Recently it struck me that on a number of front writers have a real sharp edged duality about them, of composed of what seems like mutually exclusive natures. In no particular order here are some of those ideas.

Writers seem to be both optimists and utterly practical. Consider that when you send off a manuscript you are competing with hundreds and more likely thousands of manuscript for that publication slot or agent’s representation. The keep sending them out as the mountain of rejections grows is an act of utter optimism. One day it will change, one day that lightning will strike. At the same time when you review and edit your material, there is no place for wishful thinking, no room here for sentimentality. that which does not work must be fixed and excised from the text. It is the basis of the adage ‘kill your darlings.’

Writers seem to exist in a strange state of self-doubt and criticism while also possessing a belief that what they have to say is not only worthy but worthy of the attention of thousands. They must be critical enough to see the flaws, as above, but certain in their views, their plots, their characters, that they know the world needs to see it.

We can also dive into philosophical duality. Character we create exist in some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty region between free-will and determinism. Consider a character like say Will Riker from Star trek The Next Generation. If a show opened with him storming onto the bridge, mouthing off to Picard, slapping Troi around and making the moves on Wesley, the viewers would demand a reason for these actions.  He would never do such things. They are beyond any scope of his freely chosen set of actions, something must be making him act that way. Characters have defined natures that if they venture beyond they break beliefe and become ‘out of character.’ And yet we have to believe that characters make choices and that often in a character’s arc he, or she, chooses something at the end of the story that would have been out of character at the start.

It is a strange thing I pursue.

Sorry, I have been absent for a week. It’s been a nasty time with headaches every day. When  you suffer from migraine you sometimes run into periods like that.

I’ve bee thinking about MacBeth again, my favorite Shakespearean play. Recently my sweetie-wife and I watched the latest film production of the tragedy, this one starring Michael Fassbender as MacBeth. It was not a great production, oh it looked fantastic but some of their choice in interpreting the text I did not agree with.

That aside one of the things that has always fascinated me about the story is the relationship between MacBeth, the events, and the Witches. In many productions, such as this recent one, the witches are reduced to nothing more than vessels of prophesy, info dumps without agency of their own. This is not how they are in the text of the play. Consider the opening of Act I Scene III

SCENE III. A heath near Forres.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches
First Witch
Where hast thou been, sister?
Second Witch
Killing swine.
Third Witch
Sister, where thou?
First Witch
A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d:–
‘Give me,’ quoth I:
‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger:
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.
Second Witch
I’ll give thee a wind.
First Witch
Thou’rt kind.
Third Witch
And I another.
First Witch
I myself have all the other,
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I’ the shipman’s card.
I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se’nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Look what I have.
Second Witch
Show me, show me.
First Witch
Here I have a pilot’s thumb,
Wreck’d as homeward he did come.
Drum within

Third Witch
A drum, a drum!
Macbeth doth come.
ALL
The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about:
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm’s wound up.
Enter MACBETH and BANQUO

The witches have motivations, goals, and purposes all their own, They are characters of malintent whose conscious actions drive the plot and force the events. In a lot of film productions these bits are discarded and that radically changes the nature of what transpires.

I am often intrigued by the question of culpability in the play. MacBeth would not have embarked on a course of treason and murder without the witches prophesy, something that if the witches know the future must also know. Yet it is by MacBeth’s hand, not his wife, not the witches that Duncan in murdered. He plunges the dagger, no one else.  Remove the witches’ malintent and Macbeth become more responsible unless one reads the prophecy as inevitable, but that is not the text.

Today I had an epiphany into a way to re-interpret this. I can’t share it publicly yet, because it may form the basis for a new novel, but it makes me terribly excited.

This is cool, though a bit dated.

Today I took a day off from work and stay home to chill, relax, and play games as required recharging time. One of the thinge I did was poke around the internet and I found a review of a review of a short story published last year in Sci-Phi issue 6.

It is the first time that I’ve become aware of a review that wasn’t written by someone I knew, and frankly that was a blast.

Now the review is not a great one, clearly my short ‘The Story is a Lie,’ did not work for the reader, but as I say often in our writers’ group, ‘no honest critique can be wrong.’ This is the reviewer’s honest opinion and this is what the story as he read it. I am glad he took the time to review it and I hope future stories of mine work better for him.

So the novel’s outline is finished, but it needs a revision. I worked out a better ending and now I have to go back and make sure everything supports that. (This is why I like being an outliner, a whole lot less work that rewriting a book after you just finished it.)

But first I am taking a break to write a short story. Not going to say what it is about because I think I’ll get it done in time for the current quarter of Writers of the Future. It’s coming together rather nicely and counter to the first paragraph of this post, it’s not fully outlined. This is a case where discovery – over a few thousand words – is working out well for me.

After that, revise the outline and maybe start researching a new short. Something very action oriented, very visual, and a new setting for a zombie story, but it requires a lot of research.

Have a great weekend.