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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Flights of Fancy

6/27/2016

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Today, I’m starting by establishing, at least partly, my nerd credentials: I am the proud owner of four different Starfleet uniforms: Original Series, Classic Films, TNG and Voyager. Being the stickler for fidelity that I am, they’re accurate, too, with all proper badges and accoutrements. (Including things like a working tricorder --- my students roll their eyes when I demonstrate it, scanning the class before solemnly pronouncing, “no intelligent life here.”) And although I like to tell my intrigued scholars who ask how I came by the uniform that every graduate of Starfleet Academy has one (more eye rolling)... the truth is slightly more mundane: my enormously talented (and long-suffering) wife made them for me. It’s one of the advantages of being a teacher --- I need a new Halloween costume each year. (Although there are limits to even my wife’s tolerance for my eccentricities... I tried to get her to make Enterprise and TNG film uniforms as well, to round out the collection, but she pointed out that rotating through uniforms in four year cycles would do just fine, thanks very much, student memories being what they are. And she’s right.)
 
By the way, one of my proudest boasts about those uniforms is that, although some were made, lo, two decades past... each still fits like a glove. (Just sayin,’ he murmured modestly.)
 
Now, I don’t intend to make this a defence of cosplay, although there’s nothing wrong with it. (In fact, many years ago, I actually wore one of my uniforms to a Star Trek film premiere at the urging of students, although my suspicions that their motives were somewhat less than altruistic were confirmed when, the next day, they queried me on my experience, and some of the less reputable seemed slightly deflated when I replied that no, no one had beaten me up over wearing a uniform.) Besides, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post, having published my fantasy novel Gryphon’s Heir, I have now set my sights on new clothing, suitable for an Arrinoran knight. My wife has so far greeted this new plan with diplomatic silence, in case you’re wondering.
 
But my intended goal --- which Windows very thoughtfully informs me has only taken 400 words or so to arrive at, thanks very much, Bill --- is briefly touching on flights of fancy. Or fantasy. Is there a difference? Perhaps, perhaps not.
 
Now, literature, at least on some level, has always been about escape, even thousands of years ago when folks gathered around the fire after another grindingly successful day of remaining alive to listen to tales of gods and goddesses and heroes and their various escapades.
 
But looking at film and literature today, there are a LOT of flights of fancy. Books. Films. Graphic novels. Video games. Anime. The concept of escape figures extraordinarily large in so much of it. Escape from what, you ask? Well... everyday lives which, in spite of being, on the whole, amazingly well off from a material perspective, just don’t seem to “do it” for many people. (Although that, too, is beyond the scope of today, a whole ‘nother discussion for some other time.) We’ve taken the concept of flights of fancy to a major new level. Mostly, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Those people who like to dress up as characters from their favourite film or book or historical period, who like to imagine a flight of fancy where they are that character... well, why not? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with some diversion that brightens up life, temporarily helping us to forget cares and stresses and worries. I say bravo to most flights of fancy.
 
However, a brief caveat: there’s an enormous difference between temporarily retreating into fantasy and allowing it to overwhelm your life. An enormous difference between picking up a book and reading for an hour or so, and becoming addicted to an online world, barely surfacing to eat or sleep or go to work. It’s like pretty much everything in life, as I frequently tell my students: there needs to be balance. Always. In everything. Too much, or too little, of anything is not good... downright harmful, in fact.
 
Regarding my own flights of fancy, I write in general because I have to, because some inner creative urge pushes me and will not allow me to simply rest in entropy like a blob of animated jelly. I write fantasy in particular because the amazement of creating a world all my own with all kinds of strange intricacies is one that was deeply impressed on me right from when, as a precocious 12 year old, I first was enthralled by an imaginary world called Middle Earth, created by an obscure Oxford don. I don’t know specifically whether his world was alive for him --- I strongly suspect it was --- but mine definitely is for me. And every time I return to it, there are new things occurring: sometimes wondrous, other times terrifying. But always captivating.
 
