That's my jam.
I'm so drawn to the darker side of human nature. Not necessarily murder or insanity, just the things that lurk just under the skin. The lies we tell ourselves and others, the face we show the public and the truth that lies underneath. Social media is all lies. We show our best selves. I'm 45 and past the age of giving a shit. I'm into fibre arts, in particular crochet. I post my work on instagram. I'm not good at photography. I just point and click with my phone, which tales a decent photo if I hold it still. I have a mannequin that I drape my finished items on, but I don't spend too long on it. I very rarely use filters. Other people will knit a woolly hat and post a picture of it on a sheet of snowy white paper with a white light shone just so on it, with a lovely hot beverage in a quirky china cup to the side and some glass beads or petals artfully scattered around. Every picture is a variation of this exact scene. It's like Stepford Wives by social media. It must take so long to set up, and we know you don't live like that. There's a kind of shrill edge of neediness behind it that annoys but really interests me. It feels quite dark. I want to explore that darkness.
One of the first things I learned when studying literature was we are supposed to relate to and like our protagonist so we will root for them through their journey. I'm not so sure I agree with this. We can relate to someone with entirely liking them, and we can root for dislikeable people. I love books about socially maladjusted people (recommendations welcome!) like Engleby by Sebastian Faulks and The Collector by John Fowles. I particularly like books about not very likeable women, although I don't know many. I absolutely adored Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. She managed to create a character who is brittle and unpleasant and out of step with the people around her, but her vulnerability and loneliness make her someone you want to protect and root for. Parts of that book devastated me with how close to reality they crept and I found it difficult to read in places (her suicide attempt). It was so raw and real but still it managed to be a warm, funny book about a really dark subject. I loved that she's Scottish too.
I recently read Pine by Francine Toon, another dark book about an anguished Scottish girl. It took the gothic realism into actual magical territory but not too far. Just some light witchcraft. The book was a bit of a mess and nothing actually happened until the last twenty pages, but I loved the atmosphere of something shadowy and unsafe in a highland village. Not really a supernatural threat, but a threat to the girl and she didn't know where it was coming from.
I want to write about a slightly dislikeable woman who keeps people at arms length. I want write from her perspective, her absolute unvarnished truth in her voice. I want to take the darkness in all of us, my own weirdness, our fears, our secrets, and expand them and explore them and write them large and in your face to make you the reader uncomfortable because you feel and do those things too and you're ashamed and embarrassed about it. I don't want it to have a happy ending. She's a weirdo and she knows it but she's also a normal person just like you and me. Scratch the surface and we're all weird as shit.
