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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Always Look Back

8/28/2017

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Picture
We’re in the final stages of wrapping up my late father’s estate, a lengthy and emotionally taxing rite of passage that most adult children must eventually and unfortunately negotiate. He passed away not quite a year ago, and rather serendipitously, I heard, only the other morning while listening to the radio (CBC – The Current, in case you’re wondering), a documentary about how taxing/difficult it can be to integrate a loved one’s belongings into your own home. Many millennials are apparently not wanting much of the stuff that their boomer parents are leaving to them, and I can indeed testify that it can be a hard thing to try and preserve your parents’ stuff --- or at least some of it --- that has sentimental value to you, but virtually none to everyone else. However, some things are easier to integrate than others. Take the painting at the head of this entry, for example.
 
Dad was a commercial artist, and an amazingly brilliant one, and I can say that quite objectively. He learned his trade in the UK in the 1930s, and his skill at precision artwork was nothing short of astounding. (He also did artwork for my school projects, and the very last ‘title page’ he did for me was the cover to my novel, Gryphon’s Heir --- a subject I’ve written about and you can find here if you’re interested.) However, what he really enjoyed doing was what he called ‘fine art' --- painting with watercolours and acrylics. His subjects tended to be the rural buildings and environments of Western Canada, which is where we lived, and I recall many Sunday afternoons when we would all load up in the family car (a mammoth 1970 Pontiac Strato-Chief that seemed only slightly smaller than the Queen Mary passenger liner) and head out into the countryside to photograph countless barns, agricultural equipment, sheds, railway stations and buildings --- and, of course, grain elevators. (I’m afraid my interest in these structures --- many of which either already were, or certainly appeared, derelict --- approached zero. But I always had a book with me, and could curl comfortably up in the massive back seat and lose myself in Middle Earth while Dad did his thing.)
 
Like so many things from our collective childhoods, I’m sorry now I didn’t take a more active interest in these expeditions. As children, we often don’t appreciate the singular opportunities --- the moments in time --- that we’re frequently confronted with. (Well, how can we, really? To a child, time and lifespans, both one’s own and those of people surrounding them, stretch ahead endlessly --- if a child thinks of such abstract things at all, which most don’t. Including me.) But the opportunities include whom we’re with, or where we are, or what we’re doing, and now all I can do is peer down the telescope of memory 35 or 40 years after the fact.
 
The painting prompting today’s epistle is one he did almost 15 years ago, when he was in his 80s. He worked from an old black and white photograph taken probably 30 years prior to that, but his paintings were never just slavish copies of his photos --- he would often take his artistic licence and alter details to make things more photogenic or worthy of art, sometimes quite considerably. His skill in this painting is still razor sharp, and the only thing wrong with it when it arrived in our home recently was that dad had framed it himself, using bits of what I believe were floorboards --- which I sighed at and smiled with fond reminiscence. Dad was always thrifty (having grown up during the Great Depression years in grinding poverty, and even later, coming to Canada and being a self-employed commercial artist bringing up a young family) and professional framing wasn’t and isn’t cheap. But my wife and I felt the painting deserved proper framing, so we went ahead and had it done. Dad would have approved with the finished result, I believe, although I’m quite sure he would have clucked in dismay at the price. But it can now hang worthily above our fireplace mantelpiece.
 
It will serve double duty there: first, as a reminder of a bygone era --- there really aren’t any of the old wooden grain elevators dotting the prairie countryside anymore. At one time, they were ubiquitous, silent sentinels marking the location of small settlements that couldn’t charitably even be called villages; now, they have vanished into the mists of history, and mostly, those small settlements right along with them. The painting’s second duty will be to provide a living memory of the gentle man who created it, a tangible reminder left behind that he lived and loved.
 
Always look back. Not in sadness or anger or preoccupation, but in simple remembrance. Because to know where you are now, to know where you’re going, you need to know --- and honour --- from where you’ve come.
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It's Such a Very Little Slice of Cake...

