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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Small Acts

9/30/2019

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I’ve recently started keeping a five-dollar bill in the center console of my car. Not for parking, because that all seems done via credit or debit these days (although the Scot in me attempts to avoid --- as much as possible --- parking in places requiring payment). Nor is it in case I develop a sudden sweet tooth, because that’s credit or debit, too. Nope, it’s in case I’m waiting for a traffic light at an intersection and a homeless person starts making their way along the captive audience of stopped cars, looking for a handout.
 
(I was going to say --- in fact, in my first draft of these musings, I actually did so state --- I couldn’t honestly pin this to any sudden flash of epiphany… just a gradual nagging realization, augmented by a couple of verses from some book somewhere. But on reflection, that’s not correct. Because it really was a sudden realization, the last time I encountered this situation. I’m not sure about ‘epiphany,’ exactly; I don’t know about you, but my conscience tends to operate more along the lines of Jiminy Cricket, sitting on my shoulder and, without warning, poking me painfully with his tiny umbrella before saying rudely, “What are you doing, dummy? You know better than this.” And he did reinforce his admonition by supplying those verses to back up his assertion. Boy, it’s annoying when he does that. Well, maybe not.)
 
Now, in this oft bleakly cold, uncaring world, in such a situation, it’s all too easy simply to turn away, to avoid eye contact, to pretend the tailgate of the car ahead is suddenly worthy of your complete and undivided attention as the raggedly dressed homeless person shuffles along, sometimes holding a cardboard sign crudely lettered with yet another tale of anonymous woe. It’s also too easy to rationalize it away by thinking, ah, crap, my wallet is in my back pocket, I’ll have to undo my seatbelt and dig around to reach my wallet, then fumble my way through it --- and that’s if I’ve got a damned five in there in the first place --- and maybe the light will change and the guy breathing down my rear-view mirror will regard my charitable action as not worth a few seconds of his precious time, and will impatiently and very audibly urge me to get the hell going, and, besides, there are shelters --- which I support through donations, by the way --- and am I just going to be feeding the homeless person’s (likely) addictions, and…
 
And… and… and…
 
You know, you’ve got to regard humanity’s stunning collective ability to rationalize uncomfortable situations as an incredible talent --- one of our strongest, although, unfortunately, not one of our more shining ones. Sigh. Why do we do this? Is it because the sight of mundane misfortune --- and by that, I mean a situation that’s not emergent, like a car crash or fiery explosion or other immediate crisis, just quiet, run-of-the-mill, private misfortune --- somehow repels us? Maybe it’s a case of there-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-go-I, and that realization somehow makes us feel ashamed of the other’s poverty, because it reminds us all too forcefully that many of us are only a paycheque away from homelessness ourselves, or many of us struggle with our own addictions or mental issues? Or is it charity fatigue? Are we so wearied by the constant parade of human misery displayed across the planet that, like the American public in the face of Trump’s constant, unprecedented, jaw-dropping, narcissistic defiance of conventional norms and decency, we no longer respond as we should to outrages perpetrated around us?
 
Well, with many of us, I rather suspect the answer is: to a certain extent, a greater or lesser mix of all the above. Which is bad enough, but not the worst possible scenario, which is, we plainly and simply don’t care… or think the person with the sign somehow deserves their misfortune. I hope our Grinchy little hearts really aren’t two sizes too small. Because that really would be the worst-case scenario, with no redemption or hope for the future at all.
 
Anyway, getting back to my personal tale. I thought to myself, you know what? Consciously, deliberately, put a damn bill in the centre console. And next time you see this situation unfolding, it’s there. It’ll take mere seconds to get it out. So, no excuses. Roll down the window, make eye contact, and say something. It doesn’t have to be anything terribly profound. Just treat the person outside the car as a person, not as a robot or a thing. And make sure it doesn’t sound patronizing.
 
Here’s the funny thing about these musings, at least from a writer’s standpoint --- and every writer should be able to see themselves in it: I didn’t intend at all to write what you’re reading. In fact, I was going to talk about a piece of live theatre I saw the other day… and my opening thoughts were relevant to that, as was one of the verses I mentioned earlier. (But they led to other thoughts. Which is not a bad thing at all --- in fact, it’s one of the best things about writing.)
 
Hey, speaking of verses, by the way, you nudge tentatively… those couple of verses? Wanna clue us in on what they were?
 
Oh, yeah. Thanks for asking. Here they are:
 
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares
 
and
 
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me… whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me
 
You can probably guess where those verses come from, so I don’t really need to spell it out for you, do I? And really, I don’t give a damn what your religious beliefs may or may not be, or whether you accept or dismiss the topic. In this particular instance, religion doesn’t really have to enter into it at all.
 
Just a small act of common humanity.
 
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Lose the Orcs

9/23/2019

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In the Beginning there were only a few classic fantasy writers of yore, like Lord Dunsany, and Darkness was on the face of the void, and The Readership either hungered for fantasy works of fiction, or knew not what they did not have. And the Master Author looked upon the darkness, ruminated for a bit, and said, “Verily and forsooth, it is not good that The Readership is not served. And so I will send unto them a revolutionary author in unlikely form, for he will be a university professor living a fairly pedestrian life, married with four children. Yea, but out of this unlikely scenario, he will create a mythos for the world, a mythos which will explode in popularity and make an incredible, indelible mark on 20th and 21st century literature and popular culture lo, even many years after his death. In fact, his writings will become a cottage industry for one of his children… and a major motion picture franchise, to boot.”
 
And so in due course, J.R.R. Tolkien was given unto us, and lo, it was good. And the Professor published The Hobbit (82 years ago just the other day, actually), a tale cleverly disguised as a children’s story but which, in fact, contained all sorts of references to deeper and darker themes, and it was An Unexpected Success. A Major Unexpected Success. And the readership, bless its little avaricious hearts, clamoured for more. And so The Hobbit begat The Lord of the Rings, and thus the modern fantasy genre was born.
 
And the readership read, and all was good.
 
