Writing as Disobedience
Janis Susan May is proud to be a seventh-generation Texan, one of the founders of RWA and the wife of a Naval Captain recently returned from Iraq. She is currently writing both mystery and romance and has two novels released this year - ECHOES IN THE DARK and SECOND CHANCE.
I don’t do much blogging. Blog. The word sounds like it describes an unsocial act for which you should apologize for after doing it.
However, it is an honor to be invited to blog on thelittleblogofmurder.com and I’m delighted to be here. When we discussed my participation, Jeff said any subject was okay, just don’t mention politics or sex.
Bad move, for pretty much every time I’m told I can’t do something, I have to. So, brace yourselves.
Politics.
Sex.
Ah, that feels better. Perhaps you regard that as something of a wimpy example in disobedience, but I don’t think so. I think that may be a part of why I – and others - write mysteries. Not politics or sex, though they often figure in mysteries, but in safe disobedience.
In writing I get the forbidden thrill of plotting a murder – of figuring out where and how and who is to be killed. I get the thrill of doing it – of watching their death throes and final expiration. I have done it. I have killed someone. I have laughed at laws and societal mores and fulfilled some of my baser desires.
Kill a single person? Why not several? Why, if we write thrillers, not endanger the entire world? Nothing forbidden is forbidden us.
But, being the basically kind, decent and law-abiding person that I am, I know that such acts are not only illegal, but immoral, and not to be allowed in a decent society. So, by way of expiation, I become the sleuth, tracking myself down, exposing every flaw, every motive. Eventually I-the-sleuth triumph, exposing and capturing me-the-killer, and the balance of society is restored.
It’s cheaper than psychiatry.
Before the purists jump in, allow me to say that neither killer nor sleuth is anything like me, but as their writer I get to experience what they experience, feel what they feel – as do the readers – and from the safety of our chairs we all have the vicarious thrill of lawlessness and the relief of justice triumphant.
Perhaps that is the key to the enduring popularity of mysteries – the assurance that, in this story at least, everything will come out right, that balance and decency will be restored, that justice will reign in the end. In this unsettled world it’s nice to have something to count on.