8/21/2017

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“Much of humanity employs rationalization on a daily basis as a crucial means of survival; which is --- to say the least --- very odd indeed, because the act of rationalization is completely irrational, and therefore a pretty lousy survival tool, all things considered.”
                -Melchizedek Middleton
 
Shortly after the film Catch Me If You Can begins, there’s an incident detailing protagonist 17 year old Frank Abagnale’s first day at a new high school. It’s a rough thing for Frank: his well-to-do father has been caught by the IRS after doing some shady things, and all of a sudden, the comfortably affluent lifestyle of the Abagnale family isn’t so comfortably affluent anymore. So among other things --- such as the confiscation of the family car, and being forced to move to very modest living accommodations --- Frank can no longer attend the tony private school he previously went to. Instead, he has to attend the local public high school and meet its inhabitants, the Great Unwashed. Of course, his rough start isn’t helped by the fact that he insists on still wearing his private school uniform --- complete with blazer, shirt and tie --- to his new school, which is akin to unwittingly painting a very large target on his back. (Why do people do that sort of thing, anyway? Is it defiance? Total obliviousness to new realities? Clinging to a familiar and secure memory? Lack of ability to confront and adapt to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? Bizarre rationalizations? Well, the answer, I suspect, is... yes.)
 
At his first class --- his very first class! --- Frank is confronted by one of the Great Unwashed (GU) mentioned earlier, and it’s here, in a split second, that he makes his rationalization. The GU kid (and we’ve all encountered them, he said, sighing and rolling his eyes, regardless of whether our high school career was decades ago or is still in progress today) is unpleasantly large with knuckles that drag on the ground, I’m certain, and not terribly bright, possessing just enough malicious glimmerings of intelligence to make life miserable for his victim du jour. In short, something very like the cave troll encountered by Frodo and Company in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring.
 
Now, the dim-witted GU kid makes an observation about Frank, saying he looks dorky enough to be a substitute teacher or something, and Frank seizes on that. In an amazing display of either courage or insanity (there’s often a very fine dividing line between the two), Frank presents himself to the class as just that: their substitute teacher. This gives him the opportunity to exact a measure of revenge on the GU kid, which is admittedly kinda sweet. But the kicker to the whole thing is that Frank maintains the charade for an entire week, teaching the class and even going so far as to schedule a parent teacher conference.
 
Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is an act of supreme rationalization, submitted for your approval.
 
Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s also a pretty ballsy thing to do (and pretty entertaining when it’s being told in a story). But... how on earth do you rationalize such an act? The real teacher is bound to return to work eventually. Or the administration is bound to cotton on to this fraudulent usurpation of authority sooner or later (which they do). And just what do you think is going to happen when this little escapade is brought to light? Hint: it ain’t going to end in sweetness and laughter.
 
We --- all of us --- see this sort of thing all the time. And we all do it, too. It’s almost like a willful denial of reality: we don’t want to face the realities we’re given, so we invent our own. Little kids do this, to the bafflement and chagrin of their parents. I recall painful conversations that went something like this with my own children:
ME: (in tones of righteous parental condemnation) Why did you hit your sibling?
CHILD: (with perfect equanimity) I didn’t.
ME: (startled at this blatant denial of reality) Yes, you did!
CHILD: (calmly) No, I didn’t.
ME: (beginning to lose my cool at this farce) I SAW you!
CHILD: (still maddeningly calm) No, you didn’t.
 
And so on, right down a rabbit hole of absurdity that makes Alice’s conversations with the Mad Hatter seem absolutely sane and reasonable. (Note to prospective parents: never argue with a toddler. It’s like herding cats: there’s no way to win.)
 
Now, we’re prepared to be relatively forgiving with young kids who rationalize like this. After all, they’re just little kids, and Don’t Understand The Ways Of The World. But for anyone over the age of five, it’s a different story.
 
The problem with rationalization is that it seldom ends well, because, much as we try to ignore unpleasant realities by constructing our own more pleasant fantasies, those fantasies are mere sand castles, helpless to withstand the inexorable tides of reality. And reality has a nasty way of crushing those sand castles flat, often with devastating consequences.
 
As writers, we want our story characters to be full of rationalizations. It provides all sorts of delicious absurdities that we can exploit in the way of plot lines and character interactions.
 
But in real life... well...
 
(Excuse me. I need to go and have another slice of chocolate cake now. I can hear it calling to me from the kitchen. And it’s really only a very small slice, so it won’t matter. And it’s full of healthy things, like milk and eggs and stuff, so it’s not really like I’m cheating on my diet, and...)

