ideas – Girish Karthikeyan

Facing Reality for the First Time

A struggle all of us faced at one time or another

For years, I stagnated, slipping into basic survival mode and leaving everything unessential behind. That happened to me between 13 and 23.

It was a really difficult time in the progression of my Muscular Dystrophy, a degenerative disease of muscles rendering them weak or altogether ineffective. Breathing issues start around the time people like me spend most of their days in a chair, which happened at 12 for me.

After 15, I ran into the trouble of slowly losing weight by eating insufficient calories for my activity level. Then I began my years long struggle with breathing enough air. I could’ve have gotten help if I had more foresight and perspective than I did.

I withdrew from the outside world and imagined up a richer inner one. There were times I felt alone, times I didn’t know the use of anything beyond learning, and times I just went through the motions. That sounds a lot like depression from the sounds of that, but that wasn’t something I was willing to admit for years after.

Then I had mediation. It was something I’d been kicking around in my head, a leftover from the country of my birth and a melting pot for religious/spiritual development, by which I mean India in way too many words.

Then when I got out of school it was nothing more than watching TV and living in my parents house (where I still live btw), mediation became my refuge and escape. My life wasn’t great and depression still ruled over me.

My life turned around with a tube in my throat and a machine to breath for me. Those first two years were harrowing to say the least. Every other month, I was in the hospital with scary complications.

I faced the image of my own mortality a few times and got sick of simply surviving from one day to the next, marking time. I picked up writing and escaped my doldrums for purpose and meaning at 23.

At a certain point in my mediation journey, I hit a roadblock. It’d been ten years of mediation at that point. There wasn’t enough head space to throw into mediation to get me further than I’d already gone. It was time to clear some room. I turned my focus inward to what I could do without.

Fear of failure turned out to be the one thing motivating me for the majority of my life. I was running from failure any way I could.

Doing well in school and trying to purify the tainted soul I believed myself to have (the reason I’d picked up mediation).
The reason I never let anybody in to see the real me behind my defenses. I was always hiding.
The reason I hated writing, which I now love. There was no correct answer, so I could stuck deciding what I should do.
The reason I was usually the adult even in the first grade. A kid so well behaved that you wondered how their parents did it. That was me.
The reason I couldn’t possibly be depressed. That would mean I’d failed psychologically.
And the thing that gave my life meaning. Not failing was the only thing that mattered, the reason I did basically everything.

Clearing that away left a massive hole in my psyche that was scary for months after until it was filed back in. Without mediation, I never would’ve gotten into that mess or passed through without a major calamity. Wouldn’t recommend this to even my worst enemy. But in that brief emptiness, I wrote something beyond my current ability as a writer.

Then there was codependence. I had this belief that I’d be abandoned if I didn’t prove my worth on a constant basis by remembering more, being clever, or proving my intelligence. Figuring that out nearly broke me. I fought back my rejection averse thought process in a kind, watchful way that mediation allowed me.

Codependence is a messy, confusing topic, but I realized something that makes it a whole lot easier. Codependence is an attempt to control the world around us out of fear — fear of rejection, fear of inadequate self-worth, and fear of being unlovable.

Blaming exigent circumstances without considering your contribution when something goes awry.
Being laid back and counting that as points to be paid back down the line. Keeping score.
Taking responsibility where someone else is already responsible, like apologizing on someone’s behalf.
Demand love or get jealous of the affection other people get, especially when I’m feeling low.
Show hollow displays of affection for an audience, and showing my true colors in private.

Letting go of codependence put me on the course for a clash with reality.

Cdependence is really a fear driven need to control the world around us, especially the people in it. Letting go of control requires accepting the world as it is.

The clash between how we believe the world to be and reality is where I’m at.

Reconciling those two requires constantly updating the model in my head with evidence from the outside world.

Sometimes people will let me down and dealing with that anger or sadness is on me.

That’s a quintessential stage of growing up that I’ve never let go enough to experience.

Knowing that everybody isn’t always truthful doesn’t make it any easier when it happiness to you. That feeling would make a great YA novel right?

Seeing Eight Grade helped me realize what I’m going through now, finding the person I have always been and being that person. It’s about an eight grade girl facing the reality that she isn’t fixed as she is now. Things change for the better and sometimes worse. Change is what life is.

How to get Better as a Writer: The Truth

There are a few things that worked for every writer

There’s no easy way to become a great writer.

There are ways to get better that have worked for other people.

1. Read in your genre.

You discover what exactly you’re trying to write.

It gives you a rolodex of techniques writers use to accomplish things.

Options you have with plot.

You can start in the middle and tell us the rest.

Start at the end and tell us everything.

Duex Ex Machina

Introduce the character that saves everyone from the beginning.

Describe a characters face.

A.) Have another character describe the protagonist.¹

B.) Wipe the characters memory so they discover their own face alongside you.²

C.) Have the character in a disassociated state looking in the mirror.³

D.) Have them wonder how that face can stand for the complex person they are.⁴

E.) Have a beautiful person describe how sentiments of beauty feel.

they’d tell me how pretty I was — but that comment really said nothing about me — Emma Lindsay

Understand of the rules behind those methods.

Describing a persons face.

Looking in the mirror describes vanity.

Otherwise, set up a situation where it’s natural to think about how you look.

That is the benefit of a writer reading books.

2.) Writing is the purpose of a writer.

There is no better way to get good at something than doing it often and for many years.

Writing is the only thing that will make you a better writer.

3.) Get feedback: the input guiding you how to write.

Writing for yourself has it’s benefits.

