ErasmusHobart.com

Human beings are, as many a thinker has observed, creatures of habit. After settling into a way of thinking they cling to it as tenaciously as a frightened koala to a tree. Authors, however, have a particular peculiarity in this regard. A mind geared to the plotting of novels will find, even when not bathed in the cool glow of the monitor, it is inclined to view life as if it had a point. Where the non-writer will take life as it comes, tinting their outlook with rosy optimism or cold pessimism, the writer will look for the story. Inconsequential actions will gain almost superstitious significance, particularly if they can be viewed as details ‘laid in’ for later on in the narrative.

Take my present circumstances, for example. Three years ago I used to run a small shareware business. After a brief halcyon age it was declining, becoming more a cause of irritable bowels than celebration. Then, out of the blue, my wife was made redundant. Whilst we could stagger on one and a bit incomes, we couldn’t cope with less. Reluctantly, I wound down the shareware and looked for work. Within a month I had secured a job and, within a day, my wife also secured a job. What was interesting was that the two jobs, whilst both about thirty miles from home, were within half a mile of each other. Most people would have seen this as convenient, I saw it as part of the narrative.

Fast-forward to the present and the economic downturn means that my wife has again succumbed to redundancy. Academically, I know us to be safe enough. My salary can cover our outgoings, even if it does mean a reduction in frivolous living, but the writer in me is thinking that narratively speaking things have to get worse before they get better.

Because, if you consider it, that’s how it always happens. You watch the latest blockbuster and you’ll see the hero progressively become more battered, every encounter giving him another injury that will miraculously fail to scar him in the sequel. And just when the odds seem to be insurmountable, just when you think the writers have to kill him off to keep their credibility, that’s when he comes through. It’s a classic formula because it sells. After all, if the hero merely sprained his ankle in the opening scene then proceed to soldier on and clear the building of terrorists with no more than the occasional wince it wouldn’t be worth the price of the ticket.

And it’s not just the blockbusters. Can you imagine a film about a man struggling to believe in his own value would sell if the angel came to save him when he just whined to a colleague at the bank? Would you empathise with the well-fed middle class child who won a tour of a chocolate factory? In writing, adversity is a necessary precursor to success. Applying this to real life may not seem particularly rational, but it’s built into the DNA of writers around the world.

Fortunately, in the longer term this lends writers more optimism than most people. Fortunately for everybody, that is, because how many books would be published, how many films made if writers couldn’t cope with years of rejection by believing in the imperative of a happy ending? The same genetics that make us believe life is never so dull as to contain no scenes of mild peril also gives us faith in our winning through in the final chapter. After all, only Terry Gilliam seems to be able to sell films where the hero is, in the end, crushed by the system. And that clearly can’t come from belief when it’s from a man who, after facing disaster after disaster trying to tell the story of Don Juan not only makes a best-selling documentary about the experience but goes back to finish the film a few years later.

In the short term perhaps the best way to cope with difficult times is to let go and become one of the audience. If we don’t worry about the price of the popcorn and stop trying to guess the ending we might just consider that whether scripted or entirely random, life is always original. And if we cling onto that then maybe, just maybe, we can believe the plot is going to turn in our favour before the end of the current scene.