Except for one small thing…
 
This is my (tongue-in-cheek) high declamatory take on how we got to Today in the literary realm of Fantasy. Tolkien almost single-handedly launched what is now a huge genre in literature… and film… and video games… and board games… and all sorts of pop culture references. His influence has been immense. It’s impossible to overstate it. He is The Godfather of modern fantasy. Which is all fine, except for that one thing I just mentioned, to wit:
 
Tolkien’s influence has been so immense that it tends at times to overshadow those of us who came after. He’s a literary juggernaut. A behemoth. A one-man scop army. (No, that’s a deliberate literary reference, not a typo. Look it up.) Look at fantasy races, for example. There are a lot of stories out there to feature wizards --- especially irascible ones resembling Gandalf the Grey ---- and elves and dwarves and goblins/orcs and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Tolkien’s influence overpowers. It’s like when you see the film version of something before reading the book (Cardinal Sin Number 1, by the way): if you saw The Lord of the Rings films first and then read the books (or tried to, which is not an easy thing for the Great Unwashed, but which is something we can talk about some other time), chances are you couldn’t see any face on Gandalf besides (the very talented) Ian McKellen’s. It’s limiting, in a way.
 
So the point of my little epistle today is to give one wee piece of advice to fantasy writers: lose the elves, people. And the dwarves. And the orcs. At least, Tolkien’s versions of them. And come up with your own races in their place. Now, sure, most of his races have been around in folk and fairy tales for a long, long time --- Rumpelstiltskin was a dwarf, for example --- but Tolkien’s specific take on elves and dwarves and wizards is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness that fantasy writers need to very consciously set out to do something, if not completely original, at least not so carbon-copyish that we immediately think of Legolas and Elrond and Gimli and Thorin and Gandalf (oh my). Because then your tale starts to veer dangerously close to fan-fiction, which in previous posts I’ve spoken out against for its lack of creativity and slavish imitation. Contrary to the old saying, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, folks --- it’s mere creative bankruptcy. As I’ve said before, find your own well, dammit.
 
Now, imitation is not the same thing as inspiration, not at all, at all. Tolkien has inspired many of us, including yours truly. And some of my earliest work was quite imitative/derivative of Tolkien, yes… but I’m talking about when I was 14. Nowadays, more decades later than I would ever want to admit, I make conscious efforts not to be imitative/derivative of the Master, but rather to find my own voice and my own world… and people it with races that aren’t merely knockoffs of Tolkien’s.
 
So… tell the elves and the dwarves and the orcs to head back to Middle Earth, and dream up new races for your own magnum opus. It’s more work, but I think you’ll be glad you made the effort.
 
 
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The Writing Process

9/16/2019

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When I engage in polite/pleasant conversation with strangers --- which, as an introvert, isn’t something I particularly seek out, but which frequently can’t be avoided --- it isn’t long before the topic turns, as we all know, to What We Do With Our Time. Not surprising, really. One of the weird things about adults is we tend to define ourselves by what we do for work. Now that I’m retired, I can’t say I’m a teacher anymore. And simply putting “retired” in front of what we used to do strikes me as a most unsatisfying idea: I doubt most of us want to be identified as something we did with our time in the salt mines. So nowadays, I frequently tell people I’m a writer. Of books. Novels.
 
To which the answer generally tends to be one of several possibilities: (a) “A novel, eh? Yeah, I’ve often thought of doing that, too, but I just don’t have the time” or (b) A polite “Oh, that’s very interesting” with an immediate segue onto a topic of more egocentric relevance to the speaker, or (c) “That’s amazing! I could never do that!”
 
By the way, folks, just so we’re all on the same page --- no pun intended --- (a) is just plain insulting. It’s denigrating an achievement, like telling someone that yeah, you too could have been an Olympic calibre athlete if it wasn’t for that pesky hangnail. And (b) simply illustrates our society’s growing inability to genuinely care about other people. So (c) is the best answer, especially if you follow it up with a breathlessly gushy, “How do you do that?” Especially if you want to see a writer actually purr. Or at least preen.
 
How do I do that? Well, I write. One word at a time, as Stephen King has so famously said. I don’t think there’s any kind of magical process involved in the act, as so many people seem to think. I start. Then continue. And finally, finish. That’s a glib answer, I know, but it’s essentially true. Although that’s not to denigrate the creative act, which obviously looms large over the entire enterprise. (Without it, we’re just slinging words together… which any illiterate teen used to be able to do verbally, but now can only do via text.)
 
I wouldn’t say I do a lot of research, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m writing fantasy set in my own world, so, my world, my rules. At least most of the time, and at least as far as its physical construction and development goes. That’s one of the great strengths of free-lancing. You’re not going to get someone coming back to you and saying, “they didn’t do it this way.” Of course, the flipside of that freedom is that you don’t have the benefit of someone else’s blueprints, so you’ve got to make it all up yourself. The second reason I wouldn’t say I do a lot of formal research is because, if you’re walking around in our world, observing and noting the people and events taking place, you’re already doing research.
 
In any event, the main thing you’ve got to focus on is interior logic. You can make things as different and wild as you want in your world, but they’ve got to be consistent within the framework that you create. It’s when they don’t that people stop their willingness to suspend disbelief. And at that point, as a storyteller, you’re in big trouble.
 
