Foreshadowing Reality

I bet Suzanne Collins didn’t know she was an oracle. That when she wrote her Hunger Games trilogy, she foretold a revolution that no political expert in the world saw coming.

While watching the Arab revolution unfold, I was suddenly struck by how similar the circumstances of the two revolutions were. I found five eerie parallels.

Revolution was “impossible”
In the Hunger Games trilogy, the Capitol of Panem ruled all, controlling everything about the 12 outlying Districts, including supplies of food and medicine. While the Capitol glutted itself, people starved in the Districts. The Capitol considered the people of the Districts too weak and too cowed to ever rebel.

An Arab democratic revolution seemed equally impossible. The regimes were too powerful. The societies were too oppressed. There was no freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble. The people had been starved and terrified into unwavering compliance. The youth had known no other way of life and would therefore not even think of demanding a change.

Unbearable conditions
In Panem, the chasm between the rich in the Capitol and the poor in the Districts was vivid. Every day, every year, the poor were forced to watch the rich grow richer. The rich grew ever more lavish and wasteful, while the poor sunk deeper into the depths. The most glaring reminder of their servitude to the Capitol was the Hunger Games, where a boy and girl from each District was sent to the Capitol to fight to the death—a sacrifice as punishment for a past rebellion.

In the Arab autocracies, the money stayed in the hands of the dictator and his family and cronies. They grew incredibly wealthy while many of their citizens struggled to put food on their table. Instead of focusing on bringing down rampant unemployment and bringing up the standard of living for the entire country, the ruling class focused on lining their pockets at the expense of their people. While no literal Hunger Games existed, many people sacrificed their dreams and their children’s dreams in order to survive, and many disappeared at the hands of brutal secret police.

The power of media
One key to the Capitol’s continued hold over its people was that they controlled all communications. The Districts saw only what the Capitol wanted them to see, and the citizens in the Capitol never ever saw what really went on in the Districts. Katniss Everdeen’s participation in, and subsequent winning of, the Hunger Games gave her a mass platform from which the message of revolution could spread. When the rebels managed to hijack the communications network, they were able to show the truth to the Capitol citizens, rather than the lies the government told.

Most of the Arab autocracies had tightly controlled state-run television and radio, and also limited cell phone and Internet access when it suited them. Technology eventually broke through the blackout, though, as the youth used social media to find each other, form protest groups, and get the word out to the world about what was truly happening in the protests.

Going viral
In the Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss’ mockingjay symbol became the symbol of the revolution. All the Districts, not just her own, adopted it, using it as a secret sign of loyalty to each other and of defiance to the government. Katiniss did not initially wear it as a symbol of anything except her home, but the mockingjay spread virally to become the symbol to bind the rebels together.

Through the phenomenon of “going viral” allowed by the Internet, the protests that followed Tunisia’s revolution used many of the same symbols, particularly the same chants and musical anthems. The information on how to stage successful protests and avoid the police also went viral, and was adapted for use in many of the other Arab countries.

Unwitting catalysts
Katniss Everdeen never wanted to be a revolutionary. She just wanted to survive the Hunger Games and go home. In the end, though, her desperate act of survival sparked a revolution that led to the fall of the Capitol.

Mohamed Bouazizi never intended to start a revolution, either. The Tunisian street vendor simply could not cope with his life and its many frustrations and humiliations anymore. In a desperate act that was his only means of being heard, he set himself on fire—and his death ignited his countrymen.

Perhaps many revolutions follow these patterns—I am no expert. All I know is that Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy was a brilliant, searing look at what violence does to children and humanity. It also turned out to be a pretty prescient blueprint of a revolution yet to come.

Change Is Good, Right?

First off, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to my fellow Irishmen and to all those who wish you were!

Second, my Act Like a Writer workshop ended last week, and I have had some time to think about the things we’ve learned. One of the biggest things about the workshop was facing your fears. Honestly, if you step back, what’s the worst that can happen if you flub a pitch or a panel or a reading? Dreadful embarrassment, most likely, and that has never killed anyone.

Even though our logical mind tells us this, fear is not logical. We spoke about our fears in the workshop, and they were familiar. Fear of babbling or stammering or not being able to speak at all. Fear of fainting or throwing up or falling down. Fear of embarrassment or insulting someone or provoking a confrontation. Fear of looking like a fool.

