Sunday blog is suffering from blank page-itis, partly due to
an over-imbibed and enjoyable Saturday night dinner. The remainder of the
vacant lot can be blamed on a hangover from a non-productive week.
Thriller Two
writing stalled as my desktop kept crashing Word docs. Helpdesq techies
commandeered my blighted machine, cyber-spanners deep in the works over several
days, emerging finally triumphant to say it was an update that had dunnit.
Then I foolishly
decided that two older paperbacks must be Kindled and since I wasn’t a complete
idiot, I would format them myself in a day. Big mistake. Following googled
instructions, I tried one suggestion and half the text shot off one side of the
page and couldn’t be persuaded to return. Sentences split asunder, the tail-end
hopping down two lines, and they refused to be reunited as well. I have a very
healthy respect for people who can fix things – plumbers, car mechanics and
super-skilled formatters who for a small remuneration will take it off my hands
tomorrow (cross fingers) and do it perfectly in double-quick time.
Dreaming of Jane
Austen sitting at her small table, quill pen scratching across hand-made paper.
No hair-tearing technological meltdowns. No distractions from facebook/twitter,
now a mandatory chore for authors. No 24-hour media spraying out political
disaster news, which should have a health warning attached. What are we doing
to our brains? It’s like living under constant bombardment from a hail storm in
a cyclone. A cacophony of useless noise with the yays and nays fighting
unwinnable gladiatorial contests.
In tribal
societies, the shaman (oracular truth-teller) used to live away from the
village deep in the forest. They could only practise their trade when
unfettered from the cares of the world. Wise move.
The story of my
first Thane & Calder thriller By the Light of a Lie emerged from my
fascination about the gap between the image and the private reality, the
ultimate Hollywood (and public figure) syndrome – looks unblemished, but hiding
dark secrets.
Thane & Calder
thriller number two (work in progress) is about mind-control, not the
Manchurian candidate scenario, but the insidious everyday brainwashing that
goes on. I’m all for specialists who can fix things (see above). What raises my
ire are professional experts, who land their theories on us like tablets of
stone from on high – scientists, doctors, rabble-rousing politicians and
religious zealots. The know-it-alls insist their ‘truth’ is the unified theory
of everything. Their avid fandom then sets up a comfort bubble which, in
extremis, can become a fascist ghetto.
Chasseguet-Smirgel,
the French analyst, writes of group delusion: "He who does not think as the
group does is excluded, harassed, killed or declared insane." London
analyst Christopher Bollas describes the same process of denigration, character
assassination and caricaturing in The Fascist State of Mind, which he says
"entertains no doubt or uncertainty". “Distortion of the views of
opponents to render them less intelligible and credible is the first move. They
have to be discredited because no separation of view is possible from the
accepted one.”
Sound familiar?
Read
my other blogs: on Messengers from a Parallel Universe, A Paradoxical Life of
Writing: Do I Contradict Myself? Novelists Can Be Whistleblowers, Fictional
characters who live on, Memory, Books Better Comforters than Parents, Choosing
Names, How to cook up a successful novel - joke. Subscribe above for regular updates on my
blog.
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me on:
BUY my new crime thriller BY the LIGHT of a
LIE at: www.marjorieorr.com
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