People who know me would assume I’m a plotter (someone who plans the story out in excruciating detail in advance), because I’m fairly meticulous in most areas of my life. But I’m not. I’m more a pantser (as in, flying by the seat of my). I used to write detailed outlines for chapters, but abandoned that approach relatively quickly. Why? Because I found, when you got into the groove of actually writing, a story is a lot like life, in that you can plan things all you want, but if you’re smart, you don’t expect things to happen exactly as you planned. People can be unpredictable --- they aren’t always, but they definitely can be. Because life is definitely unpredictable… Robert Heinlein spoke in one of his books about all military organizations (an, by implication/extension, life itself) consisting of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Jokes Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. He notes that “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 what between life’s surprise parties, practical jokes and fairy godmother interventions, life’s unpredictability makes it well-nigh impossible, in my humble correct opinion, to plan out a story plot for very much more than a chapter, if that. Which is not nearly as awful as one might think. If you want your characters to be alive, to be real living beings, why would you want or expect them to behave like marionettes on your strings? Be grateful for that unpredictability. It demonstrates that you’re not just dealing with cardboard cut-outs. That’s not to say I don’t plan anything at all, especially if I’m stuck and none of the characters feels like helping me. (Yes, that’s a thing.) I’ll sit down and hand-write almost a Q and A session for myself. You know, ‘if this happens, or so-and-so does this, then what?’ it pretty much always works, or at least provides grist for the mill.
 
And the word count grows. So and so does this, which means that the other guy will do that in response, which in turn means that this happens, and… so on, one word at a time. Just like life. How did the old soap opera intro go? “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives…” And eventually, months (or years, with some of us, sometimes --- but that’s a story for another time) later, you have somewhere north of 50,000 words… a novel. You have had, in the words of author James Branch Cabell, “literary parturition” i.e. you have given birth to a story.
 
‘Tis truly a wondrous thing, to be sure.
 
 
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The Accidental Novel

8/26/2019

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You know, the funny thing is, though I’ve always loved to write, I didn’t intend anything as grandiose as a novel when I began Gryphon’s Heir, my debut work. In fact, today’s torrid writing confession: Gryphon’s Heir wasn’t meant to happen, at least in the sense that I didn’t one day sit down at my laptop, crack my knuckles experimentally, and think to myself, I Will Now Proceed To Write My Magnum Opus. It was, as Pooh Bear might say, sort of an Accident.
 
Now, when I say I’ve always loved to write, I’m not kidding. I was one of those nerdy kids who loved to write in school --- in elementary, in junior high, and in high school. I was always excited whenever the English teacher would announce that the net assignment was to write a story. And I wrote for myself. At home. In my spare time. But I never made it out of short story country, much less into novella territory. And certainly not into novel country.
 
(What’s the difference? you ask. Well, I always used to tell my students that short stories tend to range from 2000 to 10,000 words, novellas 10,000 to 50,000 words, and novels anything over 50,000 words. But today’s attention-deficit/challenged youth and educators might say that’s too much. Pffft. I discard them.)
 
Flash forward thirty years or so. I was teaching English at the high school level and was deeply unhappy at the school where I taught. In the interest of trying to stay professional, let’s just say the school’s administration and I had fundamental, irreconcilable differences of opinion in terms of what constitutes good educational philosophy and good governance. One day after school, as I sat in my empty classroom, I was musing despairingly over how to get out of the toxic atmosphere of the place. I looked idly at the classroom’s exterior wall --- part of it had windows, but there was also a substantial part that was simply blank wall, and I began fantasizing what it would be like if a door suddenly materialized in the wall, a door that could take me away.
 
I’ve used writing as a self-therapeutic tool many times in my life, and that night I sat down and put that little scenario down on paper. I don’t really know why I was motivated to do that, other than to say that writing about things that trouble me often makes me feel better about them. So, the door appeared, and the teacher (I was writing in third person, not first) opened it. There were, I don’t know, maybe 500 words to the thing. And for some reason, I came back to it a number of times over the next several days. It was like a mental house guest who refused to leave, although even then, I had no sense I was writing a novel. It really wasn’t until my computer informed me my word count was in the neighbourhood of about 14,000 words that I took note and sat back and thought, “Whoa, what’s happening here?” 
 
I reread what I’d written and thought it was a pretty decent story --- and, more importantly, I wanted to find out where the whole thing was going. So, I continued. And it grew and grew and grew… (rather like Professor Tolkien’s remark at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Not, I hasten to add, that I am in any way trying to compare myself, a pathetically ordinary mortal, to a literary demigod like Professor T.)
 
Eventually, several years later (nobody will ever accuse me of writing in haste, but in my own defence, life kept getting in the way of writing), I finished the first draft, and it clocked in at a bloated 202,000 words. Except I didn’t realize at the time that it was bloated. My attitude was rather like a scene from Amadeus, the Oscar winning film about the life of Mozart. At one point in the film, the Austrian emperor tells Mozart there’s ‘too many notes’ in his opera i.e. it’s too long. And Mozart is genuinely bewildered, replying, “I don’t understand, Majesty. There are just as many notes as are required, neither more nor less.’ And I felt much the same about my book. But at the somewhat less than gentle prodding of my wife, I began to change my attitude. And therein began the hardest thing about making the novel (aside from finding the time and the creative energy to shoehorn the thing into my life, as I’ve said): editing it.
 
But I sat down and started going through it, and as I went, I realized that yes, dammit, there were things that could be trimmed, things that could be cut, things that could be tightened. And as Stephen King recommends, I wound up cutting 10% off that first draft. Then I went back and did some more. And even though I also added elements to the narrative, I eventually wound up with a story of about 186,000 words. A story that was much more tightly written, much less sloppy in its use of verbiage, much better overall.
 
Nowadays, I actually quite enjoy editing --- which seems a fairly contrarian view among writers, who mostly seem to moan about it. But my favourite part of writing --- then and now --- is watching the story unfold. I may have an idea about what’s going to happen next, but I’ve found it’s only very rarely that things wind up going the way I have planned or anticipated. Why? Because the characters are real people, and they frequently have their own ideas about how things or going to go, and they’re not shy about telling me that no, thanks, they’re not going to do things the way I’ve planned, because they’re doing it their way. C.S. Lewis once said he never actually wrote a book; he was given things to say. And I’d say that writing, at its best, is like that for me, also. It’s wondrous to watch things unfold on a page, not necessarily knowing how things are going to turn out. You feel a whole lot less like an omnipotent Creator, and a whole lot more like an interested observer who can’t wait to see how things wind up.
 
Which, frankly, sounds more interesting.
 