So let’s give the last word to C.S. Lewis. He was talking about literature, but I don’t think he would mind if we broadened it to ‘flights of fancy’: “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”
 
Thanks, Jack. As always, your pithy observation both grounds us... and helps us to take flight.



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Surprise Parties and Practical Jokes

6/20/2016

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“Major Ian Hay, back in the ‘War to End War,’ described the structure of military organizations: regardless of T.O., all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. The first two process most matters as the third is very small: the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave. But when she is at her desk, she sometimes puts down her knitting and picks a name passing across her desk and does something nice.”
                -Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road
 
This is a passage I like a lot from a book I also like a great deal. I was idly flipping through the book just the other day, and was struck yet again by the pithy reality of Heinlein’s observations. While it’s science fiction, Glory Road has much relevant insight into the kind of quest tale so many fantasy stories deal with. And although Heinlein is writing the passage in a military context --- his protagonist is at that point in the book a soldier --- I’ve often thought we could also say the passage is really every bit as applicable to life, isn’t it? (Theological musings aside, of course.) And it’s also completely applicable to our characters and plots when we’re writing. A friend of mine looked at me with raised eyebrows when I quoted the passage and mentioned this. “Don’t you think it’s a rather cynical take on life?” she asked. To which I replied that most cynics are merely realists who have seen a great deal of the realism life tends to offer. Sometimes way too much realism.
 
Literary and real life (there isn’t always too much difference, you know) do seem to include lots of surprise parties and practical jokes, don’t they? Sometimes much more positively than others. Let’s take surprise parties as an example. There are occasions when surprise parties seem to work really well (although I’ve never had one thrown for me); other times, those surprise parties everyone thought would be such terrific ideas, for one reason or another... well, no, they’re not so much. We would really prefer not to have to go through them. And practical jokes... well, I’ve never been much of a practical joker... much of the time, such jokes seem to range from the merely pointless to the downright cruel, as far as I can see. (Oh, stop it. I do so have a sense of humour.) Some of the surprise parties and practical jokes life throws at us are quite nasty, indeed. Death, divorce, loss of job, disease diagnosis --- there’s quite the catalogue of grim surprises and jokes we’re frequently faced with.
 
Of course, with our stories, it’s a different matter. In them, the Surprise Party and Practical Joke Departments have to be dominant forces and very actively at work, sometimes --- most of the time, truth be told --- in pretty nasty ways. The Fairy Godmother department tends to show up rarely; most of the time, she waves her magic wand only towards the end of the tale, when we’re pretty much all seeking resolution, redemption and maybe, just maybe, some sort of happy ending. But that’s kind of the way it has to be: if she’s actively present and dispensing minor or major miracles throughout the course of the plot --- other than keeping our protagonist alive, even through the deadliest of situations that would otherwise bring down most mere mortals --- then we don’t have much of a story. It really boils down to this, as I’ve said before. (Actually, it was my editor who said it and I commented on it --- you can read that particular pearl of wisdom here.) You have to throw rocks at your protagonist. Sorry, protagonist. But if everything is sweetness and light all the time for them... then we don’t really have much of a story, do we? It’s ironic that the very things we don’t want happening to ourselves become really absorbing and entertaining when they happen to others, real or imaginary. A tad creepy, what it says about us: while we’re not so enamoured with the idea of being hit with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ourselves, we eagerly look forward to it occurring to others in real life, or our literary heroes. Hmm. Okay, a lot creepy, really.
 
Which is food for thought for another time.

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The Power of Words

6/13/2016

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“There is nothing more mine than my writing.”
                -Fran Lebowitz
 
One of the people I follow on Twitter tweeted this quote the other day. I happened to see it and then, as also quite often occurs, I spontaneously replied: And yet, the irony is, when we publish it, we give it away. Hmm, I thought, one of the many paradoxes writers face. Which got me to thinking...
 
