Comments on: The Useful Anxiety of Narrative Thinking http://loveandzombies.co.uk/2012/07/the-useful-anxiety-of-narrative-thinking/ Kate Harrad: selling her soul to go to the ball. Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:50:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: The Goldfish http://loveandzombies.co.uk/2012/07/the-useful-anxiety-of-narrative-thinking/#comment-17040 The Goldfish Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:04:07 +0000 http://loveandzombies.co.uk/?p=1106#comment-17040 It also helps to write the stories. Writing a story about hapless kidnappers who kidnap an unarmed writer, mistaking her for a wealthy heiress but are foiled by her fast-wits and clever science fiction obsessed children, might lay that one to rest. I think writing generally helps to protect us from the worst excesses of narrative nonsense (there's a technical term for this but it escapes me), because we get to exert power over stories all the time. Then again, we must be prone to constant story-telling in order to want to write in the first place. "I know I need to avoid very realistic stories about bad things happening to children" I've had phases of needing to avoid other things, but that's been a constant, always, even in my late teens when I didn't really have any children in my life. It's part of why I feel I wouldn't want children even if I could - given the strength of that now, I worry that as a mother I would catch an episode of <i>Silent Witness</i> and be forced to place my kids in an underground bunker until they turned eighteen. Or twenty-five. Or forty. Oh and it was a great metaphor. It also helps to write the stories. Writing a story about hapless kidnappers who kidnap an unarmed writer, mistaking her for a wealthy heiress but are foiled by her fast-wits and clever science fiction obsessed children, might lay that one to rest.

I think writing generally helps to protect us from the worst excesses of narrative nonsense (there’s a technical term for this but it escapes me), because we get to exert power over stories all the time. Then again, we must be prone to constant story-telling in order to want to write in the first place.

“I know I need to avoid very realistic stories about bad things happening to children”

I’ve had phases of needing to avoid other things, but that’s been a constant, always, even in my late teens when I didn’t really have any children in my life. It’s part of why I feel I wouldn’t want children even if I could – given the strength of that now, I worry that as a mother I would catch an episode of Silent Witness and be forced to place my kids in an underground bunker until they turned eighteen. Or twenty-five. Or forty.

Oh and it was a great metaphor.

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