References and Originality

            One thing you should always remember about authors is that we are playful people and words are our favourite toys. We love to be sneaky and hide little secrets and references in our books, not to mention leaving a few puns lying around. My favourite  though, are the references. Most of these you won’t even notice unless you’re familiar with what they are about, but when you see them, they give you a good chuckle.

            The master of these references, of course, is Terry Pratchett. I firmly believe that no one can measure up to his satirical fantasy. I don’t think you can read a page without stumbling across some sort of obscure reference – the more I read, the more of them I catch and the more I marvel at his brilliance.

            In the three and a half books I've written, I've snuck in everything from Monty Python and Princess Bride quotes to references from Tolkien, Pratchett, Shakespeare and Dr Who (which I've only been watching for about a week) to internet memes. The more I write, the more ways I discover to sneakily hide references.

            I started thinking about these references (obviously, or else I wouldn't be talking about them) after coming across a reference to the lyrics of a Bon Jovi song in the book I'm currently reading (Vortex). I started to wonder why we hide these little tidbits in our books. I mean, obviously it’s fun, and it makes us feel special when someone likes our books enough to go digging through in search of everything we hid inside, but those couldn't be the only reasons.

            Then I realised that it’s our way of giving credit. In this day and age, there is virtually no originality. Not because we artists aren't as imaginative as we used to be, but simply because there is so much that has come before us. When I first read Eragon (a book written by someone close to my own age) I knew right away, without a doubt, that Christpher Paolini was a fan of Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K Le Guin. Whether it is intentional or not, authors will always have traces of whatever inspired them in their work. So, by sneaking our little references in, we are tipping our hats to those who inspired us and making ourselves feel better about using the turn of phrase that, strictly speaking, we didn't come up with.

            Since I mentioned the lack of originality in the world, I think I should elaborate on what I mean by that, as well as making it clear that it’s not a bad thing. We humans love to measure things and, while many would argue that art can’t be measured, we have managed to analyse books and say with certainty that there are only somewhere between 1 and 36 plotlines that exist in the world (the number depends on the system you are using to define the plots). If you look at the thousands of books, movies, video games and anything else requiring a plot that’s out there (like life), it’s obvious that these get used over and over again. How do we not notice?

            Well, the reason we don’t notice is because we (well, most of us) aren't watching for it. The art of telling a story isn't in creating a plot that no one has considered before; it’s in telling the story in a way that entertains people. It’s nice if this is a new way, and even better if you can keep people guessing, but the true purpose is to entertain. So, it doesn't matter that every story has already been told, because it can always be told in a different way!

            What about those people who analyse everything and complain about the lack of originality? That’s their own problem. If they want to decide that every story where the villain is the protagonist’s father is a Star Wars rip off, anything with a portal to another world is Narnia and anything with any type of institution that teaches magic is Harry Potter, then they are welcome to be disappointed about the lack of originality. They should, however, take a moment to read the history books to see how often events of reality repeat. They should also look to see if anyone else has commented on the lack of originality, lest their complaint is not their original thought.

            To finish off, I shall impersonate the Doctor and say, live long and prosper with the force. Alas, poor Yorik, he got caught playing riddles in the dark and was slain by Sephiroth before he could collect all the Deathly Hallows! Now, where did I leave my holy hand grenade...? Like a boss!

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Nostalgia

            What is it about the past that we find so enthralling? It doesn't matter if it was good or bad; something always draws our minds to the past and somehow, the past was always better than the present.

            Nostalgia is such a fascinating thing, not because it exists, but because it exists in so many people. While I’ll freely admit that there is a lot of merit to the saying “They don’t make things like they used to” (don’t get me started on built-in obsolescence), was the past really better than the present?

            When I think back to when I was a child, I wonder at how easily I was entertained and how much fun I had with simple things. Swimming is a perfect example. My parents have numerous pictures of me swimming and having a grand old time. I remember having a blast pretending to be a dolphin or just paddling around. Now, however, I don’t see a point in swimming. There’s no purpose to it and, because of that, I no longer have fun.

            So, is swimming less fun now than it was when I was a kid? I find that doubtful. Swimming is an activity, it cannot change – but I can.

            What is it, then, that changes us as we grow older that makes us enjoy life less, or at least think we do? Is it growing up? Gaining more responsibility? Having greater knowledge?

