Oh, how I love these final chapters! So much is finally explained and revealed. So much fun!
Also, I put together a sad little blooper reel, to demonstrate just how poorly I read my own stuff.
On to Book 5, as soon as I finish grading about 100 papers from my 10th graders. Sigh.
These are the chapters that fill me with such anxiety! It’s silly, but even though I KNOW what’s coming and how it’s going to play out, I STILL feel worry for everyone involved.
(Who knows–maybe in my sleep I rewrote the chapters and they have different endings now. I’m never quite sure . . .)
Mahrree opens her mouth and everything changes. Or doesn’t . . .
(This is also why I rarely open my mouth. I’ve learned the hard way from Mahrree.)
Only five more chapters to the end of this book.
The plot is starting to ramp up here, getting to the good/scary/cringey parts where you realize you’ve been running straight toward a wall and it’s not about to move . . .
When I wrote, and now read, these chapters I fluctuated between wishing I were so brave, and wincing because I knew what was coming. As a teacher, I point out “dramatic irony” to my students: when the audience knows something the characters don’t. It creates tension for the audience, but I hadn’t realized how much anxiety it could create for the writer!
A few times I had yelled at the laptop, “Don’t do it! You don’t know what’s coming!”
Then I thought, “Well, if it doesn’t happen, the plot goes nowhere. It HAS to happen. Write it!”
And then I thought, “Maybe it’s time to call a therapist. I’m yelling at my laptop far too often.”
And then I threw in some “reverse dramatic irony” (yeah, it’s a thing because I say it is) where my characters know something the audience doesn’t, so I feel it balances it out. (I never did call a therapist. I rather enjoy my psychosis.)
“Mal noticed it frequently took Administrators some time to realize that taxes—their income—actually came from real, everyday people. As senseless and bothersome as they usually were, the government really did need its citizenry.”
There will come a time when all will be corrected. But before that we’ve got a lot of insanity to wade through first.
We’ll make it.
It’ll be ok . . . eventually.
“I can handle anything temporarily. And it’s all temporary.”
Sorry, I kind of neglected to update here, as you can tell.
My favorite lines from all these chapters are one that grow more true every day:
This chapter was one of the hardest, yet most important ones I’ve ever written.
Perrin has to decide if he’s going to give up his life or fight for it. He’s stuck in a debate where the rational thing to do is the most irrational. Someone once asked me how I wrote it, and I said, “Easy. I write what I know.” Especially when I was pregnant with my girls, my mind was in a terrifying, dark place for months at a time.
I’ve written about the “rationality of suicide” in a blog back in 2014, after Robin Williams died: https://forestedgebooks.com/2014/08/15/suicide-is-rational-in-its-own-mind/
I caught some flak for that blog, too, from some who said I shouldn’t have written it, or shouldn’t express such ideas. I still don’t understand why not. It’s a debate many depressed people are trapped in, and it’s important to know.
Last year I taught at a residential treatment center for teenagers, many of whom had attempted suicide. The “rationality of suicide” was a common feeling, and therapy was geared to helping students discover the irrationality of it, especially suicide’s potential affects on those who are left behind.
That’s where the internal debate gets sticky. Depressed people often feel they are a burden on their loved ones, and if they removed themselves, the burden on their families would be removed.
Their death is a self-sacrifice for those they leave behind, so believes the irrational mind.
However, I personally know that’s not what happens. Survivors don’t move on. My grandfather killed himself when his first and only child–my mother–wasn’t yet a year old. She had no memory of him, but the weight of his untimely death at just age 28 dragged on her for her entire 87 years.
If you don’t choose to stay for yourself, consider staying for those you leave behind. Your death doesn’t fix anything, no matter what the rational-irrational argument in your head believes.
I had several readers contact me about the descriptions in my book series of the Pox and how it mirrors much of what we’re seeing with COVID-19. While I based my “plague” on a genetically-vulnerable version of small pox, and the Spanish Flu of 1918, much of what I learned while researching and writing applies to now.
