Insecure Writer's Support Group: Learning to say "It is good"

Take an insecurity and ratchet it all the way up and what do you get? An anxiety.

I've probably obliquely mentioned that I have anxiety issues before. But I'm one of those people who likes to (needs to, really) maintain a veneer of being calm and collected no matter how I feel on the inside. So while I'm projecting this...

There's a very real chance that on the inside I look more like this...

And the problem with the anxiety that I suffer is that it's general, meaning that at any given point in time I'm feeling strong anxiety about nothing in particular that manifests its self by making everything I want to do difficult. My anxiety isn't based on anything real or anything rational for the most part. And let me tell you, that drives me insane. Because I am a very rational and logical person. So I can sit back and examine my symptoms of anxiety and KNOW that there's nothing to be anxious about, no reason to argue about the possible consequences of every little thing, no basis to most of my fears. And yet, that knowledge has absolutely no affect on my symptoms. I simply can't control the physical effects of my fear. I can't stop the breathing difficulty or the rapidly beating heart or the muscular paralysis or anything else that I experience every time I need to make an important phone call. (That's right, I get severe anxiety from making phone calls. It's stupid and really, really inconvenient and I've been struggling against it for years with no results.)

Quite honestly, anxiety is something that people who have never suffered from it can't understand most of the time.

And I'm talking about this today because in addition to phone calls, trying new tastes, needles and other various things I suffer from anxiety of putting my own words out there for other people to read. I know that this is what's been holding me back for a long time as a writer. It was easier, once upon a time, when I didn't really consider publication as the goal of my writing. I just wrote because I couldn't help it and the only person I ever showed any of it to was my husband. Now that every word I write has the potential to be seen by the public...

Well, let's just say I even have a hard time hitting the publish button on blog posts. There's a part of me always second guessing myself, whispering "You could have said that much better with a bit more time". But down that road lies madness. If you start telling yourself that with a bit more work it could be so much better (even though it's true) then you'll never get around to publishing anything because it could ALWAYS get better. None of us are sitting down to the computer and typing up perfection on the first draft or even the 50th.

For me, this particular madness is preemptive. Before I even get a first draft down the voices are whispering to me, "Why bother? You'll never get it right. It will always fall short of what you want it to be." And that's probably true as well. It's probably been true of all the masterpieces of literature that were ever published. In one way or another, they fell short of the author's vision. And yet we have those masterpieces because at some point the writer looked at his or her creation and said "It is good." Not "It is perfect and could never get better" but simply "It is good."

I haven't managed to reach this point yet, but I'm working on it. I suspect simple discipline is necessary and I am admittedly not a very disciplined person in my habits. That's something I plan to work on this year.

So how about you? Do you struggle with this anxiety? Have you found ways of combating it? I could use all the tips and tricks I can get.

Getting to Know My Characters

Characterization is pretty important to me as a writer. If I have a good understanding of my characters and their natures it makes it a lot easier for the words to flow. For me, to a certain extent, the plot flows directly out of the characters. Who they are and what choices they would make determines what happens in the story. So I need to know my characters. I need to know how they think and what they would do.

For this reason I often do characterization writing where I'll just sit and write stream of consciousness style from a particular character's point of view to try to get them to reveal themselves to me. I generally do this until I can hear their voice, and I mean that literally. When I can actually hear the sound of their voice in my head as I'm writing their words (it usually takes the form of a voice I've heard from an actor or actress) then I know I'm ready to write them in the story.

Right now I'm gearing up to finally make a fresh start on my novel which I'm planning as the first in a saga. (I like the sound of "saga" better than "series".) So I've been doing some characterization writing and I thought I'd share some of it here. What I'm sharing today is from the point of view of the character Menes, who is one of the two characters that speak from the future in the saga's framing device. Menes is a priest who is the curator of the great library in the city of temples. I hear his voice as the voice of the character of the technomage Elric in the sci fi show Babylon 5...


Menes

I remember.