Words. Phrases. Sentences. In the stillness of our writing spaces (or for some of you, the babel --- see
here for my thoughts on that) we craft our words --- frequently in the lateness of nightness, as Miriam Waddington said. (Night time was made for writers... well, this writer, anyway.) Sometimes our words sing. Sometimes they fall like stones into still water, managing the seemingly impossible feat of leaving not a single ripple. But we continue. We create a compilation of our hopes and fears and likes and dislikes, and it becomes a story. It morphs and hopefully, takes on a life of its own. We project all kinds of emotions into that writing, so it is frequently a barometer of where we are in our life journeys. Ultimately, we create something intensely personal, far more so than even clothing or hair styles. Because our writing is a mirror of our innermost thoughts. It’s like Lebowitz says: nothing is more ours than our writing. Our words are intensely personal.
 
And then we take these creations and we present them to the world. Which has to be an act either of supreme courage, dauntless confidence... or stupefying lunacy.
 
By and large, I’m going with a mixture of the first two, although sometimes, there’s definitely a certain amount of trepidation mixed in. We want our work to meet with approval. Hell, we want a great deal more than that. Most of us want enthusiasm bordering on hysteria... because that’s validation, and most writers are just as hungry for validation as the next person. If you like my work, it means you like me; if you dislike my work, well then...  And, silence is generally regarded as negative.
 
It’s much the same for painters, sculptors, musicians, and actors, too. They put themselves into their creations, and then put those creations out on public view. As much as artists seek to put their creations out there, the public hungers to experience those creations. They want to be moved, made to experience thoughts, feelings, emotions that are beyond their own imaginations. There’s a massive demand for it.
 
And words are also powerful. Writers’ words. Readers’ words. Never doubt that. I don’t know who the moron was who coined the by-now tired old phrase about sticks and stones breaking bones, but words never being able to hurt people... but they couldn’t have been more wrong. Perhaps that’s something we could all --- writers and readers alike --- stand to be a little more conscious of. As an educator, I’m acutely aware of the impact my spoken words can have in the classroom: the ability to encourage or discourage, to motivate or crush. My written words can possess the same impact, especially with my students, bless their angst-laden little adolescent hearts.
 
Stephen King has said that, as a writer, you write the first draft with the door closed, the second with the door open. So your first draft is really the only time your words are truly yours. Once you involve someone else --- Ideal Reader (Mr. K’s term), editor, whomever --- you inevitably lose sole ownership of your words. And then once those words are actually published... well, in some strange, indefinable way, people will adopt them as their own. The characters, the plots, the dialogue. For example, Frodo and Sam, while still Tolkien’s characters, kind of belong to the world now.
 
But then... to be adopted and taken to heart by many, many people around the world... not such a bad fate for a writer’s words, is it?

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Uncomfortable Realizations

6/6/2016

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CHAPTER
XI.       IN WHICH We Chat About Life Issues Full Of Thistles (Not The Kind Beloved By Eeyore), Applicable to Literary Characters and Real People Both

 
In my last post, I was discussing the concept of Happy Endings with everyone’s favourite Bear of Very Little Brain (the picture above shows my Very Own Teddy Bear --- and Friend --- standing in for Pooh), and I used the last few lines from The House at Pooh Corner as an example. (With apologies to A.A. Milne --- but then again, haven’t we all had discussions with our favourite literary characters? At various times? What’s that? You haven’t? Well, then, I’m sorry, we can’t talk anymore. You need to Go Away now. The rest can stay.)
 
However... I also told Pooh the lines preceding that excerpt were decidedly bittersweet. Silly me. Because, of course, Pooh asked why. (You’d think nearly three decades of parenting would have taught me better than to volunteer a statement that begs an explanation.) Reluctantly, I replied that because in those lines, Christopher Robin is coming to some Rather Uncomfortable Realizations... and he’s not sure he wants to face them. Pooh thought this over for a moment before asking me, “And will he?”
 