1) Stop complaining. All of us are suffering—every last person. Universally, we’re universally disappointed. I’ve had students and friends tearfully tell me that dances, graduations, weddings, and events are being postponed or cancelled. Well, mine too. Money and hours I’ve personally put toward an event may never come to fruition, and here’s the thing—EVERYONE is suffering from extreme disappointment. And there’s always someone suffering far worse than you. So let’s get past it and start being useful.
Jaytsy hid her face in her hands, feeling betrayed by everything in the world. “It’s not right!” came her muffled cry. “It’s just not fair!”
(Book Four, The Falcon in the Barn)
2) Check on your neighbors and friends, especially the elderly, those receiving cancer treatments, or otherwise dealing with compromised immune systems. Many of us find we now have extra time. Perfect! Knock on the doors of your neighbors, take several steps back to keep a safe distance, then ask, “Do you need me to pick up your groceries and drop them on your front step for the next few weeks? Do you need your dog walked? My kids are home from school, they can help. I see you have chickens. Can we gather the eggs for you? It’s going to snow tomorrow—can we clear your sidewalks later?” Take care of each other. There’s never been a better time.
Perrin pointed at him. “Remember this moment when you first realized that the government can’t properly take care of people. In fact, that’s never been their responsibility. They’re supposed to keep our borders safe so that we can live as we wish. It’s our responsibility—yours and mine and Zenos’s and everyone else’s—to take care of each other.”
(Book 4, The Falcon in the Barn)
3) If you get sick, STAY HOME and keep everyone home with you. We know what to do: binge watch TV, surf the internet, or—best of all—read a book and get some sleep until you’re better. We know what to look for: fevers, aches and chills, coughing, and runny noses. You or your family come down with those symptoms, stay home. Do NOT run to the hospital. There’s nothing they will do for you because it’s a VIRUS. Antibiotics don’t work. Your body will fight it off in time. Treat the symptoms with over-the-counter drugs, and rest, rest, rest. So when do you run to the hospital? See #4.
About two hours later, after half the neighborhood consisting of Hycymum’s old sewing club had come to her Cottage, assured Mahrree they would prepare her mother for burial, and gave her wet kisses, Mahrree finally accepted a ride home.
(SPOILER: this outpouring of kisses proves to be a bad strategy for old ladies. Book Four: The Falcon in the Barn.)
4) IF you find yourself unable to breathe, that means pneumonia is settling in, and that’s when—and ONLY when—you need to go to the hospital. Pneumonia’s the real problem, which very, very few people develop. So for 98% of us who might get sick, don’t even bother the doctors or hospitals. You’ve weathered nasty colds before. Just deal with another one. You’ll be fine.
Mahrree remembered something. “Wait a minute—you’ve been here the entire time I’ve been ill? What about the fort?”
He looked into her eyes. “The fort can function without me for a while. I had some leave coming anyway. I belong by your side.”
Mahrree blinked. “Four days? You’ve never been away that long without being unconscious or seriously injured.”
He shrugged. “Shem kept an eye on things for me. So did Jon Offra. Whatever Thorne may have changed in my absence, I’ll just right again.”
(Book Four, The Falcon in the Barn)
5) When all of this is over, realize that the bigger problem will be coming. “Wait a minute,” I hear you saying, “the danger of illness is over—all is great again, right?” No, it won’t be. Look at all the businesses closing, the massive amounts of revenue being lost to canceled events, the shortages we’re facing because of fear. Generosity of companies now (providing free internet or paid leave of absence, etc.) means they’ll have to make up those losses later. The financial cushions companies have built up will dry up in a few weeks, maybe months. Unless they find ways to recoup those losses, their employees won’t be paid and companies may collapse.
No one’s saying it but I will: We’re looking at a future financial crisis, likely globally, that will take months, if not years, to recover from. This, I believe, is when the real trouble will begin. People will become greedy. They’ll want “compensation” of some sort for their suffering (although ALL of us have suffered). They won’t accept that suffering is a part of life, but will panic when they feel they’ve “lost” experiences, possessions, or people that won’t return. That’s when #6 will become vital.
“Once that numbness wears off, it will turn to pain. And no one seems to think that pain is part of the human condition; they seem to think they should be compensated for it.”
