Byronic Butterflies

I'll admit, sometimes I pick topics just for the alliteration of it all...

THE INSPIRATION: Butterfly of Joy

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”

—E.E. Cummings

Look, I don’t know about y’all, but things have been rough lately. Everyone I know is struggling. We all know why, and maybe some of us are doing okay and are like, “What’s the problem?” but for many of us, we’re seriously questioning… everything.

We’re quitting our jobs. We’re quitting relationships. We’re grieving losses. We’re moving across the country. We’re moving to new countries. We’re looking at a world full of fascism and death and the return of boot cut jeans and deciding that we need to stop planning for a future we might not have, and live now.

Yeah. Existentialism is trending, y’all.

And you know what? It’s not terrible. Societally, we’re a butterfly in a chrysalis, beating our wings against the constraints we’ve built until we can break free. I hope that’s the case. I hope when we do break free, that we create a better world for everyone in it. That we’re kinder, that we’re better, that we’re more loving to each other.

But while we’re inside the chrysalis, beating our wings to build our strength for the next expression of our existence, while we are in the now, let’s find a way to laugh and express joy.

No matter how tight the chrysalis is, there is always space for joy.

THE FAT ORANGE CAT: Now you see me…

Glasses as a metaphor are a lot of fun, because they speak to how we see. We can darken them with sunglasses, or brighten them with fun, funky frames. What if your character lost their glasses, and suddenly the world was all blurry? What if they found someone else’s glasses, and wanted to return them to the owner? What if they looked through their spouse’s glasses, only to discover that the glasses have some kind of magical entry to the past?

Glasses, man. Put a pair in your story today. Have some fun.

The “Get Your Stuff” link will bring you to an item I selected specifically to accompany this post, but you do not have to buy that thing in order to support me. Just keep popping through Amazon and buy the stuff you were going to buy anyway.

THE TROPE: Isn’t it Byronic?

I cannot tell you how little patience I have for the Byronic hero, while also loving them so much that I’m kind of ashamed of it.

For those of you who are new to this idea, a Byronic hero comes from Lord Byron, who wrote this kind of character and had a reputation for being a bit, unironically, Byronic.

The Byronic hero is dark. Broody. Tortured. Self-involved. Self-destructive. He loves intensely, but always through the filter of his own pain and torment. He’s great in bed, a disaster at dinner with your parents. He can’t be happy, because he’s too stuck up his own ass to see that happiness is even an option.

The thing I hate about the Byronic hero is SHUT UP. Heathcliff, I get that you’re a petulant little child who thinks that life should have worked out differently than it did, but you and Catherine are doomed, stop rending your clothing on the moors, and get over yourself.

On the other hand… Angel. Mr. Darcy. Batman. There’s a million reasons not to get into a romantic entanglement with any of these self-involved, self-destructive men, and that makes us want them all the more. Romantic conflict is built in with these dudes, and romantic conflict can be very fun.

Have your character sleep with a Byronic hero, absolutely. But a long-term thing will never, ever work, because they cannot be happy or they cease to be Byronic and if being Byronic is their entire identity, then they unravel and your character is just sitting there, holding them while they cry.

The sex will be fantastic, though.

THE QUESTION: Magpie

“I’ve been working on my prep for nanowrimo and I keep on wanting to put myself in (little references that mean things in my own life) and I was wondering how much of yourself do you put in your own work? Do you filter at all or do you put yourself in raw?”

—Personally Invested

Dear PI,

Interesting question. It’s my feeling that you can’t write honestly and vulnerably without inserting pieces of yourself inside the work. When I talk about craft and magic, I define the magic as “you.”

Now, how “you” would be defined as “magic” covers a lot of ground. It’s your humor. Your sense of doom and darkness. Your philosophical outlook. Your fascinations. Your wording, your perspective.

In “write what you know” it’s there again; you.

So, that covered, I think your question might be a little more literal; putting in little details that have significance to you, maybe? And to that, I’d also say… how can you not? I’m like a magpie, snatching little glittery details from my life and weaving them into the story, simply because they are mine. I cannot imagine filtering myself out of my work, and I cannot imagine the purpose of doing so… except maybe to avoid the vulnerability of it, or because you might be worried that it’s narcissistic?

It is vulnerable. It is not narcissistic.

Re: vulnerability, that’s already a forgone conclusion if, as I said, you intend to write honestly, and there’s no reason to write if you’re not going to do it honestly, so if vulnerability is the catch for you, work on increasing your comfort level with that.

If it’s narcissism you’re worried about, you can let that go. Culturally, we have a toxic relationship with ourselves that I think needs some examination. Ignoring yourself, your needs, your thoughts, your fascinations simply because they are yours speaks to a cultural implication that we should always consider ourselves to be less valuable than others and… I don’t like it. This idea that we don’t want to get too full of ourselves…

Ugh.

I say… fill up. Get full of yourself. Take in a deep, deep breath of yourself, and exhale joy. And if that exhalation of joy gets into your work, awesome.

What’s important is not that you shrink away and play small, making room for other people. What’s important is that you realize that room, in this sense, is not a finite resource. Take up all the space you want, there will still be plenty of space for others as long as you make it.

Do you see what I’m saying?

What’s important is not that you’re not fascinated with yourself—and I maintain, you should be—but that you are as fascinated with yourself as you are with others. That you are as supportive of yourself as you are of others. That you are as willing to talk about yourself as you are to talk about others.

Do not shrink. Expand. Do not play small. Dream big. Your awesome doesn’t take away from anyone else’s awesome. And if you make as much space for others as for yourself, and you make loads of space for yourself, you’re doing just fine.

I don’t know if that answered your question, or if it touched on anything you needed answered. But that’s what I have to say on the matter; magpie away, be glorious and let everyone see it.

Everything,

L

I’ve had some reports of the button not working for everyone, so if you want to ask a question, you can also email it to lani@chipperish.com.

THE PRACTICAL: True Crime

Sometimes, I wonder about why I return to true crime. I don’t particularly like it. I mean, it’s dark. It focuses on the terrible things that humans do to each other and while I understand that this is the world we all live in, I don’t enjoy diving into that world too much.

But lately, I’ve been listening to a string of podcasts and watching documentaries that would suggest that I protest too much. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Suspect. Over My Dead Body. What Happened, Brittany Murphy? Firebug. Tiger King.

Part of it is that I listen to the Crime Writers On podcast because Kevin and Rebecca are delightful and I love them. The whole podcast is about true crime, and I get sucked in when they recommend something.

But also, there’s a fascination there. I mean, there’s a built in story structure to these things, always some mystery. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen?

And how can I prevent it from happening to me?

But I don’t really know. I’ve been thinking lately about the philosophy of story, or aesthetics, and I wonder sometimes about the pleasures of things like horror or true crime. What is it that draws us in?

I don’t know. But I do wonder. What do you think?

Everything,

L