When the summit of holy Tatenan breached the surface of the primordial waters I was there to remember. When Seppo the Architect broke ground at the feet of that mountain to make the foundation for the first of the four great cities I was there to remember. And when the rumblings of the earth caused the seas to boil and overwhelm the land I was there to remember. All things I remember. This is my role within Mayet.

For a thousand thousand years I have watched and remembered. I have lived among the mortal children of Re through countless cataclysms and catastrophes. I have seen them in their darkest hours and known the depth of their potential for honor and glory, as well as for betrayal. In the unending struggle between the Bas of Order and the Sheut of Chaos, I believe it is the Akh power of these mortal Men that will tip the balance for Mayet or Isfet.

I live among Men, when most of my brethren have retreated beyond the living world, to help guide their steps along the path of Mayet and prepare them for the task they must take up if Order is to triumph.

What others have forgotten, I preserve. What they have forsaken, I will restore.

This is my participation in Mayet.

So what do you think? Does Menes seem like an interesting character? Does Elric have the best voice ever or what? Do you do any similar exercises to get to know your characters?

Thoughts about Love on Valentine's Day

Eleven years ago I had one really perfect Valentine's Day with my future husband. 5 months later we were married and we've never worried about Valentine's Day since then. We've never worried about "romance" and we've also never for a moment not known with absolute certainty that our marriage will last until death do us part.

Over the last few years my husband and I have watched helplessly as the marriages of my brother and his sister (both of whom have one child) fell apart suddenly and ended in divorce. In one case we know why it happened. One of the spouses turned out to be a crazy, lying piece of excrement. In the other case, the divorce is so ridiculously amicable that I cannot fathom why the marriage had to end at all. It's heartbreaking to see how it is affecting the children caught in the middle. It is also heartbreaking to have to occasionally assure my oldest child, who can see what is going on and is unsettled by it to say the least, that divorce is something she never, ever, ever has to worry about in her family.

Some weeks ago when the subject of divorce entered a conversation with my mother, I had occasion to comment to her that divorce is something my children will never have to go through. My mother, who went through 2 divorces before finding happiness with her third husband, looked at me seriously and said, "I hope so." I was shocked by that response, though in hindsight I know I shouldn't have been. Mostly because the tone of her voice clearly said "that's a nice thought, dear, but you'd better be prepared for the possibility". She didn't really believe me, in other words. Divorce is too much a part of her reality (going through 2 herself, seeing other family members around her going through it and now helping my brother through his) for her to ever believe that it's not always lurking around the corner.

And it seems like that's true of most people. Most people seem to view relationships of any kind with the built in assumption that there's always the chance that the relationship will change and come to an end. And the world is filled with people trying to figure out how to keep that from happening. Married couple discuss their tips and tricks for having a healthy relationship. Gurus and experts and counselors tell people all sorts of things they need to do to keep a relationship going. But the assumption is always that there's a limit. There's some point where you've done all you can do and you just have to let a bad relationship die. That it's a natural part of the process.

Well, I've only been married for 10 years. And God knows we have our ups and downs like everyone else. But there is one huge difference between our relationship and every other relationship that I see around me. It's very simple and I truly believe that it is the one and only thing that will guarantee the life of a relationship.

We do not, under any circumstances, admit the possibility of separation or divorce. It is simply not conceivable in our view of marriage.

So we argue and disagree. We fight. (I once threw a hard cover book at my husband's head and gave him a concussion.) We're normal people who have tempers and don't always feel mushy and loving toward each other. But we always know in our hearts that none of that stuff matters. Because we are married and we are always going to be married and that is that. Ending the relationship in any way is simply not an option.

That's what love is. I'm the most fortunate person in the world to have it and to have had it from the beginning and to know without a shadow of a doubt that I will have it until death tears us apart.

What is an Epic?

Ok, I'll let this one go.

The word "epic" gets bandied around a lot on the internet these days and I admit that it makes me very sad to see the meaning of the word watered down and used in ridiculous ways. The truth is that the word epic comes from the Greek meaning "word, story, poem" and was traditionally used to refer to a lengthy narrative poem. Homer wrote epics. The word does not refer to something you think is neat or impressive. It is not an adjective to be shoved willy nilly in front of the words "win" or "fail" as if they weren't opposites.

