Buffy the Vampire Slayer was as big of an influence on my early work as Angela Carter or Edna St. Vincent Millay. I remember learning the writers knew fans would be worried about who Buffy would date after Angel, her big love (I’m Team Spike, but whatever).
So they wrote that anxiety into the story.
Buffy makes a bad choice for a rebound, as many of us do, hops too quickly into something shallow and bad, believes his lies, and gets hurt. That’s real, and that also wasn’t skipping around the viewers’ issue. Instead, the issue was addressed head-on: that the next character after such a massive love would have big shoes to fill, and would probably disappoint the viewers.
Why not make it direct? Why not make the writers’ and audience’s worry a deliberate part of the story, woven into the very fabric of the narrative? Thus: Parker, a one night stand who disappointed the viewers and the character of Buffy herself.
Though my upcoming projects are set in the late 90s, I am writing them in the deep suck of now.
Fiction for me has always been an escape, a way to tune out the outside world, relief from reality—especially imperative now as reality is simply unbearable. But the world is so difficult—as a mother, as a journalist, as a disabled person, as a human being—I can’t shut it out, even for an hour or two.
If I close the door, the world is only screaming behind it, rattling the knob like Jack Torrance. The world is both the abuser and the ax. Those hinges are going to fall off, the wood splinter. And my writing feels forced when I close the door, like I am pretending, because I am.
You can tell as a reader when writing is forced. You can tell when an artist doesn’t believe in their words, when it was merely a paycheck (which happens—we live in capitalism), or worse: when the artist was masking, afraid to tell the truth, including the truth of their own fear.
Let’s not pretend to be anything other than terrified, stressed, spent. This is the reality of right now. Things are terrible. And though my upcoming projects are set in the late 90s, I am writing them in the deep suck of now.
So there’s a tyrant in my next story. There’s a dry and burning land. And there’s a young woman who is doing her best to save the world, her family, her friends, and strangers while also just trying to survive herself. And while feeling feelings.
Which are my feelings.
My stories work best when I go there, as I like to say, when I go deep. Right now, that includes deep fear. Avoiding that would be avoiding the truth of who I am and what I’m experiencing, and that’s what makes art meaningful and human: us and what we’re going through.
Write the anxiety in. Give it a different dress. Mask it in different details but make the worry, the justified fears, your own. Don’t turn your back to the door. Move your desk so that you face it.
News
On Wednesday June 18, I’ll be reading at Denison University in Granville, OH. This event is free and open to the public, as part of the Reynolds Young Writers’ Workshop. I’m not sure what I’ll be reading yet, but probably something that scares me.
I love this. Thank you for writing it.