~~~Lara Zielin~~~

STATUS: After months, literally, of editing — both for my work and for my books — I finally feel like I have a bit of creative cranium space to begin writing again.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Without question, it’s the Sarah Palin name generator. Ever wonder what you’d be called if Sarah Palin had named you? Now you can find out! For the record, I’m Stinger Assassin Palin.

Hurricanes, economic woes, and promises of salvation by both religious figures and political pundits have reinforced my belief that there’s really nothing new under the sun. Every one of these issues has played itself out in history before. Multiple times.

I’ve thought a lot about this as I’ve recently been watching the HBO show Carnivale (on DVD since it’s not on anymore and we don’t get HBO anyhow). One of the producers for the show was Ron Moore, who you may know from shows like, oh, gee, I don’t know, Battlestar Galactica. Anyway, the whole thing takes place during the Great Depression and, I gotta say, the external forces the main characters are struggling with are a scary echo of what we’ve got going on today. Granted, they don’t have polar bears drowning because of disappearing ice floes or an AIG bailout, but they do have dust storms raging across the midwest and a financial infrastructure that’s just imploded.

Themes, themes, themes. Cycles, cycles, cycles. It’s like the Matrix (back when it was good, before it got so confusing) when Neo found out there’d been, like, a thousand Neos before him.

Joseph Campbell reiterated most of life’s great themes in his works, most popularly The Hero With a Thousand Faces. When we as writers think we’re creating great, original characters with unique arcs, we should pause and realize it’s pulling from cultural themes that have played out before, again and again. We’ve been there, done that, for thousands of years.

But hey, I’ll still vote, watch the debates, get sucked into Carnivale, and write another book. Because unique interpretations of these great themes, cycles and archetypes is always, always entertaining.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under looks like life, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.