Struggling With the Antagonist ( A Learned Neurosis)

In Margeret Mitchell's epic novel, Gone With The Wind, we see the author's soft appeal and romancing tones in a vortex of voracious conflict. Simple times in the South's early history backdrop the story with beauty and idealism, while a raging domestic war confronts the characters. This technique or effort puts the author at risk. The risk of being identified with the ugly truths that fight its idealism and beauty. Being in this predicament is not at all unique as that is what makes for a good book. In fact, it is critically necessary. The problem is that the writer's true fabric, should he or she be more sheltered, has to temporarily be overcome by this enemy of heroism. Like scratching a blackboard, the sound and feeling make us cringe, but the actual doing it has to bring a healing procedure of massage and meditation nearly impossible. It is most difficult for me as I was raised in a well-guarded and sheltered homelife. Reading other epics is what divided my more pristine response, allowing me to build the 'bad guy' up enough to create a situation. Is it believable? It must be.

Though sheltered in a loving and seemingly well-balanced family, Mitchell was indoctrinated with stories of the Civil war by her parents, her own mother Maybell, independant of the standard femme fatale of the era, supporting the women's suffrage. Later, during college, she landed a job at an Atlanta newspaper as a journalist, and became one of the best in her business. Before Selznick took it on as an academy award winning movie, her book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Though successful, she suffered from bouts of depression that subdued any desire to top the book that turned over the movie industry forever. Some sources say that it was due to her admonitions with the graphic horror with which she wrestled in such a powerful project. There is a hint (foreshadowing) of drawing toward then away from the adversary.

This was just one example among so many whose lives contributed to the balanced effort of the best sellers, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov. The story deals with moral and religious elements that fiercely fight one another, placing both protagonists and its enemies in a clever duo, a contest of philosophical interests. Different from Mitchell's history in theme, they both contain the firey elements of plot development compelling the readers to stay with the story. Digging for clues planted by those elements of good and evil, the reader can easily become a literary juror who must decide which will succeed, (all the while knowing that good usually wins in the end.)

The antagonistic influence is the most difficult to write into a narrative, be it illustrated in conflictive forces within the story itself or a character. However, reading the basic principles of the best sellers, especially those of the 20th century, we as writers, have hope that we can become well acquainted with the successful art of losing our less candid thoughts behind for the sake of the story. For it is in the passion that makes all stories cohesive, no matter how hard the author must slip out of their own element. The author, in truest sense, wins after all.

On A Subway

The face was quite like I imagined
appearing close to the subway door;
and I, so very shy, thought you would
never remember me; now that I had
a larger frame, and wrinkles under my
scanty brows, tears that still flow
without much warning to give me away;
I would have to tell you how your hair
smelled like pine tar and your skin like
starchy linen in the heat of a sweat.

...and so this is how we never met?
passing up a jaunt to Queens once we reached
the stop in the Bronx. It didn’t matter-
thunder rumbled the screeching brakes
rain swallowing your image,
the wind filtered the smell while your
face was only the ghost of a dream thinking
maybe I should have gone to Jersey after all.

Does the finished book seem too far away?

I finally learned something. Yes. I'm going on the 62nd year of my life, and all the lessons I've learned have suddenly come to the awesome knowledge of 'huh'? Why? Because I'm always on a timeline. You know who you are, and why it seems like finishing a book takes so long and then the whole time you're trying to materialize the abstract of your wild imagination, there is that thought in the back of your mind. " But what if no one wants to buy it? "

Stop right there. If you're like me, writing nearly every day, then half the work is done for you. You just need a support system. Not the one at home that needs to be taken to school. Nor the one who wants meatloaf for dinner instead of stuffed tilapia. You need a group within a sensible driving distance to help you keep the vision, keep you focused, and force some discipline into the dream of being published.

...to be continued