Friday, May 15, 2009

I was listening to Harry Chapin at the gym. He doesn't even pretend to be cool and that's why I like him -- because the music snobs don't.

Listening to him makes me think about my work in different ways. Specifically, that the characters who could be natural villains should be anything but that. We were talking about that at writer's group yesterday, and I'm taking it a step further.

The expected villain is not. It's much more interesting that way.
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6 comments:

robp said...

um, the music snobs don't like him because he wrote cats in the cradle. and he didn't have to pretend to be cool; he was quite successful (commercially - artistically, well that's where us snobs have our go).

i don't think your story contains villainy. it has people who fuck up, people who don't know how to do what they're supposed to, people who know what usually works and expect it to always work, people so caught up in themselves that they may not see what they're doing to someone they claim to care about.

i never bought that "road to hell paved with good intentions" thing. you're not writing about hell-bound people. you're writing about a bunch of people making different mistakes whose lives overlap. and part of the power in the writing is that some of these people would like to be helping but just aren't good at it.

little boy blue and the man in the moon indeed.

May 15, 2009 at 10:41 PM
Allison Landa said...

And all of what you just wrote is a backbone for the section I'm going to add.

It would be much easier to make the assorted douchebags look like douchebags. But all of these people in this project -- most of them, anyway -- well, I've loved them, and to tell it otherwise is short shrift.

I am inebriated, so any typos are resultant of thus, as is the use of 'resultant of thus.'

May 15, 2009 at 11:26 PM
robp said...

I like 'resultant of thus.' It's almost certainly wrong, but it sounds like something said by royalty. Do you know the phrase "King Brilliant?" It's British slang for fucking brilliant, one of my preferred slang phrases that I never get to use.

May 15, 2009 at 11:54 PM
Allison Landa said...

I would imagine 'Queen Brilliant' goes over well in the Castro.

May 16, 2009 at 9:57 AM
Sean Craven said...

You know who liked Harry Chapin? The Beatles. Sorry. but those guys knew pop.

"You put the lime in the coconut, you drink it all up..."

May 17, 2009 at 8:23 PM
robp said...

"lime in the coconut" ain't chapin, it's nilsson. and that dude had a great voice and was friends with someone in the beatles.

May 17, 2009 at 10:27 PM

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