I have a major pet peeve. I have a couple of them, but this is one very few people know about. Not because it’s a secret, or I’m ashamed of it, but because it’s not the kind of thing that comes up in polite conversation.
Them: I hate it when the cable company randomly turns off my internet because they’re monitoring my connection and can see through the cameras in my monitor that I’m downloading porn. That’s not their business. I mean, it drives me absolutely insane. I hate it with every fiber of my being. Does anything piss you off that much?
Me: That much? People who form grossly strong opinions about subjects they know nothing about and then rant about them for hours, expecting the rest of the world to agree. Maybe you shouldn’t have signed the EULA (end user license agreement) that gave them permission to install the cameras.
As you can see, it doesn’t lend itself to being friendly. I’m all about making informed decisions. If I don’t know enough about something, I can’t have a strong opinion about it. Of course, that’s not always true. I’m as guilty as anyone, but, I hear someone say something that I know isn’t correct. And then forcibly getting everyone around them to buy into the same misinformation…it makes my skin crawl. Which is a polite way of saying it makes me privately curse for the next hour until I find a new distraction.
I was pondering this today, because an incident last night set me off like that. I realized that I’ve given myself the perfect opportunity to vent this frustration in my writing. I’ve created a character with this trait – that she spouts off about all sorts of things she knows nothing about.
And I’ve let the other characters call her on it, and even give her a hard time for it. Nothing mean, well, not usually. She’s my main character after all. But in the end, she learns the lesson. She actually figures it out.
None of this was intentional, but I suspect my subconscious know I was doing it. I have another story that one of the underlying themes is how someone deals with losing their job as the final straw to a horrid series of events. And another where the characters take on corporate America and bureaucracy in order to prove sometimes the little guy can win.
So…do you ever write things into your stories as a means of venting/resolving your frustrations? Obvious or not?
My writing is all about venting 🙂 But I try not to be too obvious about it in the story.
I do it all the time. In fact, the whole plot of my next book came out of a newspaper article I read which made me furious. I’ve been thinking about it for over two years, and it still makes me mad…
I think a lot of people do this 😛 me as well!
I think it’s only human to let our personal feelings sneak into our writing. I do it but I try not to let it grow into preaching or lecturing.
And I agree with your pet peeve. I had to work with a temporary employee today who really could make it into one of my books. Drove me to the point of rude thoughts.
One deleted scene/character from Air was based on my former artist with whom things didn’t work out well… Whoever knew me and her, recognized the fact and wondered. She did nothing for the story. So I cut her out (but she’s still in Earth, mwhahahahaha!!).
Barb