Writing for others came be far more rewarding.

Writing in an easily digestible form is impossible without feedback.

You can’t read your own writing without letting bias in.

Getting an interested outside opinion is the easiest way to figure out what you are doing well, and what needs work.

With that information, you can direct your efforts to correct your mistakes and capitalize on your strengths.

Editing your own work is the deliberate practice of a writer.

When you hit 10,000 hours of rewriting, you’ll be a skilled writer — Venkatesh Rao

Editing gets you to see what you’ve written from a position of reflection and optimization.

You see mistakes made and errors missed.

Editing is when you improve and grow.

Editing makes a huge difference. If it doesn’t, you aren’t doing it right.

That’s the writing process.

It has to be repeated again and again throughout your writing journey.

That’s the work of the writer. Used over and over for years and months will make you a great writer.

That’s all there’s to it.

Writing, editing, getting feedback aren’t the hard things.

Doing battle by choosing to write day after day, going on despite the rejection a writer faces, choosing writing above more socially acceptable things, and finishing.

Then starting again.

As much as we want a secret that we are missing, a secret to success — it doesn’t exist without the work of writing.

There’s a caveat here.

Some strategies help make you a better writer.

1.) Write every day.

Writing at least 300 words a day.

Start small.

I will think what to write every single day.

I will write something every single day.

Meeting this goal should be doable, but not too easy as well.

Starting to meet these goals turns writing from something fun you do when you have time into something that’s a required part of your day to feel happy.

2.) Write things you aren’t ready to write.

Some ideas are scary to write out.

A skill, understanding of the world, or writing ability isn’t quite good enough.

That’s where the possibility of growth lies.

Doing something hard puts you in a situation were stagnation means failure.

The only way to succeed is to grow.

Choose something challenging that isn’t so hard it crushes your motivation.

Repeated failure is a motivation crusher.

Success and growth keep you coming back day after day.

It’s hijacking your reward system to work for you instead of being led around by it.

3.) Take breaks from writing.

Writing can’t be forced.

Sit at your desk writing until the ideas stop flowing.

Take a short break.

Check facebook or whatever then return to writing.

Those things make a great writer.

Defeating Anxiety: How to Write Awesome Content without Fear

Getting past the anxiety of writing.

Writing awakens your insecurities.

It’s logical.

Writing is a solitary activity. Other people aren’t going to constantly validate or demean your writing. People need that to stay in the game.

Without feedback your insecurities have free rein.

It’s like how you imagine seeing shapes or colors with your eyes closed. There’s nothing there, but something appears. That apparition is from the lack of sensory perception. There’s nothing to see except interference.

Getting feedback from another person or even yourself helps.

Reading over what you’ve written opens your eyes to what’s really there.

In a vacuum of perception, your fears, anxieties and insecurities take over.

Battling Anxiety

1. Before sitting down to write.

Follow your routine.

2. In the process of writing.

Read something you’ve written before that you know is good. Truth scares away anxiety.

3. After you’re done writing.

Ask someone you trust to read it and give you feedback. Don’t be blind to your successes or your improvement.

Perfection doesn’t exist.

Striving for perfection leaves you stranded.

Too scared to try or too scared to move on to something else that could work better.

The goal here is improvement.

Improving is growth. That’s all you want.

Unattainable goals like perfection sap away your motivation.

No matter how hard I try, my goal doesn’t get closer, so why should I even try.

Something achievable keeps you coming back each day.

Coming back day after day and putting in the work separates a great writer from a writer lost in the crowd.

Don’t be a Slave to the Writing Process

Figure out your writing process. Don’t follow one blindly.

There are methods or a “process” that a writer uses.

You’ll be questioned about process if you ever get anything published in any meaningful way. But process can’t be transplanted from writer to writer. It’s something you have to discover for yourself.

Ray Bradbury wrote about his process.¹

Make lists of what he’s thinking, short one to two word phrases.
Find something that has a story behind it and write a lyric poem.
Keep going as lyric poem turns into prose.

Following that process doesn’t work for me.

I can’t write poetry.
I can’t keep lists, because I barely have enough time to write as is.

My method is wildly different.

Meditate daily.
Come up with ideas when inspiration strikes or meditation leads me there.
Run through everything I plan to write again in a meditative state.
Sit down and type very slowly. That’s as fast as I can type.

That process isn’t going to work if your lived experience is different than mine.

Writing is an individualized act.

The product is generally recognized, but there are umpteenth ways to arrive there.

You’ll have varying success with everything you try.

It speaks to how difficult writing is.

You need to discover the process that best suits you.

It’ll be a mixed bag of the processes out there that no other writer uses to the letter.

Things like this are best figured out when you try things, everything you can find within reason until something gets you writing to the best of your ability.

It’ll be something close to who you are deep inside your soul.

Maybe you’re from the meditation camp or the poetry camp.

Whatever works is your process.

Resources

Bradbury, Ray. Zen in The Art of Writing (p. 11-12). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Don’t be the Odd Writer Out in the Cold

How to be different without being too different as a writer.

Write something that people expect.

Follow the rules of genre gleaned by reading extensively in your genre. Have characters, stories, or settings that are familiar to the reader.

People need to connect with your story from the first line.

Once you have the reader invested in your story, it can show us something different.

Your answer to a common problem
Your plot twist
The thing that sets you apart — your take — the thing that makes this piece worthwhile to read.

Moving too soon into what makes you special as a writer raises the barrier to entry for your readers.

Writing’s true value comes from readers.

If you write from far left field, it alienates the reader.