Of course, we've appropriated the term for things other than narrative poetry that aren't so stupid. I'm a pretty big fan of Epic Fantasy. But then, I think we've been defining Epic Fantasy too loosely. If we're going to use the term "epic" for prose rather than poetry, that's understandable. Long narrative poems just aren't really a viable method for storytelling these days. But I do think that our prose version of the epic should at least participate in some of the other characteristics that set the epic poem apart.

This definition of the epic is from A Handbook to Literature by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman:

Epic: a long narrative poem in elevated style presenting characters of high position in adventures forming an organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race.

Let's look at some of these elements. 

An Elevated Style 

Within the context of poetry, that's pretty self explanatory. Poetry is an elevated style. But what would this mean in the context of a prose tale? The idea brings to mind passages from certain works that express ideas and emotions so strong, so grand, so glorious that you want to shout them into a thunderstorm or while swinging a sword above your head. Words that stir you. For instance, it used to be that whenever we had a storm around here my husband would feel the need to go outside and proclaim into the gale:

And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Which is, of course, a line from Shakespeare's King Lear. Just the other night I read some lines from the classic fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros which gave me distinct chills:

And now, let the earth be afraid, and Cynthia obscure her shrine: no more words but mum. Thunder and blood and night must usurp our parts, to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great piece.

Or this from Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany:

Far over the waters, and on the wings of the prayers beats the light of an inaccessible star. No hand hath touched it, none hath journeyed to it, it hath no substance, it is only a light, it is the star of Hope, and it shines far over the sea and brightens the world.

An elevated style, I think, is using the power and the sound and rhythm of words to conjure up in our hearts things of grandeur and beauty. Things greater than anything we are likely to experience in our day to day lives. 

Central Heroic Figure and Characters of High Position

Achilles. Beowulf. Odysseus. Gilgamesh. Rama. Siegfried. 

The great epics feature huge casts of characters, but the nexus of the story is the Hero. The character whose words and actions can move mountains and ultimately drive the story. The Hero of an epic is a larger than life character and usually embodies the values of the culture from which the epic is born.

The Hero is not, of course, the only character of importance. Given the vast scope of most epics there will be many other actors in the drama having their own adventures and escapades either with the Hero or on the side. But all the parts of the tale come together through their relation to the Hero. He is, in other words, the glue that holds the epic together.

But why, one might ask, should an epic specifically be concerned with "characters of high position".

Well, keep in mind that the art form of the epic goes back thousands of years to times and places where it was only those of high position who would have participated in adventures on a scale grand enough to influence the history of a nation and justify an epic. Everyone else was too busy wondering where their next meal would come from. Also, which type of tale would you rather be entertained with at the end of a long day toiling in the fields? A story about Joe who lives in the next village and has the exact same cares and faces the exact same conflicts as you? Or the tale of mighty Achilles overcoming the great Hector outside the walls of Troy? I know which I'd prefer.

Still, we live in a different world now. People of "high position" who can change the course of a nation or influence a culture can come from anywhere. To incorporate this idea into a modern prose epic one can choose to focus on the individuals in a story that have the most at stake and the most influence over their world. The characters whose actions and words have powerful ramifications within their culture are the characters of "high position".

Episodes Important to the History of a Nation

My husband suggests that a better choice of wording in this part of the definition would be "episodes important to the identity of a nation or race". In other words, epics are born out of a culture as well as helping to shape the culture. Reading the ancient epics gives us insight into the mind and heart of the cultures of the ancient world. These epic poems developed from the tales told by the people as part of their cultural identity. They reflect what was sacred to the people, what made them Greeks or Romans or Anglo-Saxons, etc.

Stories don't have quite the same relationship with culture these days. Not only because there are hundreds of thousands of books published every year allowing us to be really picky about which ones we readers turn into successes, but also because culture just doesn't mean the same thing these days. The world has become, at the same time, a much bigger and much smaller place. Bigger because we're not confined to villages anymore. Smaller because the unknown and unexplored has all but vanished. Which is why, I believe, a lot of us have turned to the realms of fantasy and science fiction for those things which once would have been part of the cultural epic.

