Surviving the chaos.

 The Jewish New Year began on Monday evening and marks the beginning of a period of introspection, personal accounting, and actions to address the wrongdoings of the past year, before culminating in a day of fasting and confession on Yom Kippur. Regardless of one's beliefs in the existence of a deity, it's a meaningful exercise to remind us to assess our successes and failures over the past year and try to recalibrate for the next year. In many ways, September seems better suited to this exercise than January, which in our culture is usually the time to make new resolutions to improve our lives. 

The past year has been one of increasing chaos and disaster in politics, nature, international relations, and technology. It feels as if the world has come loose from its bearings and is spinning ever faster out of control. I'm not going to go into detail; I know we are all feeling that sense of impending doom and struggling to keep a toehold in normalcy. It makes it difficult to stay focussed on mundane tasks, like writing the next chapter of my book or indeed remembering to write my post for Type M for Murder. I apologize once again for the long lapses! 

One suggestion for retaining our sanity is to avoid reading the news and social media. Nowadays, AI is turning truth upside down so that nothing is trustworthy any more. There are forces, whether merely malicious or deeply malignant, that are constantly trying to promote lies to mislead us. The effort to fact-check and double-check is exhausting, and as AI gurus get cleverer, we still might get sucked into some lie or scam no matter how savvy we try to be.

Decades ago, Maslow developed a theory about the hierarchy of needs that motivate our behaviour, which is still a useful lens through which to see today's struggles. Basic needs like food, water, and sleep, all essential to our individual survival, come first, and only once we have satisfied those, can we move on to safety and security, then to the need for love and belonging. More existential aspirations like self-fulfillment, betterment, and humanitarianism only become important when those more basic needs are taken care of. 

Maslow would not have conceived of a world where almost everyone can be exposed to the violence and threats occurring anywhere in world, not just in our immediate neighbourhood, through constant news feeds and social media eager to get our attention. He would not have imagined the misinformation amplifying, even directing, our perceptions. We feel a level of anxiety and insecurity greater than the reality. This is not to say that climate change is not threatening the existence of the planet and malignant leaders are not destabilizing the world order. In fact, faced with those realities, it's easy to feel powerless to make a difference.

But turning away from the screaming headlines and social media gives us respite from that pervasive, existential anxiety. So, instead of scrolling, I will spend part of my day doing peaceful things. Taking my dogs for a walk in the woods with friends, reading a good book, meeting friends for lunch... It's not just "head in the sand"; it's a survival tactic. Somewhere in there, I will find time to write another scene of my WIP. Small victories that I can control, when I can control so little on the world stage.

On the other hand, however, I think it's important not to ignore the crisis we are in. We can't all turn inward to take care only of ourselves, and let the world burn. So I will try to find small steps that I can personally control. I will vote thoughtfully. I will donate to reputable agencies whose mandate is to take care, be it food banks and shelters in my own city or international relief agencies. I will try to make environmentally wise choices. And so on.

And I will always try to write with compassion and understanding for people who are struggling. Murder is not just about thrills or chills or laughter. It's about pain and fear and desperation. The world needs more compassion.

Moving up the Hierarchy

Last night I was watching Cupcake Wars. The four bakers were competing for $10,000. The winner would also have her fabulous cupcake creations served at the star-studded celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the iconic TV sitcom, I Love Lucy. I was watching this show because I love shows about food. But I was thinking now and then that I should be writing my post for today. But it has been a labor-intensive week, so I stayed there on the sofa with Harry, my cat, sleeping, belly up and paws in the air, beside me.

This week I finally finished the synopsis of a proposed book and sent it off to my editor. Actually, I sent a short version and a very long (34 pages) version. I had spent so much time on that 34 page version that I couldn't not send it along. When I was plotting this book, I used script-writing techniques to craft my scenes. Unlike when I simply outline, my characters had a great deal to say. They started talking to each other. Knowing I should type instead of telling them to shut up, I included those snatches of conversation in my synopsis. My characters were talking about what they needed. They were explaining how what they had done was related to what they wanted. In those snatches of conversations --either stated or implied -- they were telling me about the internal needs that motivated them.

My cat, Harry, had his bedtime snack early last night and at 7:47 am, he meowed politely outside my door. Harry has been incredibly considerate these past few weeks. A friend says Harry has "mellowed out" now that he knows he is really home and it's okay when I put him in his carrier and in the car (that I do intend to bring him home from the vet's or come back after my vacation to retrieve him from his sitter's house). Harry no longer meows and knocks on my door with his big paws (Maine Coon mix) because now he is not worried that I have disappeared and he is not going to be fed. He now sits on top of the radiator waiting for me to come out and raise the blinds so he can bird watch. Or he sits outside my door waiting for me to wake up and come out -- so quiet that I've almost stumbled over him a few times. But this morning, he was hungry, and he thought a polite meow would let me know that his stomach was rumbling.

Harry has reminded me of something I learned in Psychology 101 (or, whatever that long-ago Intro Psych course at Virginia Tech was numbered). It was in that course that I first heard about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.


Offering a theory of human motivation, Abraham Maslow argued that humans are motivated by needs that range from basic physiological needs to self-actualization. Humans . . .

I had to take a break between paragraphs because Harry was standing beside my chair meowing insistently.

(Photo taken by his sitter, Russ, on another morning).

This morning, having had his breakfast (wet prescription cat food mixed with pumpkin) and spent some time looking out the window at the birds sitting in the leafless small trees, he felt compelled to remind me that I had neglected to carry out our morning ritual. Each morning, using a pet grooming tool that has a metal rake on one side and a bristled brush on the other, I attend to Harry's fur. When I adopted him in October of last year, Harry's back had been partially shaved because his fur was matted when he came into the shelter. Now, his fur has grown back and is luxurious and thick, and it tends to tangle on his stomach. I suspect that he knows he will be swallowing a lot of hair when he grooms himself if I don't brush him first.

But having me brush him each morning is also Harry's way of maintaining our connection. He is moving up his cat hierarchy. As he is being brushed, Harry is ensuring his continued security and maintaining bonds of affections. I'm pretty sure he's also nurturing his self-esteem ("I'm a handsome cat. I cannot be seen with my coat looking scruffy").

Observing Harry has reminded me about my character's pyramid of needs. My characters -- whether in my 1939 historical or the whodunit with the very long synopsis -- are not going to zip through my books without stopping for meals or bathroom breaks. Yes, the public stakes may be high in my thriller, but along the way my protagonist and his valiant team are going to have those moments I've always loved in books and movies -- the outlaws are lurking outside, but inside the safety of the jail Dean Martin is stretched out on a bunk and he begins to sing about his pony and Rick Nelson joins in and then Walter Brennan pulls out his harmonica. . . yes, I watch too many old movies.

But my point is that I have now found another way to think of that dictum that in every scene in a book or story, each character should want something. Harry -- meowing again, paws on my knees, before he jumps, all 16.5 lbs of him (he's a pound from his goal weight), onto my lap -- is working on his hierarchy. He wants to sit in my lap because he's ready for a nap. He could be much more comfortable on the sofa or curled up on the radiator or an area rug. But he wants to sleep in the crook of my arm as I type. His need to bond and feel secure makes him want to sleep in my lap even though he has better options when it comes to physical comfort. A cat's reminder that meeting ones needs sometimes requires trade-offs. I must keep this in mind about my characters.