They never connect with what you written. Engagement isn’t there or the reader for that matter.

It doesn’t matter how well you’ve written something without readers.

Getting your foot in the door is getting harder by the day.

Anyone that wants a website can get one. Anyone can publish a book. Anyone can post a video on Youtube. The vast amount of content out there drowns out good content.

There needs to be something better about your piece.

Something that is relevant to the reader. It could be a character that they see themselves in. A place they’ve been before. Something they’ve done before.

Once they are hooked you can go your own way.

Things can’t change so much that you lose the readers trust, but you have some room.

Connect with your readers lived experience.

Vulnerability for a Genuine Connection with your Reader

The advantage of letting people in through writing.

Connection is a scarce resource.

New ways of connecting like social media, the Twitters and Facebooks of the world simulate connection without delivering.

It’s time to return to what worked in the past, writing.

The opportunity for deep connection is slipping away. Reading is the only way to get that back.

Connecting with your reader is the purpose of publishing writing.

Connection is the purpose of a human life.

It’s the innate spark that has driven everything good we’ve ever done. Writing, scientific discovery, and cooperation are manifestations of that desire.

Being alone is one of the most painful things we can experience.

As writers, we’re in a unique position to fill that need of connection.

Being vulnerable is how you make that happen.

Connection requires the strength to be vulnerable — letting people into your life with the possibility of getting hurt.

That’s one of the things a writer must overcome to connect with readers.

The process goes something like this.

The people reading your work feel close to you.

Readers open their heart and soul to you, because you have already done the same.

Then your message gets across to be interrogated and verified.

If the message pans out, the reader interrogates their life with it.

We’re wired to seek out connection.

Being vulnerable is how you get there.

Repackage your Truth to Write Something Great

The reason to “write what you know”

Write what you’ve lived.

Passion and motivation accrue when your writing something you believe to be. Your lived experience is a powerful tool that gives you insight where few others have it. Because each life is different and everyone is slightly different, we come at things from different perspectives.

People read to find insight about human nature.

That’s why fiction and memoirs sell as well as they do.

Share what you know better than anybody else.

People want truth, and truth comes from life. The life you’ve lived means something no matter how you’ve repackaged it.

Fiction shows a truth about life by changing the situation.

Making the facts stand out like they never could in real life. Sometimes real life can do that too.

You can’t choose your life

You sure can choose characters, a setting, and a plot that shows your truth.

Writing on Medium (where this originally appeared)

Personal stories of facing adversity do really well. That’s the focus of Medium at this point. Fiction is hidden in some back corner.

People come here for stories about people changing

Being true to yourself does really great here, because the community is supportive in a way few places are across the web. Medium is growing a lot still. That has to mean something. Sharing stories of life, of your truth bring people to you. That’s the story Medium tells us.

That’s a formula many prolific writers on Medium employ.

They write personal stories and other types of posts like poetry, fiction, thought pieces, and interviews. Like Meg, Abby Norman, and E Price — the examples I remember off the top of my head.

Put your truth out there and people will come.

Slaughterhouse-Five and The Handmaid’s Tale: Things to Like

Reading can show our lives reflected in a myriad of ways.

I have this allergy to classics.

Most books written before the 1950’s that is. I find sleep creeping up on me like an unfulfilled need. That’s after having a full seven hours sleep and not feeling tired at all. Something about them is dull enough to put me to sleep, and it’s just me. Unlike some, a book before 1950 takes me to sleep quicker than anything else.

Slaughterhouse-Five

I whizzed through the first chapter or two. Those chapters were Vonnegut trying to remember what happened in the war and preparing to write. There was this great exchange that setup the themes to come.

“You were just babies then!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true…
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was an accusation…
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry.¹

Then the story started. Throughout I was confused about what was going on. The non-linearity threw me off.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.²

I ended up grouping the events of the story into parallel stories.

One was the war. The other was after the war. And the third was being abducted by non-linear aliens. That reminded me of Arrival. The movie is two parallel stories that each follows a linear progression. It’s much easier to follow than the leaping Vonnegut did. That makes me believe I didn’t get everything out of reading Slaughterhouse 5. A whole bunch of symbolism was lost on me.

I kept trying to find a rationale reason for this time hopping.

Maybe he’s in the POW camp imaging his possible future. The more likely scenario is he’s an old man looking back on his life. That distracted me from looking at other more important things. The skipping around was a way to give the reader moments away from the conditions suffered in the POW camp.

A few comical moments made me laugh in the beginning.

But lost their humor. Now, I suspect that was intentional. The dark humor came when some thing dies, and Billy thinks So it goes. It speaks to the universality of death, whether it be fleas, cows, or people.

The Handmaid’s Tale.

It’s about an alternate divergence of history in the 1970’s.

Society regresses to an ancient state. Woman became a possession of men again has it hadn’t been in a while. The pressure on the society was great enough to allow it to happen. The story looked almost prophetic seeing the way history progressed from 2001 onward. The adoption of the Patriot Act in a time of intense pressure from the outside.

Some things in the book made me angry.

Like the way anything could be used to further a decrepit political ideology. The subjugation of a weaker group by the numerous and privileged. The impeachablity of the dominant sex and blaming the subordinate sex. The society described in The Handmaid’s Tale annoyed me, like the backwardness espoused by ethnocentric people. The subjugation of woman by other women was disheartening. Though that is actually a fact a lot of the time. Like the installation of a puppet government by a foreign government. The foreign power chooses a native figurehead and puts them in a position of power over their countrymen. The use of a select portion of the Jewish people by the Nazi’s to police the ghettos set up in Nazi Germany. And the symbolic position of people that had no real power.