To achieve the same kind of importance and meaning in a prose epic today an author almost has no choice but to create their own setting. An epic should involve circumstances and events that have far reaching consequences and it should be played out across a vast and lofty canvas. 

Artist's rendition of mythological Ireland, where the sagas of the Age of Heroes happened.

I'll be honest. I think there's too much "epic fantasy" out there that doesn't count as epic in any way. I think we need more truly epic works of fiction. And the reason I am exploring this topic is because it is my goal to write some. Toward that end, I'll probably spend some time talking about particular epics and examining some of the other common elements of the ancient epic here in future posts. Wish me good fortune!

Who am I? Part 2: The Blog

The Look

Recently I've been looking at my blog. For while now it's been bright and cheerful. All happy little clouds and primary colors. I liked that look. It made me smile to look at it. But let me bring you in on a little secret... The look of my blog didn't reflect me as a person in the slightest. It also didn't reflect the type of stories I want to write at all.

That's a problem. As I'm sure you all know, there's this thing called author branding. Now, I hate the term "branding". It makes me feel like a commodity. Still, the principle behind the term is solid. Branding is all about how you present yourself to your potential readers. It's important to send a clear message about what readers can expect from you as an author.

And the simple truth is that I am not one of those cheerful, carefree bloggers that are always relating amusing stories and making people laugh. That's just not me. Sometimes I wish it was, but I have to accept who I am. I'm a thoughtful, introspective, often philosophic person who only talks when I have something worth saying and always, always, always fact checks any statement I make on any subject for dread of being wrong. When I'm humorous, it's usually sarcastic humor. I'm a somewhat serious and old fashioned person who sometimes wishes I had been born in another age and always wishes I had been born an Elf in Middle-earth. I'm not bright, cheerful colors and happy little clouds.

That's why I've decided to go for a new look. Something that reflects me and my writing better. Yeah, I'm definitely more of an earth tones person. The picture I've chosen for my new header is by Scottish painter David Roberts who produced many images from his tour through Egypt in the 1840s. It's no secret that Ancient Egypt is a passion of mine and a strong influence on my worldbuilding.

The Name

I've also chosen a new title for the blog. Truth be told, I've never been happy with "The Aspiring Subcreator". There's something suggestive about using the word  "aspiring". It subconsciously gives you permission to stay aspiring forever, to never quite meet your goals because you can always reach higher. Well, I'm tired of that. I want to accomplish something this year. I'm not giving myself permission anymore to keep putting off achievement.

I do love the term "sub-creator" coined by Tolkien. But the term "mythopoeia" (which also come from Tolkien, in the context of fantasy literature) is probably more descriptive of the particular way in while I want to write. And the structure of the word gives me a good opportunity to use it to make a geeky reference to Babylon 5, my favorite Sci Fi TV show. (The phrase "Falling Toward Mythopoesis" is a shameless paraphrase of the title of a season 4 episode of Babylon 5, "Falling Toward Apotheosis".) And we geeks love our little in jokes and references, don't we?

To match the new name and new look and new everything else, I think I'd also better change the blog address. As far as I know, if I change it nothing should get screwed up. Everyone who follows me under this address will still be following me under the new one. Please tell me if I'm wrong about that before I do anything drastic. My intent is to just use my name, since this will probably have to serve as my author's website for some time after I finally begin publishing. In fact, that's really what this whole overhaul is about. Getting serious about my goals and preparing for the day when I'll be using this site to present myself to the world as an author.

The Content

But the main thing about a blog is the content, right? No matter how pretty it looks it still needs to be engaging to those reading it. And now I'm going to talk about an observation I've made recently that may be a bit... unwelcome.

I took a long break (again) from the blogosphere. Actually, this past year I took a couple. Every time I stepped back and stopped watching my blog list and then came back... I've noticed that the list of blogs I follow becomes more and more about a relatively small group of writers constantly promoting each other to each other and little more. Which makes me wonder... Who are we even talking to here?

