Obsessiveness

[pegkerr]

Talked to kijjohnson today, who, to my delight, is finally reading the Lois McMaster Bujold books. She made some remark that she hasn't been able to do anything else, but has simply been gulping them down one after another.

This started a chain of thought for me today that led me to brood on the issue of obsessiveness (a topic which I have obsessively considered before). Right now, I'm re-obsessed with Lord of the Rings, as I just got my DVD copy of the first movie. Kij is like this, too, and in fact, that's one of the bonds between us. Other obsessions I have had over the years, starting from when I was very small:

The Chronicles of Narnia
the Bible
fairy tales
Laura Ingalls Wilder's books
the Lucy M. Montgomery books (Anne of Green Gables and its sequels)
Star Trek
Star Wars
Beauty and the Beast (the television show)
the King Arthur tales
Robin Hood
LOTR, as well as Tolkien's other works
Harry Potter
Jane Austen
Georgette Heyer
Lois McMaster Bujold

This tendency in myself to obsess about story has been an extremely strong aspect of my character, beginning since, I would judge, I was about eight years old. I like stories with a wide scope: many characters, vivid scenery, heroes to cheer for, villains to hiss at. Essentially, I like a fully imagined world (scenery AND character AND history AND . . .), where I can totally lose myself.

This has always totally baffled my family (by which I mean my family of origin; my husband understands this completely). Why is Peg going to see Star Wars for the ____nth time? I couldn't explain it when I was 16 years old, and it always rather embarrassed me. Other people around me were able to read a story or see a movie and shrug and say, "Well, that was interesting" or "I suppose that was rather good," and then go away and forget about it. But not me. My imagination has always seemed to need some story that I turn over and over and over in my mind (like Gollum muttering over his "Precious," I suppose--I forget who it was who remarked that Gollum is a picture-perfect example of the psychological concept of addiction).

As I've grown older, I understand it a little better, I think, although it still is somewhat embarrassing to admit, even to myself. I tend to hide the full extent of my obsession from the people who know me (by which I mean the Muggle, or mundane world: my coworkers, for example). And yet, I have to admit to myself, that a large part of my life is spent simply thinking about whatever it is I am obsessing about the most. At work nowadays, I replay the LOTR:FOTR movie continually in my head, or listen to the soundtrack in my mind, or think about the fanfiction I've read lately, all while continuing to do my work. I would estimate that at least 50% of every day sometimes is spent just thinking about whatever my current obsession is. At night, I'll surf the Internet, or read essays about an author, or simply brood. I turn stories over and over in my mind, thinking about how the author created them, how the characters interact, how the world is made vivid, and about the issues and themes revealed in the story: how do you go on with your life if your greatest love was someone has died? How do you get over being betrayed? How can you be a hero when you are scared to death? How do you show faith when you have never had anything to depend on in your life? How do you come to know and understand yourself truly in your relationship with other people--both in people you love and people you hate? Who are you, and how does that change as your role in life changes, and as you make hard choices?

Why do I do this? I don't know. Sometimes (quite often, really) I wish that I didn't, and I get totally exasperated with myself. But I have done a good deal of reading about the creative process, and I have learned that this is a tendency that is shared by many other creators. C.S. Lewis wrote approvingly of those readers who read stories over and over; he thought more highly of them than readers who read something only once. The Bronte children, for example, built a whole imaginary world as children, based on the toy wooden soldiers that Branwell owned, which they turned into a series of stories set in "Glass Town," later "Verdopolis" and "Angria." Tolkien himself is another great example, of course, brooding over his imaginary languages and the history of Middle Earth. I take comfort sometimes, when I get too discouraged over the fact that I have been blocked from writing fiction for a number of years, by remembering that Tolkien himself was a blocked writer, and the book that he wanted to publish the most he never finished, although he put fifty years of work into it (The Simarillion).

I find that my tendency to obsess is closely related to my tendency to feel stories deeply. Stories move me more than most people, I think. I say this and wince--it seems downright conceited somehow (I feel more deeply than you do). Yet I really believe it's true. Someone who knows me pretty well once remarked that I have less of a carapace protecting me from the outside world than most people do, and so that I get much more rocked my life's joys and woes than most. Powerful stories feed right into that, plugging right into my imagination, jolting me like someone mainlining heroin.

It's both a curse and a gift, I think. Obsessing can give me wild delight, but it also uses vast reserves of physic energy, reserves which the wise part of me knows I should be using creating my own work, but I don't because I'm obsessing over someone else's work. I worry, too, that I might lose track of my own life because I've sunk so deeply into an imaginary one. Perhaps it has gotten worse since I have discovered the Internet. It used to be, when I was stuck in a particular obsession, I would quietly keep it to myself because I didn't know any other people who felt about a certain story as I did. Now, with the Internet, it's very easy to find many, many people just as obsessed as me. The possibility for endless time-wasting, in discussions, in speculations, in mutual delight, grows exponentially.

I think that the Internet has made things both easier and harder for the obsessive creator. We have the ability to find each other now. But if you want to create your own stuff, as, say, a fantasy novel fiction writer, the Internet can stand for a continual temptation to forget your own work and immerse yourself in someone else's work. Who knows how many great Tolkiens this generation might have produced who instead frittered all their time away playing computer games on line?

Throwing this out for thought. I think I'll go re-read "Leaf, by Niggle" by Tolkien, which he wrote in conjunction with his essay "Tree and Leaf," about fairy stories. He wrote it as he was struggling with the fear that his obsessiveness over detail would prevent him from ever finishing The Silmarillion.

Cheers,
Peg

P.S. Aargh. There's a bat flying around in the house. Must go deal with this.

Comments

[red-queen.livejournal.com]

I think it has to do with moving into another world, and wanting to spend as much time there as possible. I've worn out copies of my favorite books because I revisit those worlds regularly (the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane quartet sure took a beating!).

Authors who spend a lot of time world-building certainly confirm this hypothesis. At the same time, world-building provides the necessary back-story. I remember Katya Reimann (an old and dear friend) locking herself away for 2 weeks, writing up 200 years of history and 50 years of political intrigue for her trilogy. It was as if she was studying for a History exam, except she was *creating* the history. Not all of that work appeared in her books, but she had to go through that to know where her characters came from and why they were where they were. As they say in theatre, every exit is an entrance to somewhere else. (And the reverse is true: when you enter a scene, you have to be comeing from somewhere else).

I'm a tech writer myself, and I know that sometimes you have to obsess about details (and write them out) before you know what parts to throw away. I don't believe that obsession with detail is ever wasted; the tricky part is knowing the difference between "process" and "product." If you figure that out, for God's sake, PUBLISH. :-}

Not to lead you down more primose paths to perdition, but have you read Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles? Six books of historical fiction, all with chess-related titles (Game of Kings, Queen's Play, Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, Checkmate), set in the last 10 years of Mary Tudor's reign. Fantastic books (I've worn out copies of these, too -- I discovered them twenty-ump years ago...), incredibly well researched, even to the music.

And if you haven't run across Laurie King's Mary Russell stories, you're in for a serious treat...

PS: How did you deal with the bat?

Dorothy Dunnett . . .

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

is still somebody I'm going to get around to one of these days. A number of writers in my former Shakespeare reading group spoke of her work admiringly.

(My "must read someday" list is huge, and I'm starting to realize I won't read all of 'em before I kick the bucket.)

Peg