            If I had to choose one, I would have to go with knowledge, because growing up is optional and in order to have responsibility you have to accept it. Knowledge is the one thing that is irreversible – once we have it, there’s no going back (well, at least not while you still have a healthy mind).

            Knowledge is important to our way of life and it’s supposed to be a good thing. So why does it seem like the more knowledge we have, the less we can enjoy life? I think it’s because we over-think things. We spend our time worrying about what other people think of us, what we could have done in the past to make the present better, when the next terrorist attack will come and what we can do to get a raise. Then we look back at our childhood selves and think, “Gee... I had it made back then.”

            The funny thing is that life isn't all that different now than it was back then. We just know more, which means we have to sift through a lot more before we can arrive at what we enjoy – or we don’t enjoy things because we don’t understand why we enjoy them.

            Instead of looking back at how great the past was, I think we should take all this knowledge we've accumulated and, rather than allowing it to make us think life is worse, use it to find ways of enjoying life more. We’ll never enjoy life the way we did when we were children – we have too much knowledge for that – but we can enjoy life differently. Not more, not less, but differently.

            Either that or we should accept that ignorance is bliss and go live in the trees like every kid wants to. After all, kids have it made.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Understanding Phobias

            I have often felt that most people don’t understand the term “phobia”. The general meaning is understood – a phobia is a fear. But, if it’s a fear, why not just say “fear” instead of “phobia”?

            The reason is that a phobia is much more than a fear – it is a type of anxiety disorder. Depending on the severity of the phobias, they can be very debilitating. As someone who suffers from a number of them, I would know. That being said, the information I can give you is based off of my own experiences and may or may not reflect those of other people, but in the very least it can give you an idea of what having a phobia is like.

            The very worst part of having a phobia is knowing that it exists, because they are generally irrational fears. With a normal irrational fear, someone can use logic and explain to you how it is irrational and that helps you overcome the fear, but with a phobia, all it can do is make you aware that your response is entirely involuntary. There’s nothing worse than knowing that you can’t control your reaction to something you know you shouldn't be afraid of.

            Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is with an example. One of my phobias that I discovered when I was a teenager was a fear of heights. But not all heights, no, just a certain type. I could easily jump down from a ten foot balcony or have LARP sword fights with my friends on the angled (and usually slippery) pavilion roofs at the park, but to get up to that roof I had to walk across the narrow sides of two-by-fours which I discovered I could only do if I was holding on to something.

            Now, I know, that seems perfectly logical and is an intelligent safety precaution, which is true, but what struck me was that I actually couldn't move if I wasn't holding on to something. I have an excellent sense of balance and I had every confidence that I could even run across those two-by-fours without falling, but my body refused to move.

            Logic told me I would be safe; I had the confidence and the skill, but I still couldn't do it. This is the difference between a phobia and a fear. Here is a picture of the closest I ever got to defeating that phobia:

            It was taken as part of a series of pictures where I was having LARP dagger fights with my best friend everywhere. Of all the pictures, this was the only one that was posed (including one where we were fighting while standing on either end of a teeter-totter) because I couldn't stay standing up long enough to fight.

            I shouldn't say that logic is entirely useless in regards to phobias. It is wonderful for making them worse. There is one very common mistake that people make when trying to help someone with a phobia, and that is to give them logic. “Why are you afraid of X? Don’t you know that Y, which you have no problem with, has far more bacteria?” To which my response is, “Gee, thanks, now my phobia won’t let me touch X or Y!”

            In fact, being a logical person and having a phobia is probably the worst combination there is. One of my worst phobias is raw meat. Somewhere along the lines, I picked up that raw meat carried all kinds of bad... something. I don’t even know what it is that I'm afraid of, but I know I can’t touch raw meat. Or anything that raw meat touches. Or that that touches. It’s like there’s a force-field.

            Colleen and I went to the local Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago and we bought a couple pounds of bacon. It was nearly a traumatising experience for me and worse for Colleen once I pointed out to her what had happened (she makes every possible effort to not agitate my phobias. Isn't she wonderful?). The lady at the shop handled the bacon with her bare hands, which she then used to wrap the bacon before putting it on the counter. To clarify this in my phobia’s terminology, the bacon contaminated the lady’s hands, which contaminated the paper that was now, by my expectation, supposed to be preventing the bacon from contaminating anything else.

Good job there.