Most posts that show up on my blog feed are all cover reveals and blog tours and new releases. And I see the same ones over and over and over.  Do readers see any of this? Or is it mostly fellow writers? Is that even slightly effective? I'll be honest, I follow a lot of fellow writers because they are writers and I am a writer and I'm interested in writerly fellowship. However, most of the time I'm not at all interested in their books because I'm not going to force myself to read something that doesn't suit my literary tastes just because I like the author's blog. I admittedly skip over the blog tour posts and the cover reveal posts and the release date posts and all the other promotional posts. It means I end up passing over most of the posts that show up on my blog feed everyday. There are few enough that have any real substance outside of promotion.

The other major category of blog posts I see is inexperienced, amateur writers dispensing writing wisdom to other equally experienced amateur writers. Now, maybe it's just me, but this bothers me. I think that if you're going to act like an authority on a subject you should actually be an authority on that subject. If you're going to say things like "This is how you should ____" then you should have at least 10 published novels under your belt.  Now, it's fine if you're clearly just talking about what your personal opinion is or describing your personal observations of the writing process. But all too many unpublished, short term writers blogging around here act as if they know exactly how all books should be written and their posts come across as if they think their way is the right way or that they've discovered the one secret to good writing. Perhaps it's just bad communication, but I expect better than that of writers.

I don't say these things to call anyone out or to tell you you're doing it wrong. Whatever brings you happiness and success as a writer and blogger is what you should do. But I'm not happy with this blogging atmosphere. And I don't want to fall into that trap. The trap where all I'm talking to are fellow writers who probably don't want to read my books anyway because they simply enjoy different genres. The trap where all I do is promote myself and those fellow writers to other fellow writers or the trap where I talk as if I know everything about writing stories even though I haven't accomplished anything on a professional level.

I think I do have worth while things to say about writing and books, but they are only my opinions. I do think that blogs are a good venue for promotion, but only in moderation and I have doubts about how effective so-called blog tours could possibly be. I realize that it's hard to reach beyond the writing blogosphere to the actual readers (who aren't writers), but that's where I want to be headed. And I want to start making my blog right now a place where readers and writers can glean near equal value from reading my posts.

In Conclusion

I have a lot of work to do.

Who am I?

Last year I went through a period of hardcore writer's block lasting for most of the year. The main reason for this was personal life issues. The energy I had to invest in learning to be the mother of an Asperger's child left little creative energy. However, as I've been adjusting to my new reality, I've also been spending a lot of time pondering who I am, what I want and where I am going in the context of my creative urges.

(Kudos to anyone who gets the references in the images.)

My identity as a writer has always been strongly linked to my love of everything written by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was The Lord of the Rings that made me fall in love with the fantasy genre and long to tell stories as magical. Over the past year, I've made a serious effort to read some of the other foundational material of the fantasy genre and to educate myself about the authors and works that made the genre popular in the first place. I've discovered a lot of forgotten treasures and learned a lot about what elements of fantasy resound with me most strongly. It's been a fun learning experience.

What I've learned is that I'm decidedly old fashioned in my tastes and preferences. The more I read the older literature of fantasy, things like The Worm Ouroboros, Lord Dunsany's works, the Conan the Cimmerian stories and many others, the more I become disenchanted with the modern fantasy literature being published today. In my opinion, it tends to be far less imaginative than the fantasy of the earlier part of the 20th century and certainly far less magical.

Sometimes I become discouraged because everywhere I go on the internet I see people that disparage the fantasy of yesteryear and praise the strides taken by modern fantasy in the direction of "progress". People seem to want fantasy to reflect modern sensibilities and values. They want Strong Female Characters and racial equality and political correctness and whatnot. Personally, I just want strong characters, whether they are male or female is incidental to the story, and I don't think fantasy stories are the place to make political stands. I hate politics anyway. It takes the magic out of everything. So I worry that if I write the kind of stories that I would like, they won't find favor with modern audiences.

