A Review and Reality

It's day #1 of my 24th week of pregnancy. Only 13 more weeks of trying not to overdo it. Thursday we made our weekly trip to our little community library and checked out four books for myself. (I would have liked to get more, but that was all the time I had before K got bored with the toys in the kids' area and started racing around the whole library and screaming.) Last night I finished the last of the four books. With all this "doing nothing," I read approximately 1,200 pages in a day & a half. At this rate I'll be able to read every book in the library in 13 weeks. (Did I mention that it's not a very big library?)

Now what?

Really, I could solve both my boredom and itchiness to organize my house if I could just get on a writing roll with the new novel. I'm perfectly happy to let all my housework slide and sit for hours at the computer when I'm engrossed in writing a new story. But the current battle with depression is making that hard. I'm kind of stuck at a certain plot point-- I've re-written it and it still doesn't work like I want it to-- and in my current negative frame of mind, I'm afraid I'll never conquer this particular wall. (Never mind that I had walls like this while writing both Legend and Corizen, and obviously found ways to solve it both times.)

Stupid negative thinking. (Um, isn't that an example of more negative thinking? Calling it stupid?) Anyway, I thought I'd get on here and share a little about one of the gazillion books I've read recently that made a huge impression on me. It's called Chime, by Franny Billingsley.

The cover art didn't appeal to me at first. Since I've been reading voraciously from the YA section lately, I've seen a lot of trying-to-be-sexy-verging-on-slutty books, usually in the vampire genre. This cover reminded me of one of those novels. And though I may have enjoyed Twilight, I'm really not into that kind of book. But since the librarian had put this one out on display, I picked it and and read the cover description, which intrigued me.

It's set in early 20th century England with the caveat that the folklore and superstitions and magic beliefs of the local village are real. The main character has a beloved stepmother who died in mysterious circumstances, an emotionally absent clergyman father, and a twin sister who is "different" (probably falling in the autism spectrum somewhere) for whom Briony (the main character) feels she is one hundred percent responsible. The local children are dying of an awful disease (called "swamp cough"), and it's up to Briony to figure out why and how to stop it. It's a combination fantasy/historical fiction/romance/mystery, my favorite kind of genre-blending fiction.

I loved it, but it was also hard for me to read in some ways, and I cried through much of the end. See, Briony has a problem (though she doesn't realize it for a long time). She suffers through some of the worst negative thinking about herself, and it warps her memory, her perception of the world around her, and nearly costs her her life. And though at first in the book I believed everything she said about herself (which makes her not a very likeable character), soon I began to recognize the lies that she was telling herself.

And some of it sounded eerily familiar. Believing that everything is my fault. Believing that I'm a horrible person. Believing that I've caused irreparable damage to the people I love. Hating myself or calling myself stupid. It sounds a lot like my life right now.

Part of me even had the guts to wonder if maybe I'm as wrong about myself as Briony was.

But then, I always end up countering that with the fact that Briony's problems were the fault of another character. My negative thoughts come from real live shortcomings and mistakes that I've actually made. Still, I've had moments, like this afternoon, where remembering the novel has been helpful in reminding myself that my dark emotions may have as little to do with reality as Briony's did.

A little ray of light from the fiction world.