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Origin Questions

8/12/2019

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Today’s origin story is brought to you courtesy of a friend who recently asked me what type of books I read growing up, whether I return to them, and if someone inspired me to write. A variation on the origin story, if you will. So…
Once upon a time, a very long time ago now (not last Friday, as A.A. Milne once wrote)… my parents read to me as a child. I think that’s a tremendously important thing, one of the most important things a parent can do. Because, as a result, from time immemorial, I have always loved to read. And later on, as a parent myself, I made sure I read to my own children. It was part of the nightly bedtime ritual after dinner, and even as they grew older, it remained a treasured part of the day for all concerned. And it was a sad day when that parenting time came to an inevitable conclusion, I can tell you.
 
As I began reading on my own, I grew up with the Tom Swift books --- loved all the gadgetry and incredible inventions, even back then, and was blissfully unaware of how formulaic they were. But I think it’s as famed psychiatrist B.F. Skinner said: “We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.” And my parents, God bless them, did that. I was also raised on a lot of the classics in children’s literature.
 
After I learned to read for myself --- and I can still vividly recall the day in grade one when I went dashing home, yelling to my mother that I could read, waving my first grade primer in one hand --- I read quite a lot of science fiction from the masters: Arthur C. Clarke was my first go-to author, probably because 2001: A Space Odyssey had just appeared in film and book versions. I saw the film first --- shanghaied my father, who had absolutely zippo interest in science fiction, to drive me up to the only cinema in town that was equipped to show 70 mm film, and we watched it together, which on reflection was a pretty tolerant act on his part. And because the film was, shall we say, a wee bit difficult to comprehend, regardless of whether you were 10 like me or much older, like my dad. I had to read the book to make some sense of it. So I did, and that was it, the fateful moment: I was hooked on the sci-fi bug. Irrevocably. And of course, the original Star Trek had surfaced at mostly the same time. And then, very quickly after that, came the first landing on the moon, which of course we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of this year.
 
As far as the fantasy genre is concerned, well, somewhere along the way, my mother bought me a copy of The Hobbit. I’m going to say I was 10 or 11 at the time, so right around the same moment I discovered science fiction, and I’m mortified now to say that I couldn’t really get into The Hobbit. Now, looking back five decades later, I’m not really sure why… the reasoning has vanished in the mists of time. So it languished. Then, in the summer when I turned 12, I came across a copy of The Lord of the Rings, the entire trilogy bound into one large volume. And I bought it. Again, I’m not quite sure why, all these years later. I’m embarrassed to say it might well have been something as shallow as that I was attracted by a big book. I took it with me when we went on our family camping holiday that summer, and was instantly, absolutely enthralled. Why? Because it was so different from anything I had read before. It was its own world, with endless vistas, completely formed cultures and languages --- it was real. I couldn’t put it down. Read it all the time. In the car. At the campsite, especially around the fire. Morning, noon, night. All the time, to the annoyance of my parents, who kept pointing out all the scenic wonders we were driving through. But all I cared about was whether the surrounding mountains and forests represented the vistas I was experiencing in Middle Earth. Sure, I return to Middle Earth and the science fiction of my youth from time to time --- still have the 95 cent copies I bought 50 years ago, and certainly still have that big book copy of LOTR, although, like me, it’s a little the worse for wear five decades later.
 
I would say LOTR was a seminal work for me. It certainly unlocked my fledgling writer’s mind, because, for some reason, it created within me this burning desire to write stuff like that. But not set in Middle Earth, no, no, no. I wanted to create my own world and write about it. The term fanfiction didn’t exist back then, but I’ve never been a fan of fanfiction. (My take on the matter is, yes, I know you obviously really, really like the world you use for your fanfiction. But don’t use someone else’s world… create your own. Draw from your own well. Taking from some other author’s well is at best creatively lazy, at worst creatively bankrupt. And who the hell are you to take an author’s characters and make them do stuff you want them to do? Anyway. Enough with the rant.)
 
So I wrote. Mostly fantasy, some science fiction. I still have some of those embryonic efforts, lo, these many years later, and every once in a while, I pull them out and smile fondly and indulgently at them. I don’t cringe at them --- although I very well could --- because we all have to start somewhere.
 
There you have it. From tiny acorns and all that…
 
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When Bad Guys Win

8/5/2019

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Imagine Sauron, Tolkien’s Dark Lord, regaining the One Ring and conquering Middle Earth, covering it eternally in a veil of black, choking despair. Or Jadis the White Witch doing likewise in Narnia. Or Voldemort triumphing, really murdering Harry, enslaving wizards and Muggles alike in a hellish world vision of his own choosing. Seems unthinkable, doesn’t it?
 
And yet, it happens --- more often than we probably realize: the story’s villain… wins. And not just in modern literature, either. Both of Orwell’s most famous and tremendously influential works, 1984 and Animal Farm, end with the bad guy on top. Big Brother triumphs over Winston Smith in the former, and the pigs under Comrade Napoleon ensure the inhabitants of Animal Farm exchange one dictatorship for an even worse one, just as the Russian people did in the wake of the 1917 Revolutions. And Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death is just one of his stories where evil triumphs. (Granted, Ed was never exactly what you’d call a glass-is-half-full kind of writer.) And quite a few of Stephen King’s tales --- novels and short stories alike --- end with badness triumphant. I could go on. It’s as though such stories are supervised by some dark conglomerate catchily named Evil Ascendant, Inc.
 
So why do it? Why not see every story end with the stock “they all lived happily ever after” kind of conclusion we were raised on in fairy tales? Well, probably because it’s still good for shock value. And it remains a very counter-cultural story concept. Generally, most of us want the good guys to win, so it’s something of a gut-wrenching moment when that doesn’t happen. Leaves us with rather a sick feeling. Especially in our so very broken world. (My wife gets on my case for following the news because, as she notes, it’s just a never-ending parade of murder, madness and mayhem. She has a point, but please don’t tell her that.)
 
