Michelle's House of Horrors

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.
–Stephen King/On Writing

One of the bits of advice Stephen King likes to give aspiring writers is about voice: you should pick an audience to write to, preferably a particular person.

I don’t think I am very good at that, and it does make a difference.

The imaginary conversations are all, yes, imaginary…but they are conversations between me and a specific person. Usually one of three people. That is why I love writing them. It’s a chance to have a conversation go exactly the way I would like it to, or explore what-ifs. Sometimes it is the only way I will ever hear what I want to hear.

Some of my non-dialogue blogs are definitely written to particular people. If those people read them, they probably know that. To me it seems obvious, anyway. Some of the things I am most proud of are written to someone. Not that they don’t apply to anyone.

A lot of times, voice is a challenge.

It’s easier to have a unique voice, or to use my own particular voice, when I am writing about things that are personal. It’s natural.

When I am being more general, it’s harder, and I am not sure if that means that I should do that more in order to get better at it or if it’s a sign that I should stick to the personal.

I do know how to recognize a run-on sentence when I write one…
And when to shut down my iPad and go to bed.

Say goodnight, Gracie.

While I whine for a moment about being sick.
Oh, I am not really, really sick. Too sick to be at work. Too sick to be on the couch. A little too well to want to be in bed.

“In between” sick, and all dumbed down on cold medicine and codeine.

Here is what I keep thinking: the common cold costs the economy billions of dollars a year in sick time and lost productivity. Everyone gets colds. I understand that the constant mutations and huge variety of cold viruses are such that a vaccine is nearly impossible.

But…

What about a cold medicine that actually does something to treat cold symptoms? (Whining) Why can’t medical science make it less miserable to have a cold? Why can’t medical science figure out a way to make it less contagious? Why, why, why?

It would be a huge money maker. I imagine that Big Pharma is all over it.

In the meantime, can we stop selling the cough syrups that don’t actually treat a cough? Maybe I have a particularly nasty cough, but even drinking codeine straight out of a jug barely puts a dent in it.

On the other hand, like anything else, there is a bright side to being home sick.

I have a perfectly valid excuse to huddle in and watch old movies. Oh, maybe not anything too complicated. Something with John Cusack in it. Rita Hayworth. Bill Murray. Cold medicine might not make me really feel any better, but it does make me stupid and inattentive.

I hadn’t ever seen Grosse Pointe Blank before. This was a perfect chance.

Anne Rice just released another Lestat novel. The timing is perfect.

I can reread all of Jane Austen.

I can drink hot lemon ginger tea until I burst.

I have an excuse for eating nothing but white rice and noodles.

The cat is happy to have me home.

Silver linings are everywhere.

I’m going to go look for one now!

Like most people who graduated from the same high school I did, I am sensitive to school shootings. We all went to school with people like the dead and wounded students, we had parents like theirs, parents like the parents of the killers.

This latest shooter, a homecoming prince and athlete, a popular boy with a broken heart, really makes me wonder. The easy to blame reasons of alienation, bullying, mental illness, bad parenting don’t seem to apply. Not that they ever really explain why we have so many school shootings.

I know so many boys, so many girls, who have been in a similar place in life. So many of my friends, literally princes and princesses of those all-important school dances. Football players. Basketball players. Cheerleaders. I’ve stood on that podium myself. I’ve also been the heartbroken one. We all have.

It’s not about heartbreak. Everyone has a broken heart at some point. Usually as teenagers. Hardly any of us become suicidal mass murderers.

The boys at Thurston High School often hunted and fished before or after school. There were trucks with gun racks in the school parking lot. I would bet that a lot of them were loaded. The ones that weren’t loaded probably had boxes of ammo behind the seats. There were a lot of close calls with gun safety and drinking, but we didn’t shoot at each other. Not on purpose, anyway.

It’s not about guns, although it is my personal opinion that there are far too many people with handguns.

We have easier, safer lives in many ways than anyone who has ever come before us in history. Normal people have luxuries that no one dreamed of even 100 years ago. War, violence, rape, terror have always existed and on a scale that impacted far more of us than they do now. Massacres and genocide are not new to humanity.

It’s not about the world being a more violent place. It always has been.

The boy in Marysville who shot his friends didn’t do it because he didn’t know how to deal with the responsibilities of sex, or a pregnancy scare either. The “right” age to have a sexual relationship is determined by culture, not some black and white dictate etched it stone. It evolves. Some cultures think you should start considering reproducing the minute biology says so. Our current societal norm is older than that.

It’s not about teenagers having inappropriate sex. Pregnancy scares are terrifying and stressful, but they don’t cause people to snap and kill each other. Teen sex has been going on since there has been teenagers and sex–always.

I don’t understand why it happens. I don’t think any of us do. I identify with the pain, but I don’t understand the violence. What is different between the rest of us, and the kids who go into their schools to kill other students and teachers and maybe mostly to ultimately die themselves?

Maybe the only difference is that every time someone kills a bunch of people, we know about it. Maybe this is how it has always been.

Maybe.
Maybe.
I don’t know.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know?

Is it part of the human condition that some people break down and strike out?

Again, I don’t know.

Does anyone?