What I didn't know though that my work has revealed to me is that I'm not as naively optimistic a person at my core as I portray on the outside. I may act like I don't have a care in the world beyond hitting my next deadline, but my stories show something else entirely. They show people who have problems that force them to grow. They show people who learn important things about life only by loss. They show endings that are far more often bittersweet than happy.
Which is weird, if you ask anyone who knows me as a friend, because I never tend to act that way in real life. Maybe I sublimate that important stuff and it's only recourse is to come out in my work. Maybe. I don't know. My hour on the couch is up and I can't afford another one this week.
See you tomorrow.
That's wacky--'cause I think of myself as generally a jaded person on th' outside, but write stories about an overwhelmingly horrible world ruled by sociopaths, that's made subtly better by the actions of the protagonist or a group of them. Even my Earth Three story that I sent DC in '84 was about a native JLA 'resistance' forming and saving the world from the oppressive rule of the Crime Syndicate. Bad things happen, but good always gets a foothold. Guess I'm a closet optimist?
ReplyDeleteNow that's irony for you, Jim. We just switch roles in our fiction, it seems.
ReplyDelete