Wednesday
So I borrowed The Testaments by Margaret Atwood from the Naval Base Guam library a couple of weeks ago. I was so happy to find the library! Anyway, I started reading it but realized I’d forgotten details of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’d read it in the very early 1990s. Maybe actually 1990, and though I remembered the gist (aided by watching the TV series), I felt the sequel would be more meaningful if I reread the book that came before it.
Thoughts on Dystopian Fiction
I figured reading about a really dystopian fictional American society would make me feel better about real life. I’m not sure if that was actually the right move, but I’m “enjoying” (if that’s the right word) The Handmaid’s Tale once again.
Reading this book makes me realize how fragile our civic freedoms are in our modern world, how quickly everything could devolve into something chilling and dystopian. The Handmaid’s Tale is the story of a modern woman (written in the 1980s) forced into loveless sex and childbirth as a kind of slave/brood animal that feels more 2000 BC than late 20th century. The BACKSTORY is the overthrow of the democratic republic and the establishment, in its place, of a restrictive theocracy based on Judeo-Christian beliefs.
The losers are both men and women, but of course it’s the women who have to wear the long skirts and head coverings.
It’s also a hierarchical society with some people in the upper caste and many in the lower. There is both gender and income inequality to the nth degree. It’s not a pretty world. It’s brutal.
Margaret Atwood has said that the horrific things that happen in her fictional Gilead have ACTUAL precedents in real life. She has gathered books that were written by others espousing some of these ideas. She has clippings of similar events to the ones that happen in her story. The story is all based on things that have already happened —and so we know they COULD HAPPEN AGAIN.
I didn’t even research it. There was no Internet then, you couldn’t just go online and put in a topic, so this is just stuff I came across when reading newspapers and magazines. I cut things out and put them in a box. I already knew what I was writing about and this was backup. In case someone said, ‘How did you make this up?’ As I’ve said about a million times, I didn’t make it up. This is the proof – everything in these boxes.”
I’m not sure reading these books right now is going to help me sleep at night. The thought that some people IRL might actually find this sort of government appealing horrifies me . . . but I know this is actually true. Radical theocratic governments do exist in real life. People believe they are doing what they do for the right reasons: for God, for country, for righteousness. If some people are hurt, well, it’s worth it for the greater good.
The problem with going down this road is you often end up in a very different place from what you imagined. And you’ve pulled everyone else into it with you. Not heaven, but hell.
Live and let live. Play by the rules. If someone isn’t hurting you, mind your own business. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
These are pretty good principles for an enlightened world. I don’t want to fall back into darkness. Let’s not make dystopian fiction like this, like Hunger Games, like Fahrenheit 451 and a host of others, a reality.
Writing Update (While I Still Can)
In Gilead, women aren’t allowed to read or write.
I don’t live in Gilead, so I did actually sit at my desk and open my Strawberry Moon manuscript and got into it again. As usual, I had to fiddle around with the first chapter. It’s amazing how I think I have it right and then I let it sit and when I go back, meh. There’s always some polishing to do.
That reminds me I will need to give all of it several passes before I do anything with it like send it out on submission or publish it myself or who knows what. Maybe I’ll read it aloud on video. Or make it an audio book.
Luckily, since I’m now in my new, two-year publishing/selling hiatus, I can set this one aside while I work on something else and go back to it with fresh eyes for a final edit.
I think this is going to work.
Maybe Starting Over With Website
This is just a little update that I’m seriously considering moving ShelleyBurbank.com to a WordPress hosted site that will look and feel very much the same, but I’ll lose my previous posts. It’s not worth it to me to transfer everything over.
Some words are meant to last forever. Other words are just for the moment. I’ll have my short fictions and some of my blog posts saved. I’ve already “unpublished” some of my earlier posts from years past because Google found some broken whatevers. Don’t ask me. I don’t get it.
This site is about six years old. I built it myself, and I’m not techy. It was a good (if frustrating) experience, but I want something that will update itself and work the way it’s supposed to every time.