All of the above are very real fears. I share all of them, as do most people. They all stem from that little voice instructor Keith Strunk talked about, the one that whispers to us, “You’re nothing special. You’re not good enough. Just who do you think you are? Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say?”

I’ve heard that voice. We all have. But those fears, prompted by that voice, are not the fears that paralyze me. Face it, you don’t reach (mumble, mumble) years of age without having actually had many of those fears manifest themselves. Although those incidents were deeply uncomfortable, I’m still here. They didn’t kill me.

So what is scaring me so much?

You see, I also hear another voice, different than the “you’re not good enough” voice. (Did I mention that, as a writer, you are allowed to have voices in your head and still be called sane?) This other voice whispers, “But if you succeed, everything will change.”

Ahh, there’s the rub. Change and I, not good friends. I like my routines. Having a baby has made me a lot more flexible, but still…I like my life. If I get an agent, and we sell the book, everything changes. I go from being able to stop writing to play with my daughter to having to tell her occasionally that Mommy can’t play with her now. I go from being able to schedule my life around my family to adding in deadlines and crises (in business there are always crises—I remember that distinctly).

More than that, I go from being able write in comfortable anonymity to having to be public author persona. To have readings and signings and be on panels and do interviews, and all of those things that are so far out of my comfort zone that I can’t even see them from my spot here on the couch. What sort of an idiot deliberately places herself in situations she equates with being in front of a firing squad?

Apparently…me.

Because I want this. I want my work out there. And this is what it takes to be an author in today’s world.

I can do it, too. Act Like A Writer showed me that not only could I do it, I could do it well. And if I continue to work hard at it, someday it may even be fun.

Into the Woods

The fairy tale has always exerted a powerful pull on our psyche. That’s why re-envisioned fairy tales by such writers as Robin McKinley, Mercedes Lackey, and Gregory Frost in his Fitcher’s Brides are popular. One of my favorite musicals is Into the Woods. The writing is fantastic and the cast of the 1991 television performance (including Joanna Gleason, who won the 1988 Best Actress Tony for it) was spectacular.

A large part of the charm of the show (at least for a writer) is how Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine wove together several well-known fairy tales into a single narrative. A Baker and his Wife go on a quest to lift a curse from their family, tying together the tales of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. One by one, the characters go into the woods, that archetypal metaphor for the darkest parts of human nature. There their paths cross as they face the evil in the world and the worst in themselves.

The tales are woven seamlessly, the lyrics are witty, and the emotion is true. It is fun and funny while being true to human nature. It is no wonder that it won Best Score and Best Book Tonys in 1988. But also, as I writer, I enjoy premise of the (much darker) second act. This is a look at what happens after “happily ever after.”

**SPOILER ALERT**

What happens is that happily ever after isn’t what any of them expected, and even though they had achieved their wish, they now wish for something else. When an angry giant attacks the land, they all get thrown together to try to stop it.

Another twist that appeals to my writerly heart is when the characters decide to sacrifice the Narrator to the giant. They reason that since he is the only person “outside” the story, he is expendable. He argues that he is the only one who knows how the story ends, so he is essential. When he dies, the characters are left on their own to make decisions for the first time in their lives.

The musical is a study in the law of unintended consequences. The pursuit and attainment of seemingly harmless wishes (to go to the ball, to have money for food, to have a child) have disastrous repercussions not just for the wisher but for those around them. As the cast sings in the show – “Wishes come true, not free.”

One of these unintended consequences is the lessons we teach our children by what we say and do. Anyone with children in their lives knows all too well that nothing escapes children’s sharp eyes and ears. They see and emulate everything. The writers of Into the Woods (a show definitely NOT for young children) are acutely aware of the powerful effect our actions and our stories have on our children. Stories are magical, a spell woven with words rather than potions. One of the final admonishments of the show is a piece of advice every writer should take to heart: “Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell. Children will listen.”

What fairy tales still haunt your dreams? And what lessons did you learn from them?

Guest Blog at Backspace’s STET!

Hello all! Today I’m guest blogging at Backspace’s awesome blog STET! So come on over and visit! Enjoy!

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