The Handmaid’s Tale is about surrogacy without modern medicine.

That basically means state sponsored rape of woman with successful pregnancies and multiple marriages. The fact it’s government sponsored and enforced leads to normalization of rape. Reading through those scenes made me confused, because the Handmaid telling the story was so distant all the time. During the trauma that makes sense, but after it’s confusing. I don’t think society as a whole was ready to have an honest discussion about rape when this book was published.

A few passages resonated with my lived experience.

I’ll list those and explain their significance.

In reduced circumstances you have to believe all kinds of things. I believe in thought transference now, vibrations in the ether, that sort of junk. I never used to.³

I see this happening in my life.

Living with a limiting condition like Muscular Dystrophy is another version of reduced circumstances. That probably had some impact on my belief in meditation. And how ready I am to believe things based on very little evidence. I need that illusion of having control more control than I do with meditation and karma, so the situations I find myself in aren’t quite as helpless as they really are. Control is what we want in life, but the only way to get that is controlling what you can and letting the rest go. Holding control over everything means you have a little control over a lot of things. When all we really need is great/er control of the few things that matter, like our view of the world, and the way we move through it.

In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects. I would like a pet: a bird, say, or a cat. A familiar. Anything at all familiar. A rat would do, in a pinch, but there’s no chance of that.⁴

I hang on to things I’ve made.

Especially with abilities I no longer possess like drawing, writing with a pencil, or walking. And the projects I devote my limited time to like the stories I’ve written. When people lose a little of the autonomy that those around them have, they cling to the limited things that they have control over.

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.⁵

I include too much detail.

This is something I encountered in the beginning of my writing journey. My stories were too muddled with extraneous description making it completely uninteresting to read. Some blog posts I’ve written were like that a year ago. Choosing specific details, the right details separates first-hand experiences from imagined situations. But choosing that is a mental process so replicable. That’s what using senses in your writing is all about. Choosing the right details to put into writing the transport you there, and make something more real than fiction ought to be.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.⁶

We want things we believe we deserve.

When things don’t happen how we like, we fixate on those qualities we hoped to attain but failed at. Then we see it everywhere around where it wasn’t noticed before. Jealousy happens when we want things we can’t have. Other people that have those things become the focus of our jealousy. That reminded me of the rampant jealousy I feel, because there’s so much I can’t do that I ought to be able to do. You can be jealous of anyone if they have something you believe you’re entitled to. The costs of those things are lost, just the object is remembered. Like writing everyday requires giving up other things like reading articles, social media, checking e-mails, listening to music, or responsibilities. People just remember the accomplishment of making progress. The cost is payable, and the benefit is attainable.

The arrival of the tray, carried up the stairs as if for an invalid. An invalid, one who has been invalidated.⁷

People can be invalidated by taking away their autonomy.

But an invalid suffered from an injury or disease. That was a powerful reminder of the fact that people can only take away what you allow them to. I have always been impaired by Muscular Dystrophy. My struggle has been making people see beyond my physical appearance to the stuff inside. I’m like everyone else on the inside. The only thing wrong with me is the external — my muscles are weak. Fighting for what I am, the person inside to be seen has been with me my whole life. What other people think about my ability doesn’t change the facts.

God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total.⁸

Love is a concept that we need to believe in.

It’s a security blanket that we will find this magic person that makes us feel loved the way our parents loved us. It’s like hope. It’s like God. It’s like dreams. Those concepts are what we need to keep living life. They are the promises that keep us going. Without them there is no life — there is on death — there is no meaning. Things that are necessary don’t fade away. They endure. They become justified no matter the circumstances. They grow to meet challenges. They are immune to the wear of time. They don’t fade away. There is no recourse in life but to believe, to have faith that they are always right and pure. Then to see things just right so that the illusion never blinks out of existence, because they are necessary for life.

I’m a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I’ve left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it… I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep.⁹

Things might change but there is always something left of the old.

Change isn’t to wash clean a chalkboard and write something new. Change is painting over an old masterpiece and leaving bits of the old in place to marry with the new. Things don’t vanish. They are reinvented, tweaked, and damaged, but they never disappear from existence no matter how we cling or try to forget. Things never leave the world. They are remade over and over. Transformation isn’t transient. It’s the constant state of life. Even death isn’t stagnation. It’s a redistribution.

That’s all I have on these two great books.

Hope you enjoyed reading. Please clap if you did.

References

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (pp. 18–19). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (p. 29). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 105). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 111). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 134). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 161). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 224). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (pp. 225–226). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale (p. 227). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Reading about Writing

I read another book about writing as part of my DIY MFA. It’s Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon. He’s one of the authors I enjoy reading. I’ve only read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay so far. His writing was the third adult book I’ve ever read.

Maps and Legends in an anthology of roughly two dozen essays by Chabon. It’s about his thoughts and how he wrote his works. Throughout a few thesis ideas emerge. I’ll do my best to summarize those points. There’s a lot packed in 274 pages.

Successful writers bring new ideas that fit together well. Examples were the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the series His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the first to write about the detective with a series to characters giving their takes on event. All in the direction of unraveling the central mystery. Those nested story didn’t explore, distract, or rephrase that said before; they added information. That’s basically the difference between literary and the beginning of genre fiction.

