Gettin' All Meta Up in Hir

I really want to write a good, in depth post, but I have a terrible headache and my cats have broken a bunch of keys on my computer so typing is now frustrating and slightly difficult.  It was fine when it was just the “z” key and slightly bothersome when the “m” button fell off, but now that I am forced to hit weird little rubbery/plastic-y nubs for “a” and “w” too I want to throw my computer out the window.  Right before I do so though, I recall how time consuming it would be to write this on my smartphone and I pause.  Maybe I will just throw the cat out the window next time she makes a really terrible smelling poop.  Nah, I guess I will keep her, but seriously, those poops are toxic. 

So, what do I want to talk about besides my two favorite topics of cats and poop?  I mean, I think they have come up three times already, usually in the same sentence.  (Brief aside, can I just misspell words to avoid using the broken keys?  No?  Ok.) Well, I read The Help this week since I was busy and Infinite Jest is too deep for that idle fifteen minutes before sleep.   No, I don’t want to talk about the movie, because I haven’t seen it.  Nor do I want to discuss race, or being dumped twice by the same guy, or even the poop cake.  I will point out that clearly I am not the only girl who thinks books should have more poop jokes though.  

I want to talk about the act of writing, and writing about writing.

Lets start with form, since I love form.  The book inside the book has one chapter written by a maid and Skeeter, who maintains this weird role of interviewer, writer and editor.  This is a fairly straightforward organizational system.   The actual book jumps between three women’s perspectives, and even has one chapter written in the third person.  This is not so straightforward.  I understand wanting to give the individual characters control over perspective, but I don’t understand breaking that pattern for omniscience.  Especially when the one chapter that is in the third person is not the only time the three characters occupy the same space.  I also find it troublesome that only three of the characters control what the reader knows when they are clearly sympathetic characters.  Why don’t we hear the story from the nasty characters too?  Because we can imagine how racist and ignorant they are so clearly their perspectives don’t count?  Isn’t it their perspectives that created the Jim Crow South?  My point being, wouldn’t it be interesting if the reader were given the perspective of a generally good person who had this one terrible, hurtful, but socially acceptable (at the time) flaw?  “Flaw” belittles racism, I know, but I lack a better word.  Blame it on the headache. 

This leads me to what I have been working on in my own story.  I want a particular character to be likeable, but totally blind to his ego, thereby undermining his reliability as a source of information.   This is hard people.  It is difficult to tell a story by withholding information.  Well, withholding it until the time is appropriate.  How do I create a likeable character with a pretty major flaw (all though WAY less of an issue than racism, on a totally different scale really), and not drop that bomb until, like, halfway through the book?  THIS IS SO HARD!  TYPING THIS I MEAN, IT IS SUCH A PAIN IN THE PLACE WHERE MY CAT MAKES STINKY POOPS.

Goodnight.