And I hesitated. For about the third time in that particular discussion. Because the issue was really one we don’t normally associate with Pooh and Christopher Robin and the 100 Acre Wood and such, although perhaps we should (more on that in a moment). And then I did what people do all the time when confronted with issues they Don’t Really Want To Talk About: I stalled Pooh by saying such a discussion was really better suited to another time.
 
Pooh was --- as he usually is --- quite agreeable to that, noting it was really time for luncheon, anyway, so he went off in one direction and I went off in the other, feeling fairly relieved. And there I thought the issue rested.
 
Except...
 
It didn’t.
 
Several people asked me about those lines, until it got to the point where I felt I owed them, if not Pooh as well, some kind of explanation. So here it is.
 
Let’s start by looking at the excerpt in question, shall we? Here it is:
 
Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hands, called out, “Pooh!”
“Yes?” said Pooh.
“When I’m --- when --- Pooh!”
“Yes, Christopher Robin?”

“I’m not going to do Nothing any more.”
“Never again?”

“Well, not so much. They don’t let you.”
Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again.
“Yes, Christopher Robin?” said Pooh helpfully.
“Pooh, when I’m --- you know --- when I’m not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?”
“Just Me?”
“Yes, Pooh.”
“Will you be here, too?”
“Yes, Pooh, I will be, really. I promise I will be, Pooh.”
“That’s good,” said Pooh.
“Pooh, promise you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little.
“How old shall I be then?”
“Ninety-nine.”
Pooh nodded.
“I promise.”
Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh’s paw.
“Pooh,” said Christopher Robin earnestly, “if I --- if I’m not quite ---” he stopped and tried again --- “Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won’t you?”
“Understand what?”
“Oh, nothing.” He laughed and jumped to his feet. “Come on!”
“Where?” said Pooh.
“Anywhere,” said Christopher Robin.
 
Wow. Want to write well? Write like that. There’s no less than three, count ‘em, three, Uncomfortable Realizations --- actually rather heart-rending realizations, truth be told --- contained in that brilliant excerpt, all of which deal with unutterably sad realities in most people’s life journeys:
  1. As we leave childhood behind, the turbulence of the world signifies an end of innocence unique to the state of childhood;
  2. Most don’t want to see that innocence end even as we acknowledge its inevitability, and would do nearly anything to see it continue;
  3. Many will make attempts --- with varying degrees of success --- to regain, even temporarily, that innocence and the special feelings associated with it.
     
    Pretty profound truths, Mr. M, and not what most people tend to associate with Pooh --- although, as I said, they should. The Pooh stories often deal with very deep themes. For example, I use Pooh stories when I want to talk with my classes about unconscious evil, or the sophistication/corrupting influence of the outside world. Yes, those issues are there. I don’t know whether or not he did it deliberately, but Milne frequently discusses all kinds of Uncomfortable Realizations in a way that is at once simple enough and complex enough for children and adults to understand on both instinctive and intellectual levels.
     
    The slings and arrows of outrageous fate tend to whack the innocence out of us. The day to day struggles, and irritations, and petty shots, and hurry, and noise... they all can cumulatively cause us to forget to be here, to be present, to remember. Us and our literary characters. If we let them. But we can’t. We mustn’t. Some days that is easier than others. But if we want Milne’s final words to apply to us --- wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing --- we need to remember.
     
    “So, do you see now, Pooh?” I asked.
    He pondered for a moment. “I think so,” he replied. “Things can’t stay the same, but that needn’t necessarily be a Bad Thing, as long as one remembers to remember. And add onto without losing things in the process. Is that it?”
    “Bear,” I said solemnly, “That is magnificent. No one could have put it better.”
    “Not even Owl?”

    “Not even Owl.”
    “Or Christopher Robin?”

    “I don’t think so.”
    “Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. If you’re quite, quite sure.”
    “I am.”
    “Then... what about a little something to revive oneself?”
    “I think that would be magnificent, too.”
     
    And it was.
     
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    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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