In His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman a few key ideas combine to make a great story. Those plot elements, rules of the world, character traits all have to combine to enhance the story. Just serving as a wall the character faces and changes to overcome isn’t enough. That’s what happens so much in fiction. The cowardly face the obstacles that most challenges them. Feats of courage. Like how Froto has to leave the only home he has ever known. How Sam wants to be a good person so he goes. Every character is designed to be a foil to the things they face. Like Ethan’s struggle in Pines, Book 1 of Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch. His time in the military makes the resistance he faces in the small town that much worse. Or how Harry feels alone until he finds a community in the Wizarding World. I always thought my plots were good enough, but I’m missing a huge part. The resonance achieved by plot elements, character traits, and the rules of the world must play each off the other. I’ve been missing that key consideration so far.

The idea that ghost stories are the beginning of short stories. I would argue that a little bit. Sure they were around in the beginning. But previous stories aren’t always a direct blueprint for what comes after. Hauntings from sight unseen seems an obscure place for short stories to begin with. But isn’t something hanging in your thoughts like that in a literary story? Things lurk in your head from defining moments. Until you deal with them, they hang around haunting you. I agree that ghost stories could be the precursor to literary short stories. That connection could help when I get stuck. Maybe I’ll use it.

Fiction is the bridge between things imagined and things real. Fiction has fictitious parts. It’s in the name after all. But some things connect it with reality. That’s always something. How real the characters feel in fantasy. How some science still works how we think in science fiction. How the sky and the environment is normal in thrillers. But characters are the big things that make something real. Those bits of real are required for the reader to believe that somewhere out in the multi-verse the story is actually possible. In other words, fiction must always be relatable.

Something you’re exposed to serves as inspiration. It doesn’t have to be the most obvious things. If you look hard enough, ruminate hard enough inspiration strikes. Some things work better than others. It’s the writer’s purview to decide what stories to go after. Choosing could very well determine success or failure.

Maps and Legends fills me with hope for the future in writing. There’s a long way to go before I can’t progress further in writing. Writing and reading will never end up on the dust heaps of history. There’s more. Humble roots and inexperience don’t matter. Get your head down and write.

Image credit: Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Track by Track: reputation by Taylor Swift (for fans only)

Everyone interacts with the media they consume in a different way. This is my interpretation of what this album means to me. A few places I’ll reference specific verses from AZ Lyrics as needed. I’m trying to make this a lyrical analysis in the vein of literary analysis.

1.) …Ready For It?

Spotify

Seems good for a starting track, but that’s obvious. I think this track says that we are made for each other. In every situation they complement each other.

“But if he’s a ghost then I can be a phantom”

“Knew I was a robber/…/But if I’m a thief then/He can join the heist”

“And he can be my jailer/Burton to this Taylor”

Researching Burton and Taylor says they are the acting duo of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. No idea of the reference before.

Isn’t that the ideal relationship we all start out looking for? It’s something I wish for quite frequently and don’t we all at some point.

Message:

Sometimes people match up perfectly, but usually the relationship changes the partners to get that perfect match.

2.) Endgame (Feat. FUTURE and Ed Sheeran)

Spotify

This song combines rapping and singing. A lot of songs these days have that combination. It packs more details into the particular song. Basically, every song on this album has quick sung or spoken statements like this. It’s of note here because the first time I ever heard this enter pop was in a Dido album for 2015, then Bad Blood (Feat. Kendrick Lamar), and then on Ed Sheeran’s albums from + onward. And that’s a trend all over Pop and everything I listen to. I’m a fan of a lot of alternative pop, Halsey, Lana Del Rey, and others.

The song says I want to be someone you can always rely on.

“I wanna be your end game/I wanna be your first string/I wanna be your A-Team/I wanna be your end game”

By the way, Ed Sheeran has a song titled A-Team.

End Game is about two guys courting Taylor. Taylor wants to forget about everything except being in love.

First FUTURE says:

“You so dope, don’t overdose/I’m so stoked, I need a toast”

“You love it, I love it, too, ’cause you my type”

Taylor says:

“I just wanna be/Drinking on a beach with you all over me”

Ed Sheeran says:

“Now well, when I was young, we connected/When we were little bit older, both sprung”

“After the storm, something was born on the 4th of July/I’ve passed days without fun, this end game is the one/With four words on the tip of my tongue, I’ll never say it”

The argument is history vs. new and flashy. Both are appealing in different ways, but love is still there no matter how it ends.

Every friendship is different. Sometimes everything clicks and sometimes you don’t know what’s going on, because everything is so restrained. And depending upon how much both sides want it to work it works or doesn’t. That’s not the same as love. Endgame makes me think of friendship though.

Message:

It doesn’t matter what everyone thinks, but the person there with you at the end matters.

3.) I Did Something Bad

Spotify

Confession: this is my favorite song on here.

This song sounds like a whispered confession to me.

The verses are about two relationships that she knew wouldn’t last. But still it worked at first and failed later on. I’ll ignore the news postulating the truth behind the lyrics. Digging too deep into the real lives of famous people disappoints me too frequently for it to be very worthwhile. I’ve read the news a little about the Famous scandal, Tom Hiddleston, Joe Alwyn, and Nicki Minaj. But that’s about it.

A relationship with a narcissist is destined to fail.

“I never trust a narcissist, but they love me”

And it won’t work.

“I can feel the flames on my skin/Crimson red paint on my lips/If a man talks shit, then I owe him nothing/I don’t regret it one bit, ’cause he had it coming”

And having a relationship with a playboy is doomed to fail.

“I never trust a playboy, but they love me”

“You gotta leave before you get left’”

A playboy goes through relationships like clothes. Each partner is used and put away for greener pastures with another partner. And the cycle continues. Then throwing names sometimes help.

