Admittedly, this behavior was a little extreme for a police officer.

"Oh, no.  I loved that.  Great message.  I just didn't know how he got the address of where to send the heads."

So what is too much for Jacob?  He has no problem with there being fairy tale creatures like reapers and the big bad wolf or with Nick being the only guy who can see these fairy tale creatures because he's a Grimm.  He doesn't even mind Nick decapitating a reaper or mailing severed heads internationally and them arriving in pretty good condition.  What Jacob couldn't handle is that Nick somehow knew where to ship the heads.

I figure the guy's the cop.  Surely he can track down an address.

Personally, the thing that has tested my belief is the sheer quantity of people that Nick has shot in the line of duty.  We've had a lot of officer-involved shootings in Portland over the last few years.  We've even had a cop who was involved in more than one of those shootings.  Let me tell you, the residents of Portland do not take that sitting down.  There would be riots if Nick the cop were actually responsible for killing several citizens.

Again, I have no problem with Nick being a Grimm or women being part tarantula or Monroe being the big bad wolf who is a vegetarian and does Pilates.  But the residents of Portland allowing Nick to stay on the job when he shoots someone in episode after episode?  No way.

Which reminds me.  The second season of "Grimm" starts up in a couple of weeks.  You should check it out and keep the ratings up.  Maybe if the show keeps filming here, I'll manage to squeeze my way into a scene.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Rejection and self-doubt

The day of my surgery I received an email rejection for my novel Ravenswood.  It was a lovely email to come home to, let me tell you.  Good thing I was already thoroughly numbed with painkillers.  It's now been rejected six times, which means I only need three more and it'll be just like Harry Potter . . . or something.

I was thinking about Ravenswood last night as I lay awake unable to sleep.  (Note: when people lie awake in movies, they lie on their backs and gaze up at the ceiling, their faces projecting the pain and hopelessness of the scene.  Unfortunately, lying on my back is excruciating right now, even on the painkillers, so my expression of hopelessness was directed into my pillow.  I can't even fail as decorously as I would like.  Okay, sorry.  I'll stop whining now.)

Do you like the stock photos I snagged off the Internet?  Note the white bedding and white jammies?  See my post from last week if you missed the discussion on stock photos.

Anyway, I thought about my characters, especially the supporting roles, and decided that they are all flat as a pancake.  There's no depth, no edge, and I found even thinking about the characters too dull to attempt.  This is not a good sign.  I know at 2 am I am predisposed to feel pessimistic, but now it is nearly 2 pm, and I am still not in the mood to fix the human pinballs I created for my main character to bounce off of.  No wonder it keeps getting rejected.

I'll admit that I love my characters.  I can see them in my head and usually find them amusing as all get out.  However, I don't think I've written them as cool as they are in my head, and I'm afraid to read Ravenswood over again and find out.  I am such a wimp.

Similarly, I still have not started revisions on Blue, the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last fall.  I know that one is a catastrophe.  I mean, I wrote it in 30 days, so its status as a work in progress is a given.  However, I also missed a week or two in the middle having surgery and had to polish off nearly half of it in the last few days (probably while taking painkillers and not eating).  This is the one for which I actually posted a request on Facebook for ideas on how to get the sucker moving.  Meagan, bless her heart, suggested ninja pirates, and I used them to get my character to stop wandering in a boring - although lovely - meadow.  Quite an accomplishment considering that this is a novel that includes space flight.  By the end of the book I had turned her into a superhero.  It's like one of those awful satires of desperate Hollywood movies, but Jacob says it's my best book yet.

And then there's the one about the accountant that is no longer an embryo, but is still just a fetus (the novel, not the character).  I'm determined to keep her from turning into a superhero or having any kind of special powers.  However, while the story is simmering on the back burner, one of her clients has been taking on an uncanny resemblance to Tony Stark.  He doesn't have a metal flying suit . . . yet.

It's probably a good thing that I'm planning to return to my day job in a few more weeks, although the tax returns moldering on my shelf in my office aren't that much more attractive than my paper-thin characters.

Sleeping well at night? Let me fix that...

Last Saturday I demonstrated my love to my mother (Hi, Mom!) by missing my daughter's first basketball game of the season, a Ladies Retreat meeting, and a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning in February to sit in on a 4-hour seminar on the public employees retirement system (PERS) for upcoming retirees.  Did I mention this seminar was in a windowless room and nearly every other person present was retirement age?

I learned several important details about PERS that I hadn't known before, not least of which was that if I had been smart I would have started working as a public employee in Oregon prior to 1996.

The best part of the seminar, however, was the second half, in which an extremely small, energetic financial planner gave lots of financial bad news with unholy glee.  Honestly, none of it was really news to me.  I work in the financial industry, so I'm well aware of the issues our nation and our world are facing on the economic front.  I did really love a graphic she used in her presentation, though, and I wanted to share it here.

If I can direct your attention to the graphic at left, I will point out something that I think every American of all political persuasions needs to understand.  See the tower on the left?  That's our federal spending.  That really big chunk at the bottom?  That's Medicare and Medicaid.  That biggish section in the middle?  That's Social Security.  Everything else . . . EVERYTHING ELSE that the federal government spends money on is in the top two sections, and that includes defense.

Now look at the tower on the right.  The black areas are all the revenues the federal government brings in.  I'd like to point out to you that all those revenues are not enough to even pay for Social Security & Medicare.  See that?  We can cut expenses out the wazoo, but if we don't do something to change revenues or those neat programs that take care of our parents (Hi, Mom!), we are sinking into a deep quagmire of debt at an amazing rate.

In the last issue of Newsweek, Eleanor Clift had an interesting column highlighting the findings of the Simpson-Bowles commission (and subsequent inaction) that gives a little more information on the political side of this, but I hate politics, so I'm not going to go there.  You can, though.

The bottom line is that we're going to have to do something daring and innovative in order to balance the federal budget.  We're going to have to cut spending (a lot) and raise revenues (probably also a lot).

This is why I don't run for political office.  This is probably also why all the characters in my novels end up with superpowers whether I originally intended it or not.  Sometimes we just need some superpowers.