Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve last posted. I’ve been tempted on a few occasions to put up a blog, but the things most on my mind were about the political and social state of the USA and I didn’t want this blog to devolve into an ideological rant, and it wouldn’t be so much a blog, more a book in its own right. Instead, I’ve been inspired to this piece by one of my favorite songs. Santana feat. Everlast – Put Your Lights On. Some of the lyrics call to me.

“Cause there’s a monster living under my bed

Whispering in my ear

There’s an angel, with a hand on my head

She say I’ve got nothing to fear

There’s a darkness living deep in my soul

I still got a purpose to serve.”

Listening to it again recently, these words struck a chord in me in regards to writing. Almost everyone has a darkness inside them. A monster living under their bed, urging them to do wrong and whether we suppress it (the angel) determines whether we’re perceived as good or bad. The more we contain and hide our darkness, the better we appear to others: less petty, less cruel, more caring and loving. Everyone struggles against their monsters. The more I thought about this, the more I wondered about fiction authors. It seems to me that when we write, we need that darkness, need to be able to touch it and draw on it to create the evil characters, the bad events. We have to imagine the motives of the villains, put ourselves inside their minds, create their deeds and still come out untainted. Maybe I’m being overly dramatic (Hey, I’m an author), but I feel that authors need that darkness to bring the dark side of their stories to life so that the bad guys don’t became thin, flimsy characters. Maybe if we didn’t have that monster under the bed, then our stories would all be happy, shiny things where people are all nice to each other and nothing bad ever happens. I’m not sure that those tales would be much of a read. Adversity defines our heroes and heroines. Perhaps sometimes our monsters run away with us. I read one fantasy series when the hero was constantly crapped on. He struggled to fight for the kingdom and nothing good ever seemed to happen to him, or at least if it did, it was taken away rather quickly. At the end of the first book I was dispirited, but I pressed on, convinced that everything would turn out right in the end. By the end of the second book I thought their was maybe a glimmer of hope, despite his misfortunes. At the end of the trilogy, the hero has saved the kingdom and finishes as an outcast living in a small hut. I felt utterly cheated. I know in real life the good guys don’t always win out or get the reward they deserve but dammit, I’d dragged myself through three books and I didn’t get a happy ending! This probably says more about me than the author, but I could never bring myself to touch another of his books again. The darkness had won. And I’m not alone in feeling like this.

SPOILER ALERT – GAME OF THRONES

My wife watches the tv series and the episode where Rob Stark and his family were slaughtered, left her outraged and depressed. The bad guys were winning and pretty much most of the good guys were now dead. There seemed to be no justice. It is perhaps a tribute to George R.R. Martin that he can evoke such passions, but at that point my wife was ready to stop watching it. In both of these examples, the story is dark and I’m sure that the authors had to reach into themselves to find their inner monsters to use in their writing. Considering how many creative people appear to have problems, I wonder if they ended up touching their darknesses once too often and losing, their angels unable to catch them. So to the readers of this world, spare a thought for the authors as they struggle with their monsters to bring you stories, hope that their angels hold onto them and that their lights continue to shine.