“But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothin’”

There’s a reference to witch trials.

“They’re burning all the witches”

I was watching a video about the witch trials on OZY. Apparently a majority of woman prosecuted were widows that inherited property. And that seems what this is alluding to. Wealth makes you a target.

The chorus is a few repeating lines:

“They say I did something bad/Then why’s it feel so good?”

That line really puzzled me. According to this avowed Pentecost I talk to, bad things feel good because humans are corrupted all the way through. I dismissed that off-hand. Then maybe the outside appearance of doing bad and everyone outside the situation isn’t entitled to an opinion. That’s my interpretation of what this means.

Message:

People can twist things around to make you the bad guy, but that alone can’t make you a bad person.

4.) Don’t Blame Me

Spotify

This song sounds different than everything else on the album.

It’s a few layers of Taylor’s voice through the chorus. I heard something like this in an older Halsey song, Empty Gold and another from Badlands: New Americana.

It sounds like a gospel you would hear from a church choir.

Love is equated to a drug, madness, and a lifetime addiction.

“Don’t blame me, love made me crazy/If it doesn’t, you ain’t doing it right/Lord, save me, my drug is my baby/I’ll be using for the rest of my life”

I agree with those associations, and they aren’t new. Love feels good. And the connection makes people seek out love. And loving someone isn’t sane, omitting the wide acceptability of love. Fear of giving another person so much power to hurt you has a widely recognized name “fear of commitment”. And people look for love all their days, if a few things haven’t gone wrong.

This song is about the search for love. And that’s basically life. That’s why so much media out there is about finding love, holding on to love, and finding peace after love is gone.

One line was interesting.

“I once was poison ivy, but now I’m your daisy”

I think that’s about how before everything looked horrible, and now she’s happy and in love.

Message:

Love is something we will always need, and pursuing it isn’t a crime.

5.) Delicate

Spotify

This song uses a whispery voice to differentiate thoughts from what’s going on outside.

It starts with wondering if everything is alright.

“Dive bar on the east side, where you at?”

Then later everything is going fine.

“Long night, with your hands up in my hair/…/Stay here, honey, I don’t wanna share”

The chorus is the most telling.

“Is it cool that I said all that?/Is it chill that you’re in my head?/’Cause I know that it’s delicate (delicate)/…/Is it too soon to do this yet?”

That asks if it’s too soon for me talk about this. Do I feel closer to you than you feel to me?

That’s frequently my experience with friendship. I’m an oversharer. And sometimes that tanks a friendship before it’s actually a friendship. Blogging is the perfect way to overshare, hence this blogging journey I’m on. I’m tangled up in anxiety deciding what to share. Is this too much too soon? And when’s the right time? How will I know?

Message:

Relationships will always be complicated, but that’s one of the things that make a relationship work, that back and forth.

6.) Look What You Made Me Do

Spotify

This song paints a clear picture in my head of a Whodunit stage play. The victim is the lyrics of Famous. And possible perpetrators standing around, Kim, Kanye, and Taylor.

“Don’t like your tilted stage/The role you made me play”

“You said the gun was mine”

Then it goes on a little about betrayal and reversals of fortune.

“I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams”

That line implies that Taylor isn’t the party at fault. Everyone is casting her as an actress playing the villain.

“The world moves on, another day, another drama, drama/But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma”

The rhyming of drama and karma really impressed me at first but a few other words rhyme with drama. Pharma, parma, Dharma, and diorama.

The chorus is odd if you watch the music video.

“Look what you made me do”

That’s basically the justification people use when the do something they question inside. But the music video is about her rebirth as a new character for the media. That doesn’t really feel evil. It feels weak. The events didn’t cause the transformation but coincided. It feels like a woman balancing between being weak and being bitchy. That bugs me, but still I fall to that position as a gut reaction. I think most people feel that gut reaction, but it’s more important what we do after.

Message:

Sometimes things are meant to be a certain way, and nothing can change destiny.

7.) So It Goes…

Spotify

This song is about the duality of life. Everything can go both ways. That happens again and again.

“Cut me into pieces/Gold cage, hostage to my feelings/Back against the wall/Trippin’, trip, trippin’ when you’re gone”

When we’re together, I feel trapped. When you leave, I can’t handle it.

“‘Cause we break down a little/And when you get me alone, it’s so simple”

When we’re apart, the problems arise. But together everything fades away.

“And our pieces fall/Right into place/Get caught up in the moments/Lipstick on your face”

Everything should be perfect. but life isn’t that neat. Nothing can be.

“I’m yours to keep/And I’m yours to lose”

Anything can happen. Win or lose is life. That’s how things go. So It Goes…

“You know I’m not a bad girl, but I/Do bad things with you”

Again that duality. With you I’m a different person.

“Come here, dressed in black now”

“Scratches down your back now”

Everything started great, but everything is different now. And we can’t go back.

“But, honestly, baby, who’s counting?/Who’s counting?/1, 2, 3”

I’m trying to forget our troubles, but that’s just not possible.

This is something that happens to me. Everything has two emotional routes in your reaction. Positive and negative. Love and fear of rejection. Jealousy and happiness. Anger and sadness. Boredom and self-loathing. Laughter and embarrassment. Everything has that duality. That’s why stories like Mr. Hyde/Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Grey, and superheroes work so well.

Message:

Life happens, and the outcomes can’t be changed too much.

8.) Gorgeous

Spotify

This song didn’t make sense for a long time before I read the dedication in the Taylor Swift Target Exclusive Magazine Volume 1. It’s written for a baby. That explains a few things. And the writer’s want to make it possible that the song is about an adult I think. That’s a really far stretch though.