I was thinking of this the other day… while mulling over a particular Stephen King story: titled Storm of the Century (SOTC), it actually wasn’t one of his novels… or novellas… or short stories. It was a screenplay, written as a TV miniseries back in 1999. And I found it chilling.
 
Set on the island of Little Tall, located off the coast of Maine, SOTC follows its inhabitants as they are hit by a paralyzing blizzard that knocks out power and all communication with the mainland. So, step #1 in the horror genre, our characters are isolated. Then they discover this… person… on the island (step #2: introduce the evil outsider, not one of the group). He commits a horrific murder, and then, inexplicably, waits to be taken into custody by Michael Anderson, the community’s sheriff… almost like he wants to be taken into custody. (Step #3: give the villain bizarrely inexplicable behaviours.) His name is Andre Linoge, and it’s kind of a tossup who --- Mike or the viewer --- will first figure out ‘Linoge’ is simply an anagram of Legion, the name of a bunch of demons Jesus cast out of a possessed person in the Gospels.
 
Being in prison doesn’t stop Linoge from committing other horrific acts, and eventually he just… walks out of jail. Into the storm. But he’s been leaving clues on walls (usually written in someone’s blood): “give me what I want, and I’ll go away.” (Step #4: provide cryptic hints that keep us guessing at the villain’s motivation.) His penultimate act is to “kidnap” all the young children, putting them in some sort of dream state/coma (kind of a nod to Freddy Kreuger, now I think of it) and threatening their parents he’ll murder the kids if not given what he wants.
 
And what does he want? Well, turns out it’s one of the kids: he’s a very old man and wants a successor. (Guess he hasn’t had much luck on Bumble or Tinder --- hardly surprising when we finally see his true appearance.) But, in one of those curious “rules” writers hang on their characters from time to time, he can’t simply take a kid; nope, the townspeople have to agree to it. (I’m not knocking Mr. King here… many writers craft similar constraints.) So, he wanders off for a pleasant stroll through the blizzard and leaves the townspeople to debate the issue, as though they’re discussing a recycling bylaw or something.
 
It’s a great scene, filled with plenty of anguish and raw emotion. Mike the sheriff wants the townspeople to unite and stand up to Linoge. (I like to call narrative times like this “brief moments of shining hope,” because Mike’s eloquent, passionate speech leads us to think, for just a few seconds, perhaps the people of Little Tall will rise above their terror and do something truly inspiring. That maybe they can unite and resist.)
 
Except, of course, they don’t, ‘cause this ain’t no fairy tale. No one will stand with Mike, not even his wife. They’re just too afraid. (Dammit.) So they overrule him. And, when Linoge returns and they do a kind of dark lottery (one Shirley Jackson would have approved of) to determine which kid Linoge takes, in a supremely ironic twist, guess whose kid wins the booby prize? Yep. Mike’s. And Linoge puts on a pretty good pyrotechnics display to ensure no one tries to stop him.
 
The denouement comes years later. Mike has divorced his wife and gone clear across the country to escape the events of that night. He’s a federal marshal in San Francisco and thinks he’s been able to make his peace… but one day, he spots his son with Linoge. There’s a brief moment of mutual recognition… but the son has bonded with Linoge, and they melt into the crowd as Mike stands there, paralyzed with shock. Evil triumphant, indeed. Fade to black. (Pun intended.)
 
It’s kind of a cautionary tale: bad stuff happens. And sometimes, the bad guy seems to win. Not in the long run, if you’re a person of faith, but the trouble with the long run, as John Maynard Keynes famously observed, is that in the long run, we all wind up dead.
 
It was a great story. Was it uplifting? No. But it was compelling. Would I allow my literary villain to win? Hmm. Don’t think I could. The consequences would be too horrendous. I think I’d want to see Sauron defeated and the Dark Tower cast down. Maybe at a price, because that’s legitimate, but I think most of us need to believe Light will triumph over Darkness.
 
Because if it doesn’t… well, that’s a pretty bleak life outlook, isn’t it?
 
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Tales From The Crypt

7/8/2019

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A friend recently asked, “What was your first revelation about teaching?” And I didn’t have to think much to come up with something. Because it happened the first day of my formal training. Before I even got to the university. It was a remarkable lesson on human nature --- mine and my (prospective) students.
 
Let me back up and provide some context. My university career spanned seven years. The first five, I majored in political science and minored in drama --- which, in retrospect, is so richly ironic I should have stayed with it, although the drama minor was actually in technical theatre, not acting. But partway through, I changed my minor to history (which may or may not have been more relevant to political science), and that’s why my BA took five years instead of four. Why change the minor, you ask? Because my drama professors were really not good at allowing students to take charge as their skill levels matured, and by third year, when I realized I was still doing the same stupid grunt tasks I’d done in first year, I decided I didn’t need that, and voted with my feet. Which, also retrospectively, was not the best course of action… but most of us at 21 are not as sure of ourselves and willing to speak out about injustice as we are with several additional decades of life experience under our belts. We’re also speaking of a society lo, almost 50 years ago, when deference to authority was far more ingrained than these chaotic times we live in today, alas.
 
 (Actually, apart from the appalling lack of a steady girlfriend in my life at that point, I do tend to look fondly back on my university years as a pretty idyllic time. I could largely arrange my own academic schedule --- a biggie for someone who hates rising early in the morning: I was careful never to schedule a class before 10. And I swiftly perfected the technique of knocking out term papers in a day or so, once I’d done the reading/research; and I had a part-time job at the university theatre --- actually doing the technical theatre I’d wanted to do in drama --- which kept me in beer money. The weird thing about university is it pretty much seemed to consist of formally acknowledging stuff I already knew. It also taught me that university professors, by and large, weren’t teachers, just [mostly] bright people in very narrow fields of specialization who would much rather be researching than dealing with a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears undergraduates, thanks very much. Ah, academe.)
 
Anyway. Back to that teaching revelation. I took public transit to university… for seven looooong years, as mentioned. The final two years were spent getting my Bachelor of Education. The first day of that program, I was pretty pumped: I was going to learn to be a teacher! Although there was one slight fly in the ointment.
 
