{"id":485,"date":"2019-06-11T20:18:15","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T01:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/?p=485"},"modified":"2019-06-11T20:23:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T01:23:22","slug":"if-its-not-fun-for-the-whole-psyche-then-whats-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/11\/if-its-not-fun-for-the-whole-psyche-then-whats-the-point\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;If it&#8217;s not fun for the whole psyche then what&#8217;s the point?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V0E1iX29rDU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Musing this evening on the perils of self-censorship. People I know have started to read <em>Ryswyck<\/em> and are telling me where they are in the story. They make brief comments or ask me questions: &#8220;I&#8217;ll be interested to see how you develop the concept of undefendedness,&#8221; said one, and, &#8220;Am I right that this takes place in a sort of hypothetical Britain-like country?&#8221; another buttonholed me at church to ask. &#8220;I&#8217;m two-thirds of the way through,&#8221; said a friend last night, and proceeded to tell me what was happening with each of the characters as if they were people we both knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is an ongoing source of quiet amazement for me. When I first thought up the story that would become this novel, I was convinced I couldn&#8217;t write it &#8212; and more than that, I was convinced I <em>shouldn&#8217;t<\/em>. A snippet from the first blog post about it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Spring has definitely sprung around here. There is a profusion of daffodils everywhere, we&#8217;ve cut pink-blooming boughs from the peach tree for the chapel, and the mint patch has begun to sprout. And, I&#8217;ve been making myself up stories again. I won&#8217;t write the one I&#8217;ve been dreaming out, because it is just too idtastic: it follows two characters through a co-ed military school that has a reputation for turning out brilliant officers but has the air of a mystery cult, and for good reason. There&#8217;s lots of courtesy and kindness, and also a great deal of sex and violence. This poses a problem, not for me, but for the Sir William &#8212; now Lord &#8212; Rees-Mogg in my head who prefers that we keep up our&nbsp;<em>standards<\/em>.<br><br>Still and all, I reflect that most of the stories I&#8217;ve made up over the years come from my id originally. I think I&#8217;m supposed to be ashamed of this, but I really just can&#8217;t manage it: it seems more to me like the id-origins of my stories are the grubby roots and the stories rise from them aboveground as plants.<br><br>But one does prefer the aboveground plant to be what&#8217;s noticed, I must say.<\/p><cite>(March 15, 2012)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately for the book, I only needed the slightest encouragement to write it anyway, which my friends were only too happy to provide. It&#8217;s one thing to know <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/How_to_Suppress_Women%27s_Writing\">Joanna Russ&#8217;s list of ways women&#8217;s writing is suppressed<\/a>: it&#8217;s quite another to realize that you&#8217;re doing most of the suppressing for them. And still another to stop doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s the miracle of art, though: a divine stubbornness that doesn&#8217;t feel miraculous in the least. A cussedness, a grubby stamping on the shovel&#8217;s shoulder, digging up that flowerbed. From a dreamed-out story outline in the rough, to a finished project one is proud of: that is worth all the slogging in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose the reverse benefit of such difficulty is that when you&#8217;ve finished the project, you can enjoy the result <em>and<\/em> stick it to The Man in one move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fun for the whole psyche, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Musing this evening on the perils of self-censorship. People I know have started to read Ryswyck and are telling me where they are in the story. They make brief comments or ask me questions: &#8220;I&#8217;ll be interested to see how you develop the concept of undefendedness,&#8221; said one, and, &#8220;Am I right that this takes<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/11\/if-its-not-fun-for-the-whole-psyche-then-whats-the-point\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More&nbsp;<i class=\"fas fa-long-arrow-alt-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p><!-- entry-read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[41,49,20,53,27],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/payFy4-7P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ldinmanbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}