            Moving on, Colleen paid the woman, who took the money and gave change with the same contaminated hands. Taking the contaminated change, Colleen’s hands became contaminated, as did her wallet and everything in it when she put the money inside. Then, on the way home, Colleen brushed her hair out of her eyes with her contaminated hands...

            And that is how phobia logic works! It took every ounce of my self control and mental re-routing to stop my phobia from preventing me from handling money ever again (because I don’t know how much of it has been passed through hands that have handled raw meat). To be fair, that’s a pretty powerful phobia, but it should at least give you an idea what having one is like (if you don’t already have one).

            So, what can you do to help someone with a phobia if logic doesn't work? The best suggestion I have is to leave them to take care of themselves and to respect that their fears are rooted so deeply that it is more than a fear – it is an involuntary, often paralysing, reaction. People who know they have phobias know what precautions to take to prevent them from being too problematic (such as marrying a wonderful person who’s willing to eliminate all those spiders that want to kill them). In my experience, all you can do by trying to make the phobias go away is to make them worse.

            I hope this has helped you to understand phobias a bit better and that, if you have phobias, it hasn't made them worse.

            To that one despicable person out there who just opened their wallet and started rubbing all their money on a raw steak, I hope that whatever it is that my phobia insists I’m afraid of gets you instead of me.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Colleen on Food

Today's blog is brought to you by my wife and co-author Colleen regarding one of her favourite subjects: Food.

I've always enjoyed cooking. But even longer than that I've enjoyed eating. At some point I discovered that food wasn't just a phenomenon that occurred when mom was around; I had control! Once that transition happened there was no looking back. I started with Mr. Noodles and then the rest is a blur until the present day. I take on any cooking challenge and I defeat most foods that I come across. The majority of the time when I fail in the kitchen it's because I went free-form, sans recipe or the recipe I did use was faulty. As egotistical as that sounds I swear it's the honest truth.

Cooking always seemed to come naturally to me. At age ten I broached the subject of home made bread with my mother. Time and again she had attempted this feat and her efforts had always turned out “smelling of beer” she told me and as a result she was fearful of teaching her young daughter. We tried anyway and my mother was astonished at the result. Not only was the braided loaf pretty as a picture but there was not a whiff of beer to be smelled. I try to tackle every culinary challenge with the same fearlessness I had at ten.

Cooking will never be a chore for me. Each aspect of it is a delight. I wish I could wave a magic wand and infuse other people with this love I have because I know too many of us dread entering a kitchen. Of course when you've been obligated to perform this traditionally “womanly” task since age fourteen, it's a little hard to find the fun in it after sixty odd years.

I also adore giving back to the people I love. I regularly baked brownies for my amateur theatre group, cookies for my live action role play group, innumerable meals for my family, casseroles for ailing relatives. My knee-jerk reaction to any situation is food. A few years ago I heard that my husband's grandmother had fallen and broken a hip. Instantly I asked “Should I cook something for grandpa?” And nothing makes friends faster than hearing “These cookies are great! Who made them?” One Christmas I decided to give an uncle the twelve days of cookies. I ended up wrapping a box weighing over thirteen pounds, of just cookies. The joy of eating is very seriously rivalled by the joy of giving and sharing a meal.

My husband has told me several times that what I cook is the best of its kind he's ever had or that he doesn't normally like whatever it is but when I make it he can't stop eating it. He once told me that my deep-fried “potato thingies” (a mashed potato French fry based on a Julia Child recipe) were the single most delicious thing he'd ever eaten. He's also accused me of trying to fatten him up with all my cooking. Feeding him is the greatest pleasure I have in an activity I already deeply adore.

I manage to infuse almost every aspect of my life with food. One of my duties as Jonathan's co-author is to assist in the descriptions of his writing. When he draws a blank he will leave [DESCRIPTION HERE] in the manuscript and I will add my imagination in the form of clothing, hair colour, fireworks displays, meadows of flowers and even a chocolate chip cookie. One chapter in his first book found the main character trying chocolate for the first time courtesy of a cook, who I was given free reign to do with as I pleased. Of course, there is no better way to introduce anyone to chocolate than with this time-honoured treat. I went to town describing how a freshly baked, warm, chewy, sweet chocolate chip cookie feels, tastes and smells. After that, the minor cook character earned a larger role in the book.

I hope to someday publish a cookbook and share my first love with the world at large, but for now I have the joy of keeping a relatively small corner of the globe happy and well fed.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

 

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.