Double D's

I drove my Mom to work this morning so that I could have the car to take my little brother to Cowboys & Aliens (I'm starting to get suspicious of the title though - why the "&" and not a "versus"? - more violence on the screen, please). During the ride, I realized that we've gone from talking about the details of the accident to giving voice to the possible consequences. These were somehow easier to talk about - I'd rather not think about why this is at the moment, but I do understand now that I'm here to talk and listen - that could be useless in the long run, but that's what I got.

I also bought a ticket to Las Vegas last night for August 15th. The plan is to go ahead and keep my travel plans with the Brazilian girl. I had told her about the family emergency and the possibility of not getting to go; she was understanding and wasn't pushy, although she said that she couldn't do the trip on her own. There are doubts about this endeavor of course, but I went ahead and bought the ticket before prices skyrocketed. I hope that being home for two weeks will be enough, that I won't be leaving at a crucial time when I could be here to talk and listen, talk and listen and repeat.

My writing mentor returned my work this month with feedback - I need to raise the stakes in my stories because my characters need more to lose. I have to make their desires clear and see what difficult decisions arise (the double D's of the 3-D theory, where the third D is drama) - by working on this, I aim to make my characters more vulnerable, more human to invite the reader in.

Storytelling is a Mobius strip. Take a flat strip of paper - on one side you have fiction and on the other side you got reality. There is no way to get from one side to the other without crossing an edge of that paper. A Mobius strip twists this paper into a ring so that you can travel along both sides without ever crossing an edge. Storytelling accomplishes this twist... are you following?

What I'm saying is that maybe I can I teach my characters about loss so that they can have more to lose. I'm sick of being limited to reality when contemplating cancer, the accident, and not drinking. And my characters - maybe they can teach me about making difficult decisions. And when I unfurl that Mobius strip of storytelling, I'll already have crossed plenty of edges.

That's all for now because there's only so much time to talk and listen, to read and write, to do that twist. Plus, I get to take my little brother to a movie today, and that's just fine.