But then I think about how perpetually popular The Lord of the Rings is, despite being pretty much the antithesis of everything people claim to desire in their reading material these days. Something about the story still grabs them and draws them in, generation after generation. So maybe people don't really know what they want as well as they think they do. Perhaps there are universal themes and ideals that reach through to all of us no matter what age we live in. Perhaps there are more people in the world like me despite what it seems like on the internet.

Tolkien's writing style tended decidedly toward the mythological. Now, real myths are developed over thousands of years by hundreds of people within a distinct culture. (Those vague round numbers may be a huge understatement.) They were not authored by any one person and so they belong, if they can belong to anyone, to an entire people. For this reason they tend to reflect human truths better than any other form of art, so Tolkien believed. But Tolkien took it a step further when he decided to attempt, as one man, to create an entire mythology from his own imagination. He also coined the term "mythopoeia" which means "myth-making" to describe the art that he was engaged in. And unsurprisingly, as a life long lover of myths and a die hard fan of Tolkien, I too am drawn to this kind of sub-creation.

The main problem with this is just the epic scope one has to deal with if one seeks to be a mythopoet.  I love worldbuilding. I take great enjoyment from it. But worldbuilding is in the background. One still has to decide how exactly one wishes to structure and present their mythopoeia in story form if one wishes to be an author. And this is something I've been struggling with for some time now.

When Tolkien was young, he wrote The Book of Lost Tales, the original precursor to the posthumously published The Silmarillion. The Book of Lost Tales tells many of the same stories that appear in The Silmarillion (though obviously in much more primitive form) but begins with an interesting framing device wherein a human Mariner and explorer makes his way to the Isle where the Elves who once inhabited Middle-earth have withdrawn to. There he becomes part of an Elven household and is told many of their myths and tales of the world and their own history. The first time I read The Book of Lost Tales, this framing device really threw me off. I was used to The Silmarillion. But every time I return to those Tales and think about the framing device, I am really enchanted by it. I like the idea of meaningful tales being told from a future perspective.

Shortly after I began doing research for my worldbuilding, I came across a passage from one of Plato's books which described an encounter between an old Egyptian priest and the Athenian statesman and philosopher Solon. Solon sought to impress the priest with everything he knew about the ancient genealogies of Greece, but the priest merely laughed at him and called the Greeks "children". He proceeded to explain that the Egyptians had been and had watched for long ages while the other civilizations of the world rose and fell due to various natural disasters. It was for this reason that the Egyptians remembered more of the history of the lands of the Greeks than the Greeks did, including the war between the Atlantians and the people who then lived in the region of Athens, which resulted in the destruction of Atlantis.

And thus I was enchanted with another framing device wherein an ancient and knowledgeable storyteller conveys his knowledge of the past to a man from the modern age. That marvelous sense of history, of ancient things lost which may still have meaning for today, of the wise passing on that legacy to the young, is something I love. So I've been struggling with my desire to utilize such a framing device and my fears that this would alienate too many readers who don't like storytelling, only storyshowing. I love told stories and I think too much showing is more annoying than too much telling, but most people seem to disagree with me.

But if there are other people like me, even if we're only a fraction of the market, I believe that there should be stories out there for us. There should be stories for every kind of person. One of the things that has for a long time been frustrating me about traditional publishing (and drawing me to self publishing) is that trad publishers seem to only want to publish two kinds of books: 1. Books that will appeal on a mass scale to whichever type of buying readers is the largest and 2. Books that will appeal to practically no one, but might win an award from critics. This business plan leaves people like me who don't belong to the bestseller crowd in the dust. Trad pub doesn't care about the people who don't fit into their narrow view of readers and so we don't get books published for us.

There's a famous writing quote that says something to the effect of : If the book you want to read isn't written yet, you should write it yourself.

