Fueling your need for drama

Ms.Write · Feb 17, 2007

Personally I love drama but I find the more I have in my life, the less energy and focus I have for novel writing.

Drama can take the form of helping others who are going through crises, or switching careers, or even going on blind dates. There is uncertainty and excitement.

Would you say that as a rule serious writers need routine, settled lives in order to keep their focus?

MicheleLee · Feb 17, 2007

What I dislike, is people who don't give a darn about me until they are in a crisis, then just as I'm having a real good useful day they have to come dump on me about some horrible thing that happened that I don't get and that quite often, they are lying about to get some sympathy. Not that they are completely lying, but they always do more than minimize their role in the crisis, it just "comes from nowhere".

Jamesaritchie · Feb 17, 2007

routine

Ms.Write said:
Would you say that as a rule serious writers need routine, settled lives in order to keep their focus?

No. Some of the best writing the world has ever seen came from writers who were in the most dramatic situations imaginable during the writing.

Having said this, I got most of the drama out of my system while still relatively young, and the routine, settled life suits me nicely now.

PeeDee · Feb 17, 2007

Jamesaritchie said:
Having said this, I got most of the drama out of my system while still relatively young, and the routine, settled life suits me nicely now.

Same here. Actually, I never had much drama to begin with. And I have a low tolerance for drama and angst, I'm afraid. My wife works with a bunch of lunatic women who are having more issues than a soap opera, and it mostly just irritates me, when I can be bothered to care at all.

My answer to drama/angst problems is usually "Why don't you do something about it?" followed by my wandering back off into my own head, which is blissfully drama free.

Chumplet · Feb 17, 2007

I agree with PeeDee. People tell me their insurmountable problems, and I have no idea what to say that will make them feel better. Usually I just put my foot in my mouth, anyway. I've learned to shut the hell up.

My problems are nothing compared to what some people go through. I'm healthy, my kids are smart and they like me, my husband isn't fooling around on me, I've had no disfiguring accidents, and I have a roof over my head. The place is a mess, the laundry doesn't always get done, my mother in law hates me... but I just don't care.

However, I do store these horrific experiences away for use in my writing.

PeeDee · Feb 17, 2007

If they were really horrific, I'd store them away too when people tell me them. But so often, it's just the pettiest crap....

victoriastrauss · Feb 17, 2007

I have friends with unsettled lives. That's as close as I like to come.

- Victoria

PeeDee · Feb 17, 2007

I let Doctor Gregory House supply me with all my drama needs.

lfraser · Feb 17, 2007

I reckon I can either be living drama or writing it. And I'm all drama-queened out at this point in my life.

Now I can look back fondly on it all and use it for inspiration.

Chumplet · Feb 17, 2007

Sometimes I wonder if all the drama is real or imagined.

lfraser · Feb 17, 2007

Mostly the latter, I suspect.

Akuma · Feb 17, 2007

PeeDee said:
I let Doctor Gregory House supply me with all my drama needs.

It's not Lupus.

PeeDee · Feb 17, 2007

If you need drama in your life, then hang out here when a spammer/moron comes around, or just go read the PublishAmerica forums. Plenty of drama there.

bunnygirl · Feb 17, 2007

I've found my tolerance for life drama has dropped like a rock since my 20s. I run from it, screaming, these days. (Okay, not that bad, but I really do what I can to avoid it.)

Drama is for my fiction-- both what I read and what I write. The real life kind exhausts me and never really gets me anywhere. Besides, certain amounts of real life drama will happen to us all if we live long enough. Why add more on purpose, unless it's in prose and happening to someone who only exists in my head?

IrishScribbler · Feb 17, 2007

I find too much drama to be emotionally draining, but as others have said, drama can be great for writing! After all, conflict builds plots!

Lately my life has been particularly dramatic, and I've found it does affect my desire and energy to write.

I think I'll do some yoga.

blacbird · Feb 17, 2007

Above all, be sure you can distinguish drama from melodrama. Lots of people I know can't.

caw

scarletpeaches · Feb 18, 2007

Jamesaritchie said:
No. Some of the best writing the world has ever seen came from writers who were in the most dramatic situations imaginable during the writing.

Having said this, I got most of the drama out of my system while still relatively young, and the routine, settled life suits me nicely now.

A case in point: Irene Nemirovsky.

steveg144 · Feb 18, 2007

Imelda said:
No way. Unsettled lives are all novel fodder. It just means you have less time to write because you're trying to live.

I would modify this to say that having LIVED THROUGH unsettled lives is novel fodder. Easy to write about that unsettled life once one has lived through it and arrived at calm shoals; not so easy to write about it when you're trying to survive that unsettled live.

pdr · Feb 18, 2007

Definitely...

a settled life helps your writing. Not a dull one, but one where your energy can go into creating, not into survival.

aruna · Feb 18, 2007

For me, it has been drama from begining to end. It just doesn't stop; I wish it would. I'm tired of tightrope walking. I'm a quiet person and I just long for a settled life. I had my adventures when I was young; they were quite enough. And I don't imagine today's dramas: a husband wirh Parkinson's Disease and depression, a conniving, manipulative and greedy step-son cheating him out of his inheritance, a mother in a distant continent falling out of bed after a sedative overdose, and a hundred other things. I don't need soap operas - I've got one unfolding in my own backyard. Real life is a challenge. My role is to keep steady through it all - and keep writing. Writing is one of my anchors.

Thank goodness, my own two kids are now settled and a source of help rather than conflict.

Azure Skye · Feb 18, 2007

I like to watch drama from a distance but try to avoid it at all costs. You can learn a lot about people by watching the drama unfold.

PeeDee · Feb 18, 2007

Mostly, I learn that people are Very Silly Indeed. Frequently, I learn that people would rather talk about their problems loudly then think about them and do something about it.

(I'm generalizing a bit. But only a bit.)

Azure Skye · Feb 18, 2007

PeeDee said:
Mostly, I learn that people are Very Silly Indeed. Frequently, I learn that people would rather talk about their problems loudly then think about them and do something about it.

(I'm generalizing a bit. But only a bit.)

Yeah, very silly, especially when it's Internet drama. Now that is worth the price of admission alone! :tongue

Summonere · Feb 18, 2007

My life is so boring it would kill an ordinary man.

All of my drama derives from madness.

I am preserved in the glinting amber of the routine.

jodiodi · Feb 18, 2007

Azura Skye said:
Yeah, very silly, especially when it's Internet drama. Now that is worth the price of admission alone!

That is SO true.

I was involved with a little writer's group through a friend of mine who is a writer herself. She met a woman who seemed (on the surface) great and fun to talk with about writing and such, and who had an online writer's group. My friend joined, talked me into joining and eventually several of our friends joined.

The group owner (let's call her ... Mary) was ok for a bit, then started dropping hints about some other ex-group member, (we'll call her ... Penny), and talking about how she was being stalked by Penny. She kept warning us not to talk to Penny because Penny would somehow 'cause trouble'.

Eventually, I found that Mary is just plain crazy. Everything is a MAJOR drama. EVERYONE is against her, keeping her out of the loop, going behind her back ... I finally just quit talking to her after she made this long dramatic pronouncement about her pitiful life and how she always tried to do everything, yadda, yadda, yadda.

It seems internet drama is just too high-school; no, maybe grade-school girl drama. I mean, really, what can anyone really do to you? Yet Mary lived in mortal fear of everything.

It has exhausted me to no end.

My life has enough significant drama (health, work, my writing) without worrying about some little snot-nosed chick online who is afraid someone might criticize her thinly-disguised ode to Jack Bauer.

End of my dramatic rant.

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