Remember I said I could largely arrange my academic schedule? Well, sometimes, the university liked to play practical jokes on my carefully ordered little world. One was called ‘cancelling-a-section-and-folding-it-into-another.’ Usually, I’d discover this the first day of classes… but after a couple of times, I was too smart for them, going up the day before to check class locations. Sure enough, they’d done it with my first education class. A methods class, if you please --- a course designed to deal with the actual nuts and bolts of teaching. (Completely useless course, as it turned out… but I couldn’t know that then.) It wasn’t at 10 anymore; it was scheduled for the middle of the night AKA 8 AM. The horror! Not only did it mean rising at an ungodly hour, it also meant taking transit during the height of high school student rush hour. I’d had experience with high school students in unstructured situations like buses. And these kids were, as my very English mother succinctly observed once, a lot of hooligans. So my enthusiasm that first morning was, shall we say, a little tempered.
 
And my fears were realized when the bus pulled up. It was jammed. With high school kids. Hardly any room to get on the bus. What added insult to injury was most of the jam was at the front. There was space towards the back. But did these hormonal adolescents see that and act? Nope. They continued standing in the jam at the front. I gritted my teeth, wedged myself in on the bus front steps, and off we went. I knew we’d be in trouble at the next stop.
 
And we were. A little old lady waited to board. Only there was no possible way she could. I looked to the bus driver for leadership. He glanced around, cast a weary, defeated eye on the assembled multitude, and said spiritlessly, “Move back, please.”
 
No one moved. Including me, but that’s because I couldn’t. He waited a beat, then said it again, sounding rather like a sheep pleading with wolves. “Move back, please.”
 
Nothing. Not a flicker of acknowledgement from any of them. The old lady still waited curbside. The universe stood still. And I would not make that first class on time. What to do?
 
Then it happened. Now, I’ve never regarded myself as a particularly angry, impatient, or imposing person. But something welled up from deep within me, surged to the surface like a volcanic eruption.
 
I. Was. Enraged. At. This. Stupidity.
 
You know how writers sometimes describe a character’s eyes ‘blazing?’ 38 years later, I can state with utter certainty it’s not just another cliché. I glanced wildly around and quite spontaneously bellowed, “WELL, GODDAMMIT, MOVE BACK!”
 
It was a Moses-and-the-Red-Sea moment… they parted and moved. With alacrity. The little old lady boarded, and off we went. When it momentarily appeared no one would offer her a seat… I glared menacingly at one long-haired, gangling youth. Didn’t have to say a word. He hastily stood, and she sat.
 
Hmm, I reflected thoughtfully. My first lesson in classroom management. No, no… not ‘swear at them,’ ‘shout at them,’ or anything like that. It was simply --- well, remember Han Solo, that erudite philosopher of Star Wars fame and his take on leadership, decision-making and such? What he says to Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, when they realize they’re inside a giant creature’s gut and need to get the hell out of there? Immediately? And she questions the wisdom of his decision?
 
Yep. Sometimes, you don’t have the luxury of leisurely sitting and discussing things in committee. Or, as Bob Heinlein said, “when the roof leaks, you don’t appoint a committee to study the leak. You fix the leak.”
 
That particular leak was fixed. And lo, it was good.
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Rites of Passage

7/1/2019

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A few months back, my wife and I flew off (in what I like to refer to rather disparagingly as ‘mass transit at 33,000 feet, with all the accompanying cachet and romance you’d expect in cattle class’) to attend my youngest daughter’s university convocation. Now, graduation ceremonies are certainly one of life’s most recognized and ballyhooed Rites of Passage (ROP), and my gosh, as a secondary school teacher for 34 years, I should know. I’ve seen enough of them, and also organized my own fair share of them (and like any event that goes off flawlessly, I can tell you quite unequivocally there’s a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes to make them so). I clearly remember writing an email to my school’s staff one year providing details regarding the upcoming grad ceremony and in particular, the rehearsal that was to take place, and I noted that:
 
“…the rehearsal will cause a certain amount of noise and distraction in your hallway, in the same way that the Pacific contains some water. But, you know, rites of passage are seldom painless, are they? And as your assorted alumni make rude gestures and farting noises at you through your classroom windows, thereby proving once again that things have changed remarkably little since the barbarian hordes swept through the Roman Empire to pillage and burn, take solace in an immortal truth: that this particular rite of passage signals an important thing:  these scholars will soon be gone from our august hallways… and busy causing mayhem somewhere else.”
 
I think the most important phrase is the one noting most ROP, while important, seldom tend to be painless. And what of the characteristics of them? Upon reflection --- having just experienced a pretty significant rite of passage myself, which, as you may well surmise, prompted today’s thoughts --- I’d say rites of passage have at least four main characteristics:
 
First, they involve highly significant moments in our life journeys, typically signifying major transitions from one state or period to another.
 
Second, while these milestones tend to be of only marginal/passing interest to most of the outside world, they are of major interest to us… or, if not us, then in many cases, our families. (Case in point: I didn’t go to my first university convocation because I’m one of those people who fail to see the point in parading across the stage with all the rest of the cattle, hearing my name called and receiving five seconds of politely disinterested applause before the next anonymous victim is named. However, I did attend my second university convocation. Oh, yeah, you betcha. Not because I’d had a change of heart. No, no, no; because after my first convocation, my mother, God rest her soul, pulled one of her patented I’m-not-angry-with-you-just-terribly-terribly-hurt routines which I know all children, regardless of age, are intimately familiar with. I’m sure it’s a required technique all impending mothers learn at mommy school… you know, along with more mundane things like changing diapers.)
 
Third, these experiences range emotionally from the tedious to the terrifying, the exhausting to the exhilarating, and the terrific to the tragic.
 
And fourth, some ROP are what I would characterize as builder milestones, others as retreat milestones, particularly later-life situations.
 