There are a lot of empty spaces out there in the regions of the fantasy genre where I think there might have been books I would have liked, if traditional publishing hadn't rejected or changed them. I really hope indie publishing will fill up those empty spaces. But I also don't want to just sit by and wait for that to happen. I'm only one person, but I want to do my part to fill up some of that empty space for people like me. I want to contribute my own story to the readers of the world that long for tales of beauty and magic and light and wonder rather than darkness and grit and so-called "realism". We all deserve to have the kinds of stories that will be the most compelling to us as individuals out there to read. No one should be excluded.

In the end all this angst leads me right back to where I started: as a person who loves stories and who has found stories within herself that must be told. And they can only be told in a way that I, the author, can be passionate about. It doesn't really matter if no one else will like them. I have to try, to make my contribution. And who knows? Perhaps like Tolkien I will find that my stories will attract a larger audience than I ever thought possible.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: The Importance of Storytelling

Sometimes we get caught up in storytelling as entertainment and forget how essential it is to our development as human beings and our relation to others. So today I have a story from my personal life to help remind us of that important truth.

This little lesson on the importance of storytelling was impressed on me by my 5 year-old son with Asperger's. To set it up a bit, my son, Maedhros, has a very hard time going to bed at night. He has some ADHD as well, which commonly goes along with Asperger's in children, and so it's very hard for him to just shut down when bed time comes. He gets a lot of leniency because of that. One night, my husband and I had allowed him to stay up late with us. When we finally insisted that it was time for all of us to go to bed it was around midnight. He still fought us about it. But I put my foot down and insisted he had to go to bed in his room. We went into our room and left him outside in the hallway having a tantrum.

As we lay in bed listening to his shouts for the moment when he would start bringing himself under control, we noticed something interesting. He was shouting something very specific.

"Come on, you guys! You can't!" and "Mom! Dad! Come on, quit eating! Get out of here!" followed by "Mom! Dad! Where are you?" We could tell that he was moving around a lot while saying these things too. Eventually it all clicked, and we realized that he was completely acting out a scene from one of our family's favorite movies: Spirited Away.


(Which, by the way, is a brilliant movie by Hayao Miyazaki that everyone should see regardless of age.)

The particular scene he was quoting word for word is when the heroine, Chihiro, and her parents wander into a sort of resort for the spirit world. The mom and dad find an empty shop full of appetizing foods and start gorging themselves, thinking they can just pay later. But as the sun sets and the spirit world awakens, Chihiro's parents turn into pigs, a punishment for their gluttony, and Chihiro is left scared and alone while strange beings appear all around her.

The connection is obvious. Maedhros was acting the part of Chihiro and my husband and I were obviously the parents who did something stupid, something their kid warned them not to do (in this case, going to bed), and ended up getting into trouble and abandoning their child in a strange and scary world.

But he didn't stop there. He continued the scene up to the point where Chihiro is helped by Haku, one of the few good and friendly spirits in that world.

"Where are my mom and dad? They didn't really turn into pigs did they?"

"You can't see them now, but you will."

He was doing lines for both Chihiro and Haku now, but still clearly identifying with Chihiro. And he finally started to calm down and bring himself under control. His parents may be missing, but he wasn't alone after all. Soon after Haku came into the scene, Maedhros stopped quoting and quietly went into his room and went to sleep.

We couldn't reason with him, we couldn't comfort or reassure him, but the story did. By putting himself in Chihiro's shoes and placing himself inside the story he knew well, he was able to feel the comfort of knowing that Haku would help Chihiro and Chihiro would eventually save her parents and everything would be all right in the end. When nothing else could ease the chaos of his feelings, the story did.

And stories do that for all of us. Not in such a literal and exaggerated way as how a 5 year-old with Asperger's experienced it. But placing ourselves inside the stories we read and watch and participate in helps us to deal with a lot of the daily strife and stress that is part of life. When the characters overcome their obstacles, we feel like we've been there along side them, we get the same thrill and sense of accomplishment and maybe we learn something from how the characters acted and dealt with their problems. Experiencing stories helps us to live life.

That's why being a storyteller, no matter what medium, is an important vocation. It's an integral role in society and deserving of respect. It doesn't even matter that kind of story you're writing. Spirited Away is pure fantasy, but it helped my son in the real world. Stories help people live.