“That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk.”

Because isn’t that what we do when we imitate baby talk.

“You should think about the consequence/Of your magnetic field being a little too strong.”

Aren’t we all drawn to the cuteness of babies?

“And I got a boyfriend, he’s older than us”

But isn’t that something you could hypothetically say to a baby when talking about an older person.

“You’re so cool, it makes me hate you so much”

This sounds a lot like that phrase “something makes my face as smooth as a baby’s bottom”. Those anti-aging commercials make me feel like they speak to the jealousy and slight anger that the young are young. And that’s a far stretch too.

“You’ve ruined my life, by not being mine”

That reminds me of the joke some people used to make about children: You’re so adorable, I wouldn’t mind taking you home with me.

”’Cause look at your face”

That really doesn’t mean a thing unless that face is a universal symbol of cuteness, or being gorgeous. Because people can be pretty in different ways.

“That I’m talking to everyone here but you”

That seems like something you would say to a baby, right?

“If you got a girlfriend, I’m jealous of her/But if you’re single that’s honestly worse”

Isn’t that another joke people make? A baby having the responsibilities of an adult. Like a job. Maybe a girlfriend. That’s basically the premise of Boss Baby.

“Ocean blue eyes looking in mine/I feel like I might sink and drown and die”

This probably speaks to how baby blue eyes are much brighter than the adult version. And babies stare into your eyes with unrivaled intensity because they’re studying you.

I have sometimes experienced this jealousy for a baby with it’s whole life ahead and all the open possibilities. And sometimes a wish that things could’ve been different when I was younger. Basically that’s the question “would you like a do-over? Would you do the same things again?”

Message:

Jealousy clouds every interaction with fog.

9.) Getaway Car

Spotify

The third best song on the album.

The sound is really cinematic.

I think it’s about cheating to get away from a relationship.

“I wanted to leave him/I needed a reason”

“Think about the place where you first met me/We’re ridin’ in a getaway car”

Meeting someone in a getaway car is impossible, so that must be a metaphor for something else right? A getaway car takes you away from a bad situation or something that doesn’t work.

“X marks the spot, where we fell apart/He poisoned the well, I was lyin’ to myself”

That old relationship would never work, but I convinced myself it would.

“There were sirens in the beat of your heart”

Being with this new guy makes me feel guilty.

“We were jet-set, Bonnie and Clyde/Until I switched to the other side”

Defection back to the lover that she was getting away from. She confessed and ended both relationships.

Sometimes I need a break from my life. I find that in the pages of a book I’m reading, a story I’ve written, or mediation.

Message:

Things aren’t neat and tidy as we would like, but in the end everything works out fine.

10.) King of My Heart

Spotify

“you are the one I have been waiting for”

She found the love that has been alluding her.

At first everything seems fine being single.

“I’m better off being alone “

Then it happens.

“We met a few weeks ago”

“And you move to me like I’m a Motown beat/And we rule the kingdom inside my room”

We are perfect together when we’re alone. And what everyone else thinks doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that the guy isn’t rich, but they are great together.

“‘Cause all the boys and their expensive cars/…/Never took me quite where you do”

“Your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep”

Again everything is great in private, but sharing will ruin things a little bit.

“Change my priorities/The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury”

Love is so important that it changes priorities.

“Is this the end of all the endings?/My broken bones are mending/With all these nights we’re spending”

Are you the one? Being with you feels good enough to heal me from everything that happened before with love.

For me, finding love has been dream that may never be realized, and that fact makes me a little sad. But that’s I choice I’ve made long ago, not to try given my status quo.

Message:

Love changes you.

11.) Dancing with Our Hands Tied

Spotify

Second best song of this album.

Love between her and someone else that remained her secret.

“I, I loved you in secret”

“My, my love had been frozen/Deep blue, but you painted me golden”

She’d wilted from love, and his love made her capable of love again.

“I could’ve spent forever with your hands in my pockets/Picture of your face in an invisible locket”

The way she loved him meant she was okay with loving him and keeping it her personal secret.

“You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it/I had a bad feeling”

He’s in love with her, but she didn’t think it would work out.

“And darling, you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis/People started talking, putting us through our paces/I knew there was no one in the world who could take it”

They were together, then people started to find out. That pulled them apart.

“But we were dancing/Dancing with our hands tied”

They can still spend time together, but not together like we were.

“I, I loved you in spite of/Deep fears that the world would divide us/So, baby, can we dance/Oh, through an avalanche?”

She still loves him. Can they be together again? At least they’ll have this. She would do anything to have this.

”And say, say that we got it/I’m a mess, but I’m the mess that you wanted/Oh, ’cause it’s gravity Oh, keeping you with me”

Everyone still sees the love between them even though they aren’t “together”. They are perfect for each other. It was inevitable they would be together.

“I’d kiss you as the lights went out/Swaying as the room burned down/I’d hold you as the water rushes in/If I could dance with you again”

If they end up in the same room again, she wouldn’t be afraid. She wouldn’t allow anything to between them.

The part about loving in secret used to be me, except it was a secret kept from me too, for years. I have experienced romantic one-way love and could never act on it. I’ve had to be satisfied with hiding it away like this song starts. Sometimes I feel like I’m living with my hands tied because of Duchesne muscular dystrophy. If I could be normal, I could do so much more.

Message:

Nothing should stop love. Until you realize that’s the point of life.

12.) Dress

Spotify

This song is obvious in meaning but a few things stood out to me.