Think about the ROP we undergo for a moment: birth (well, most of us don’t have too many memories of that particular ROP --- which on reflection is probably not a bad thing at all), walking and talking (same), beginning school, moving from elementary to junior high to high school, graduating high school, being formally recognized as an adult (at least physically), post-secondary education, first jobs, first relationships, marriage (I wanted to write mawwidge like the Impressive Clergyman from Princess Bride, but decided not to), children, careers, retirement, grandchildren… and, of course, the ultimately final ROP, the one Will describes as moving on to “the Undiscovered Country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.”
 
These are all highly significant personal moments, snapshots in time if you will, of our respective life journeys. They are (mostly) moments we all share, so in that sense, they tend to be relatable to each and every one of us, which gives us a common frame of reference across the human condition. And, you’ll notice, a lot of them also involve firsts --- and sometimes, lasts. Quite a few are also what you could call involuntaries, in the sense that they occur quite without any conscious decisions or consent on our part.
 
The ROP I’ve just experienced? Ah, yes, thanks for asking. I retired. Just last week. From a secondary school teaching career spanning nearly three and a half decades. A mostly very rewarding career. And it was a voluntary ROP whose time, I decided, had come --- despite the fact it was also a very daunting ROP, signalling as it did a profound shift in the way I am about to live my life. Maybe that’s one of the most telling things about ROP: they also tend to signal major changes in our lives, and, given that most of us tend to have a lot of difficulty/anxiety with change, it’s easy to see why many people view some ROP with a certain amount of dread. I didn’t dread retirement, not exactly. I’ll go so far as to confess to being a little daunted by this profound shift, but am fairly confident that, with the help of friends and loved ones, I’ll be able to successfully navigate the sometimes-rocky channels of change without running aground or hitting any icebergs.
 
Anyway, ‘tis done. (As Will says, “If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.” Or something to that effect.) Today is the first day of, not retirement, but a change in careers.
 
Full steam ahead! (Or “ahead, warp factor one.”)
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More Literary Dads

6/17/2019

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Yesterday, of course, was Fathers’ Day. (Please note apostrophe placement, he said sternly in his best teacher voice. Yes, I’m painfully aware most calendars seem to write it as Father’s, but That Is Not Correct, You Illiterate Louts: we’re not referring to one father, but rather to a collective. Sheesh.) Anyway… so, fairly predictably, I was reflecting on literary fathers (hey, back off, man… it’s an easy blog topic for this week). I’ve written about literary dads before, a couple of years back (you can find that post here if you’re interested), so I had to think of a few new ones to talk about. And came to a mildly thought-provoking conclusion (well, thought-provoking on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when I wrote this, anyway), to wit:
 
It seems easier to generate a list of literary dads who aren’t really very good at being daddies than to come up with dads who are. (Or maybe that’s just where my mindset was, for some reason.) Yeah, I know there are nurturing, caring dads out there in the literary realm… but I suppose that, like literary mommies, daddies who are incompetent, testy or just plain nasty make for more interesting characters than ones who are wholesome, supportive and effective at what they do. It’s kind of a corollary to what I call the Mischief, Murder and Mayhem Syndrome in news reporting: most current events junkies aren’t really interested in news stories about unbearably cute kittens playing gently with each other in flower gardens on a sunny day; it’s the awful, the ugly and the bizarre which is far more fascinating. Hmm. Guess that’s not really much of an endorsement about human nature in general, or news junkies in particular, is it?
 
At any rate, here’s my list of literary daddies that came to mind (in thirty seconds or less) for this year:
 
Claudius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I like this play a lot, although it’s not a happy one, and as I tell my students, whenever you read Shakespearean tragedy, you can pretty much guarantee a pile of corpses on stage by play’s end --- including the title character.  Claudius is Hamlet’s uncle… or step-dad, really, because he marries his dead brother’s sister just as the play has started. Which never fails to gross out my students. (Granted, they have a point; what should Hamlet call Claudius? ‘Uncle Dad?’) Claudius makes a show of displaying step-fatherly devotion to his new son, but he’s usurped the crown Hamlet should have had, married his new wife in unseemly haste (Hamlet notes sarcastically to Horatio, his BFF, that food from the funeral became food for the wedding feast), and, we eventually learn, murdered his own brother to become king. And while he repents what he’s done --- well, sorta --- not enough to come clean and own up to his crimes. Unsurprisingly, he meets a nasty (and fitting) end at his stepson’s hand. Sir Derek Jacobi does a masterful job with the role in the excellent 1995 Kenneth Branagh film.
 
Claudius from Robert Graves’ books, I, Claudius and the sequel, Claudius the God. Yep, ‘nother Claudius --- amusingly, also played by Sir Derek Jacobi in the terrific 1977 BBC television miniseries, back when he was still just an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. This Claudius is the reluctant Roman Emperor of two millennia ago, and I say ‘reluctant’ because he’s no monarchist at all --- wants the Roman Republic restored, in fact. He’s made Emperor, totally unwillingly, by the Praetorian Guard after his mad nephew Caligula is murdered. To universal surprise --- everyone erroneously assumes he’s mentally disabled, to accompany his physical disabilities --- Claudius actually proves a pretty competent Emperor. And he’s dad to a son and daughter, although a pretty distant dad, truth be told… and he’s quite sure the boy isn’t his. Nevertheless, he’s got plans for son to restore the Republic --- which, of course, ultimately come to naught, in a tale worthy of Shakespearean tragedy.
 
Denethor from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (My obligatory Tolkien reference for the day.) I like book Denethor --- who’s Steward of Gondor i.e. de facto king --- much better than the filmic one, although John Noble did an excellent job with the material he was given. Book Denethor is prouder and not nearly as loony as filmic one --- Peter Jackson’s take in the films is that Denethor is clearly losing his marbles, which I doubt Tolkien would have approved of. Book Denethor is proud, cold, and calculating, yes, but doesn’t lose it until just before dying by his own hand, when he thinks he’s lost his second and only surviving son… whom he neglected in favour of his firstborn. There’s a lesson for dads everywhere: cherish your children while you can, buckos. Ah, yes, which leads to a title for Denethor’s memoirs: Tales Of A Bad Dad.
 
