Unqualified for Carpe Diem

Good heavens, I can't even get my blog done on time (this is HOURS late!), how can I speak with any authority about seizing the day?

Honestly, I don't even know what this means. I mean, intellectually I do, but since leaping before looking is encoded in my whole gene pool, the saying doesn't have any emotional resonance. If I seized any more of the day, there wouldn't be any left for anyone else!

There's a saying: "once you take something, then you have to keep it."  That word "seize" implies for me "take away from someone who already has it." Which means someone else will come along and take it away from me at some point.

So, I let the day do whatever it was going to do. And leave the seizing to engine blocks and foreign powers.

This kind of applies to my theory (oh, I have a lot of them! Don't get me started. Seriously, don't.) of writing. Lots of writers write from a place of pure will:

• My character is going to kick the ass of everyone who was ever mean to me!
  
  Of course, this can lead to one dickens of an unsympathetic lead character. All that ass-kicking.
• My character is going to show the reader how stupid racism is.
  
  I'm with the movie producer who encouraged filmmakers to send messages via Western Union.

No, I try to write from a place slightly to the south of my will. That area where perception, understanding, and feeling cross paths. My favorite response when I read a book is "OMG, that's EXACTLY how it feels!" That comes from sharing, not teaching. Making oneself vulnerable to the reader. Terrifying, and exhilerating.

What's your favorite emotional response when reading a book?

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

hi, I've been waiting for you to seize, Mysti!

I have to say I also eschew seizing, especially days. They're too long for me to commit to. I'd just as soon have them float my way if they want to. Or not.

[Mysti Berry]

Some days have seized me and shaken me silly. Luckily they are few and far between!

[Susan C Shea]

Mysti, My favorite emotional response? Ir's a bit of a strange way to think about the greatest enjoyment I get from a book since the KIND of emotion isn't what makes it stand out - it's the fact that a book can catch me up and make me forget myself for awhile and be present in someone else's imagined world so completely. When it works, it's damned amazing and earns my highest respect (after the fact, when I emerge into my real world again).

[Ann Parker]

Hmmm. I think the response I'm looking for in a book is a sense of "completeness" when I finish, even if there are teasers leading to the next (if it is a series). That and a certain "resonance," as when the story stays with me, lingering in the back of my mind. Huh. That's not a very clear explanation, I guess, but I know it when I feel it! ;-)

[Mysti Berry]

Susan--yes, that makes perfect sense. I still remember the first time something stood out like that--a Shakespeare poem of all things, and the feeling that I felt something so clearly just as the author had hundreds of years before...goosebumps! Dickinson does that to me too...

[Mysti Berry]

Ann, I think I know what you mean! Maybe that's why endings are so hard--if that part isn't just right, it's hard to get that feeling...