(Book 3, The Mansions of Idumea)
6) Realize that we are a resilient species, that physical and financial losses in one area always mean emerging opportunities in others. When this is all over, we’ll have choices to make: Will we a) graciously acknowledge that life is hard but we are creative and can cope, or will we b) crumple like spoiled children, demand someone to make everything better, and throw violent tantrums if they don’t? We’ll be a lot happier and more satisfied if we follow the first route rather than the second.
In my books I speculate about people looting and rioting to be compensated for their losses. The fact that they lived through the illness wasn’t “reward” enough. Greed and fear take over. In a way, that’s already happening. (I don’t know why people stock up on TP and water. I was stocking up on chocolate, and I made sure there was plenty left for others.)
Mahrree looked out the dark window. “They’re just like animals,” she decided. “No. Worse than animals. We may no longer debate but we’ve retained our ability to rationalize away logic and compassion. We can be so great, or be so terrible. It seems we’re content to just be terrible.”
(Book Four: The Falcon in the Barn)
There’s little we can do about the events already set in motion; we need to seclude ourselves, take care of others, and ride out the virus. It’s after COVID-19 has gone, when we try to make sense of what we have left, especially financially, that we need cool heads, calm hearts, and reminders that we’ve come through far worse.
“Yes, the world’s unfair, Nature’s unfair, because the Creator is allowing us the opportunity to resolve that, as part of our Test. We can choose to bring balance. We can choose to fix those inequalities . . .
“I believe the Creator intends for us to use our surplus to help those in need. He’s giving us an opportunity to do something good for others, not take a reward just for surviving.”
(Book Four, The Falcon in the Barn)
All of us had ancestors who survived multiple bouts of the Black Plague. (If they didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.) Our species has also survived massive volcanic explosions, world wars, tsunamis, and financial disasters. We’ll survive this, and quite well, too, with the right attitudes. Faith over fear, every time.
Help everyone around you remember that as well.
“We realize that we’re asking you to put a great deal of faith in us, but I promise—you’ll be glad you did.”
(Book Four, The Falcon in the Barn)
(And by the way, I have been blogging every week, just not here. If you’re at all interested in AP Lit, here’s what we’ve been doing this semester. This has taken a great deal of my time, and seeing as how our school will likely sometime follow suit and go online with all of our classes, it’ll take even more.)
Only two weeks into the new semester and I’ve created anxiety in my AP English Literature classes.* I’ve told them that I’m going to be ruthless, and I’m keeping my promise by deleting words, phrases, and even sentences from their essays. “Cut the fluff,” I tell them, “and give me substance.”
Delineating between the two, however, is the challenge. They send me emails of angst, unsure of what is marshmallow and what is meat. They confuse the two, and I delete and rewrite to show them what’s what. Some sweetly email me thanks for my editing. Others greet me in the morning with a crusty glare and the words, “I thought it was good, but apparently not . . .”
I love these kids. I love their anxiety, their frantic messages, their pleas for help, their apologies for mistakes, their worry that they won’t be ready for the AP Exam or college, which I tell them I’m prepping them for.
I love them because they’re demonstrating desire to improve. They want to be better, they want to do the right (write) thing, they want me to highlight their sentences and share them on the board with everyone else as a good example.
And when one of them says something insightful about a poem or a character, and I write it on the board and say, “Ooh, I hadn’t considered that,” they beam: they got it right. They surprised the teacher.
Already more than once I’ve been able to say honestly to the classes, “Oh, good job, guys–you’re getting it! You’re so smart, I love it.”
And oh, how they glow.
Then I grade their essays and show them how half their words could be deleted to make the paper twice as effective. And the glow fades a little, but I’m not worried.
It really is all about gardening: they dig deep and plant new ideas, and weed and water–and a fair amount of manure is involved–and they worry and fret that nothing may come from all of their effort.
But already I see budding that they don’t yet recognize–my cruel pruning has its purpose–and in a few months these teenagers will bloom. Oh, how they’ll bloom.
I love spring.
From Book 4, The Falcon in the Barn, available in paperback and Kindle.
*And why I haven’t had time to post here. There’s a lot of prep–I’m putting all my lessons on a website for when kids are absent or need reminders–and it’s a lot of grading. Whatever I make them do, I have to grade. (Who came up with this system?! It’s a punishing cycle for all of us.)
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