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Getting Out of Hand

8/7/2017

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“It’s getting out of hand, isn’t it?”
 
These words of wisdom were spoken by my wife as I threw down my book, rolling my eyes and making an inarticulate sound of disgust that she has come to know all too well during our many years together. “Yes, it is,” I agreed with heartfelt exasperation.
 
Let me back up a little here and give you some context. I’m currently wading my way through the enormously popular and successful Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, mostly courtesy of my wife, who is a huge fan of both books and TV series. (She was delighted with the Clan Fraser scarf I got her for Christmas last year, and only slightly less excited by the Clan Fraser tie I purchased for myself so we could match at formal events. Of such spousal sacrifices are strong marriages made.) My wife hooked me in by getting me to watch the first season of the TV series with her, which I mostly enjoyed (with the strong exception of the graphic sexually predatory violence towards the male protagonist by the villain --- a topic I explored in some detail in another post, which you can find here if you’re interested). And the second season of the TV series was great, I thought. So... not wanting to be guilty of Cardinal Sin #1 --- something I’m always sternly wagging my finger at my students about --- I started reading the books. Although I bought my own copies... my books are my books, and while I love my wife, there are some things a person just doesn’t share with anyone else. (Cardinal Sin #1? you ask, as well you might. So here it is: Watching The Film Version Of Anything Without Reading The Book. I usually draw myself up to my full height and declaim this to them in the sepulchral tones of an Old Testament prophet. And then I frequently add Thou Shalt Not Do That, Thou Uncultured Barbarian. Or words to that effect.)
 
Anyway. Reading the books. Yes. I have made my way through the first three so far, and am currently working on the fourth, Drums of Autumn. They’re mostly very good books, well written, although as I said in my Goodreads review of one of them, my biggest objection --- up until my comment at the beginning of this post, anyway --- has been that I find the mommy-porn tiresome. (Jamie and Claire, the two protagonists, can hardly keep their hands off each other, which is fine, I suppose --- they might want to get their hormone levels checked by a doctor --- but I’m not sure it’s really necessary to provide us the graphic details all the time, and I’m definitely sure it doesn’t do a thing to advance the plot. They’re like a couple of randy old rabbits, yeah, we get it, can we move on now, please?)
 
Anyway. The comment at the head of the post... and the point of today’s epistle. The startling coincidences and the plot twists and the scenes-of-people-missing-each-other-by-seconds-with-dreadful-repercussions and the well-if-you’d-told-me-this-before-we-wouldn’t-be-in-this-mess-now situations are all beginning to be... a bit much. At least for me. (Passionate defenders of all things Outlander, you’re entitled to your opinions. Absolutely. And so am I.) And I just happen to think that when a story reaches the stage where a reader starts rolling their eyes in disbelief at just how many things can happen to one couple, when situations start to sound like a series of coincidences on the order of winning the Irish Sweepstakes... then the writer has strained the Willing Suspension of Disbelief just a little too much. And I think writers need to guard against that happening. Because reaching that stage is where readers start falling away.
 
(I’m going to make my obligatory Tolkien reference here today and say that I never felt that way with Frodo and his quest. While people could make, and have made, the observation that the story advances at times at a very leisurely pace --- although the tale was written in a very different cultural environment than ours today --- it’s not full of weird coincidences and situations that stretch credulity. At least, I don’t think so.)
 
Will I continue to read the Outlander series? Yes. (For now. Unless and until I find I’m rolling my eyes like a Vegas slot machine.) As I said, I do find them mostly well written and entertaining. But I find it interesting that even my wife, Outlander fan extraordinaire, acknowledges that things are getting awfully convoluted/credulity-stretching in the Outlander universe. And, she says, it only gets more so.
 
Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. (Ooh! Jamie is going to wind up in a Revolutionary War battle on the opposite side of his illegitimate son, who doesn’t know Jamie is his dad! Yeah, I got a plot spoiler on that one.)
 
In the meantime... I guess we can boil today’s theme down to this: keep your writing clean. While there’s nothing essentially wrong with plot twists and coincidences --- every one of us uses them in our writing, after all --- make sure they don’t begin straining credulity. If a reader starts muttering, “Seriously?” too often as they’re making their way through a story... it’s in trouble.
 
 
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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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