Ruminating on Dark in the Park, abandonment issues, JP Kinkaid, and more
I had a realisation, from something Nic said. He said, I hope your wip-readers understand that they aren't getting a story told in Catlish. They're getting an English translation. It's Dark translated into human for humans to read.
See lightbulb, going off over head. Because, yes, this exactly; the story is the story of, essentially, an abandoned oldest child, dumped by parents who can't or won't give her time or houseroom anymore, because they have a newer child that needs them more, and besides, Dark is essentially a teenager now, and hey, old enough to be out on her own, right?
It's abandonment, a huge issue of mine, and of course, that's colouring the story, every aspect of it. There are solid emotional reasons why abandonment is my ultimate nightmare. I've already written some of that out as catharsis of a sort, in Rock & Roll Never Forgets; the first time and the only time Bree asks JP not to do something, she asks him not to leave her alone, not to go back and give in to Cilla's demands for his time and help, not - in essence and fact - to abandon her. And he goes anyway. He feels he has no choice. And that action, his going, affects every single thing between them for the next thirty years, and beyond.
Writing it, according to many of my WIP readers, ought to have been very cathartic for me. Well, no - it isn't. The man who gave JP Kinkaid his voice did have a choice, and he chose to do what his miserable wife had talked him into thinking he wanted to do. Hell, maybe he did want it. How should I know? All I know is that he went. He left. He didn't love me enough to stay put, he was gone for two damned years - he left me in 1973 and came back in 1975, for that halcyon half-year - and I've been having abandonment and loyalty issues ever since. Bad scene.
So Dark is abandoned in a particularly brutal and selfish way, dumped in a place where she has to fight to survive. She's a teenaged girl left alone by uncaring or incapable parents.
But she's also a cat, not a human being, and her view of things will be different. Her survival techniques will be feline, not human. Her ache, the never-ending sense of loss, of not being good enough to have been kept in someone's heart no matter how much she loved or how hard she tried, is where this story is.
Thing is, the voice, as we hear it, has to encapsulate humanity as well as felinity. She's every homeless child in that situation, forced to make choices. And in the end, her biggest choice is going to be a question of abandonment.
May be small wonder that I have no idea about this book.
See lightbulb, going off over head. Because, yes, this exactly; the story is the story of, essentially, an abandoned oldest child, dumped by parents who can't or won't give her time or houseroom anymore, because they have a newer child that needs them more, and besides, Dark is essentially a teenager now, and hey, old enough to be out on her own, right?
It's abandonment, a huge issue of mine, and of course, that's colouring the story, every aspect of it. There are solid emotional reasons why abandonment is my ultimate nightmare. I've already written some of that out as catharsis of a sort, in Rock & Roll Never Forgets; the first time and the only time Bree asks JP not to do something, she asks him not to leave her alone, not to go back and give in to Cilla's demands for his time and help, not - in essence and fact - to abandon her. And he goes anyway. He feels he has no choice. And that action, his going, affects every single thing between them for the next thirty years, and beyond.
Writing it, according to many of my WIP readers, ought to have been very cathartic for me. Well, no - it isn't. The man who gave JP Kinkaid his voice did have a choice, and he chose to do what his miserable wife had talked him into thinking he wanted to do. Hell, maybe he did want it. How should I know? All I know is that he went. He left. He didn't love me enough to stay put, he was gone for two damned years - he left me in 1973 and came back in 1975, for that halcyon half-year - and I've been having abandonment and loyalty issues ever since. Bad scene.
So Dark is abandoned in a particularly brutal and selfish way, dumped in a place where she has to fight to survive. She's a teenaged girl left alone by uncaring or incapable parents.
But she's also a cat, not a human being, and her view of things will be different. Her survival techniques will be feline, not human. Her ache, the never-ending sense of loss, of not being good enough to have been kept in someone's heart no matter how much she loved or how hard she tried, is where this story is.
Thing is, the voice, as we hear it, has to encapsulate humanity as well as felinity. She's every homeless child in that situation, forced to make choices. And in the end, her biggest choice is going to be a question of abandonment.
May be small wonder that I have no idea about this book.
posted by DebGrabien at
6:13 PM
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