President Coriolanus Snow from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. Truthfully, I’d forgotten his first name --- if in fact I ever knew it --- and on seeing it as I checked with my friend The Google, I rolled my eyes and just wanted to say… “Really, Suzanne? Really? Are we trying to be terribly clever here?” Because, of course, his first name is a not-subtle-at-all reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name: both characters share all kinds of common plot and character points in their respective narratives. (Of course, that’s not something your average teenager/YA aficionado would know. Or care about, come to that, so maybe it doesn’t really matter that much.) That personal snarkiness aside, however, I like President Snow’s character a lot, particularly as Donald Sutherland plays him in the films: he’s utterly ruthless --- although there’s a charming (if creepy) dichotomy as he tenderly relates to his grand-daughter --- cunning, pragmatic, and above all, terrifyingly honest (“Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had an agreement not to lie to each other”) which is as unorthodox in a politician as it is refreshing.
 
So there we are. Pater familias, indeed.
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What? Act VI Already?

6/10/2019

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Okay, baby, ready or not, here we come: Act VI.
 
There’s something simultaneously alarming and exciting about that simple statement, you know. Act VI? Already? Yikes.
 
What are you babbling about now? I hear you mumbling. Well, glad you asked. Let’s start at the beginning: as you can see from the quote at the top, Will (Shakespeare, Of Course, Dummy) wrote one of his most famous monologues in one of his comedies, a play called As You Like It. (Yes, he wrote comedies. Yes, he can be very funny --- and not just to dead Elizabethans, either. Now stop looking at me like that and stop interrupting.) The weird thing about the monologue being in one of his comedies is that it’s actually fairly melancholy, with an ending that is, to be frank, downright depressing (more about that later). I won’t print out the entire thing here, but will provide you with my own summary of Will’s take on our lives:
 
Act 1 – Babyhood
Act 2 – School Daze
Act 3 – Young Man/Woman
Act 4 – Startin’ Out and Establishing Yourself, Career/Marriage-Wise
Act 5 – Later On and Bringing it to a Close
Act 6 – Retirement
Act 7 – Decrepitude and Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil
 
And as of the end of this month, I will officially be transferring from Act V to Act VI when I leave a 34-year career as a secondary school teacher. Without even the benefit of a rhyming couplet at the end of the scene to signify the conclusion of Act V. (Sorry. English teacher humour.)
 
It’s alarming because it’s something new: the second last act in the play. Which means the end of the play is a helluva lot closer than it was two acts ago. Yeah, I know things could have conceivably ended at any moment --- kind of a grand cosmic ringing down the curtain, so to speak --- but it’s way more likely to end at the end, if you know what I mean. (Like most people, I have no recollection of Act 1, a few jumbled and probably largely inaccurate memories of Act 2… and Act 3, despite the fact I naively think I can recall it, is largely obscured in a purple mist of hormones.) But I do recall Act 4 commencing like it was yesterday. And it seems hard to believe that here we are, on the other side of that gaping chasm which appeared to be, three and a half decades ago, an utterly uncrossable and unbridgeable divide.
 
It’s also exciting because it’s something new: I’ve run the wheels off the old model of my life, and this represents something quite different, which is, yes, a little (okay, sometimes a lot) unsettling, but also full of potential and new opportunities. I ran into a guy at work the other day; I’ve known him since high school, although our acquaintance was more the casual kind than BFF. At any rate, he’s now retired, but is substitute teaching as a means of bringing travel money into the kitty, and he assured me there is life after teaching. Which was really good to hear. (I can’t imagine substitute teaching after retirement… not at this juncture, anyway. While it’s fairly lucrative work, money-wise… well, I subbed way, way back when Pontius was a Pilate because it was the only way to get on full-time --- a means to an end, I guess you could say --- so I did it with dedication but no real enthusiasm. It does allow you to leave at day’s end with no lesson planning or marking, and you get to avoid the endless, pointless meetings, but the trade-off is that one of the big things about teaching is the rapport you build with your kids, and quite obviously, in subbing, you don’t have that. In terms of school-daze social status, you are down near the bottom of the ladder, sandwiched unhappily between caretakers and school bus drivers. I still vividly recall, way back in Act 4, at one school where I subbed regularly, being in the classroom one morning, reading the lesson plans I had been left, and kids streaming into the building. One kid poked his head into the room, saw me, and yelled to his buddy in the hall, “Hey! We got a sub!” Yikes. Words to make any substitute’s heart sink way down to his toes. His buddy, answering the summons, came to look, saw me, and smacked the first kid. “That’s not a sub, you dummy, that’s Mr. Ranshaw,” he loftily informed the first kid. God bless him: I knew, at that moment, I had made the critical shift in that kid’s subconscious from cardboard cut-out teacher to real person.)
 
At any rate, I anticipate and hope Act 6 to be one of rejuvenation and re-invention. In good ways. My wife has always noted that when I come home from school for the summer at the end of June, I undergo a Jekyll/Hyde transformation --- the Jekyll side, I hasten to add, although she doesn’t call it that: she refers to me in the summertime as “Island Niles,” a reference to the TV comedy classic series, Frasier. The series protagonist, Dr. Frasier Crane, has a perpetually uptight brother named Niles, who, in one episode, goes on a tropical holiday and comes back very uncharacteristically relaaaaaaxed. So, yeah, I could see myself as Island Niles.
 
And Act 7? Well, Will’s take on it is very bleak, even for an Elizabethan --- but you’ve got to remember he was writing four hundred years ago, when most people didn’t even make it to Act 7. Life was, as Thomas Hobbes wrote around the same time, “nasty, brutish and short.” Although none of us know exactly what’s in store, I hope my Act 7 is much better than what Will projects.
 
So here’s to a long and lustrous Act 6 (and hopefully Act 7, too)!
 
I’ll keep you posted.
 
 
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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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