“Our secret moments/In your crowded room/They’ve got no idea/About me and you/…/Made your mark on me/A golden tattoo”

No one see what’s between us, but it’s deep. We love each other.

This reminds me of the way social gathering feel like to me. I’m really good at one-on-one conversations and suck a talking in groups.

“All of this silence and patience, pining and anticipation”

This is longing for something.

I long for a lot of things but mainly getting cured.

“I don’t want you like a best friend”

I’ve always thought that was the ideal way for love to develop. Best friends falling in love.

“And if I get burned, at least we were electrified”

It doesn’t matter if this relationship implodes, at least we had these moments.

Basically my philosophy for life is “it’s better to have loved and lost than not having loved at all.” Or “it’s always better to know any experience even just once”. And not repeating it might as well hurt like hell, but it was worth it. My life has a lot of lasts. Last time I walked. Last time I breathed for myself. Last time I talked.

“Everyone thinks that they know us/But they know nothing about”

People know what we allow them to know. And they can never know/understand everything even if we tell them.

“Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me”

I can never do wrong in his eyes. He loves everything about me.

Message:

How we are together matters. And what everyone thinks doesn’t matter.

13.) This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Spotify

This song seems to match really well with the Great Gatsby.

The first image is right on.

“It was so nice throwing big parties/Jump into the pool from the balcony/Everyone swimming in a champagne sea/…/Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year”

“Did you think I wouldn’t hear all the things you said about me?”

Gatsby knew what everyone was saying and just didn’t care.

“But you stabbed me in the back while shaking my hand”

That is ultimately what happens in the Great Gatsby. The protagonist finds that hanging with Gatsby isn’t that great for your mental health.

Never had that experience of excluding people, but being the one excluded. That explains my interpretation of this song. The desired meaning is way off probably.

It started as a song about wrongdoers or mean people getting cut off for revenge after trying everything else first.

Message:

Some people aren’t worth the trouble.

14.) Call it What You Want

Spotify

If I’m with him, nothing else matters.

“My castle crumbled overnight/…/They took the crown but it’s alright “

“Nobody’s heard from me for months/I’m doing better than I ever was”

I don’t need anybody except him.

“Cause…/My baby’s fit like a daydream/…/So call it what you want, yeah”

That is because I love a great person. And I don’t care what everyone thinks.

“My baby’s fly like a jet stream/High above the whole scene/Loves me like I’m brand new”

He’s above it all. He just cares about loving me.

“Windows boarded up after the storm/He built a fire just to keep me warm”

I’ve hardened against everything, and still he makes me feel good.

“All the jokers dressing up as kings/They fade to nothing when I look at him”

Nothing else matters when I’m with him.

“And I know I make the same mistakes every time/Bridges burn, I never learn/At least I did one thing right/I did one thing right/I’m laughing with my lover”

Everything else is going wrong except her love for him.

“I want to wear his initial on a chain round my neck/…/Not because he owns me/But ’cause he really knows me/…/But would you run away with me?””

They are actually in love. And he’s her escape.

This is again the song that describes my dream of finding love from a different perspective.

Message:

What other people think doesn’t make people happy, but happiness is there in finding love.

15.) New Year’s Day

Spotify

It’s about a New Year’s party that’s a microcosm for how to love.

“There’s glitter on the floor after the party”

The party was fun but it’s over now. We have great times together, but after.

“Don’t read the last page/…/I want your midnights/But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day”

After the party, the good times are over. That doesn’t matter. How we are together when things aren’t so good really matters. It doesn’t matter how this will end, but right now we love each other. That’s what matters. I don’t want lose you, because we are great together.

“You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi/I can tell that it’s gonna be a long road/I’ll be there if you’re the toast of the town, babe/Or if you strike out and you’re crawling home “

It started out simple but I could tell it was going to be something. I’ll be with you through good, bad, and everything.

“Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you/And I will hold on to you”

Remember what we had, because it was something important that you’ll want to remember, and I’ll never forget.

“Please don’t ever become a stranger/Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”

I don’t want to lose you and just remember what we had.

This is the ideal love I have in mind. Finding someone that sticks with you through good or bad.

Message:

Love is about choosing to be together no matter what and mutually not wanting it to end.

Conclusion

reputation is a coming to maturity album, becoming a fully fledged adult by accepting you can’t make everyone like/understand you. That’s the difference between adulting and staying a whiny adult. Everybody won’t like you, and what you do with that informs a lot of your future.

This album is all about accepting that perception of other people. Two people can grow together. What people think can change a little (…Ready For It?). We look for the person that will be with us at the end. I doesn’t matter what people think, if it can work (Endgame). Sometimes people won’t understand and nothing can change that (I Did Something Bad). There’s nothing wrong with looking for love, because it’s something people do (Don’t Blame Me). We can’t know everything in advance, but that makes life interesting (Delicate). People get what’s coming to them (Look What You Made Me Do). Life happens and what we do can’t change much (So It Goes…). (Sometimes things happen that change us in strange ways (Gorgeous). Things happen and only those involved in the matter have a say (Getaway Car). We find love in unexpected places that might not be approved of by everyone (King of My Heart). Love between two people doesn’t have to be known by others (Dancing With Our Hands Tied and Dress). Sharing something can ruin it (This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). Everything else going on doesn’t matter except in the way we feel about it (Call It What You Want). Love is something special that can be elusive but well worth it (New Year’s Day).

New Year’s Day sounds a little like what people expect when two people in love don’t ever have plans to get married. Like how Gorgeous is a little about babies.