[guest post] Judith Tarr on Story

Writer Brain: The Power of Story

by Judith Tarr

Story helps us process trauma and understand the world. I've been thinking more about what Story is, and what it does. And how as far as we can know, it's unique to humans.

We may find out that other animals tell each other stories, too. For now, we seem to be the only species that tells itself things that aren't true, but that contain a deeper truth. It may be a factor of the way our brains are constructed. We can think in layers. We can know what is, but also what might be or could be--and what couldn't possibly be except in our imagination.

It can be hard to tell what's true and what's not. We have a powerful capacity for self-deception, which can be dangerous. Consider the Big Lie. It's a deliberate falsehood that's told to serve a purpose, usually political or financial; that's repeated over and over until the people who are lied to believe it's true.

Which, yes, has something to do with the events of this month.

But I'm talking about Story here. About the lie that is, in its essence, true. It creates worlds and characters. It invents histories. It fabricates languages that can take on lives of their own.

People are out there speaking Klingon and more than one dialect of Elvish. They're living in our world but speaking words that came from the mind or minds of humans who imagined how alien beings would think and talk. It's a strange thing, but it's beautiful. It's a lie but it's true.

The image I chose for this post exists in multiple worlds. In this one it's a piece of jet contrail that caught the wind and attached itself to wisps of cloud. The light of the setting sun struck the ice crystals and give them the illusion of color, even while the wind made it seem to be moving steadily westward.

In another world, the world of Story, it's a dragon. Can you see the shape of it? The long neck. The snaky tail. The wings. It comes from the west and it's flying east over the mountains.

I don't know where it started or where it's aiming to go. But because I have the power of Story, I can imagine. I can invent a world for it to come from and a reason for it to be flying over this land, on this evening. I can make up a destination for it, and tell the story of what happens to it when it gets there.

Maybe it's a happy story. It's bringing good news to people who are waiting eagerly for it. Or maybe it's a tragedy. Something terrible happened, and it's warning the people in the east. Or it's a monster story, and it's hunting, and its prey is running away in front of it.

Personally I like the more optimistic kinds of stories. I understand and appreciate the need for the darker ones, for the way they shed light on our own darker impulses. But I lean more toward good news than bad. There will pretty definitely be darker moments, crises and reversals, but my mind wants them to end more happily than they began.

I know that every story can't and won't have a happy ending. Real life can hit hard. But one function of Story is to make it possible to withstand the hits. To find a way through. To face problems and, if at all possible, solve them.

Even if they can't be solved, at least we can try. We can imagine alternatives. We can hope.

Story helps us do that. That's its power.

That's why I'm writing fiction again. So that I can process what's happening. Deal with the hard parts. Find ways to make them less hard. And share those ways with other people, many of whom will share their own ways with me. And maybe, among all of us, we'll end up in a better place than we began.

Judith Tarr is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. She has a Patreon, where she shares fiction, nonfiction (like this blog), and (of course) cute cat pictures.

https://www.patreon.com/dancinghorse . 

She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzan horses, a small clowder of cats, and two Very Good Dogs.

Reprinted by permission

In Troubled Times: Bouncing Off the Bottom

Following the 2016 election, I wrote a series called In Troubled Times. It seems appropriate to post these again now

Last week I had a meltdown. It did not take the form of tears, irritability, or burning pots of

vegetables (as I am wont to do when I am upset and distracted). Instead, a horrible doomsday scenario popped into my mind and I could not talk myself out of it. Normally I’m not given to imagining worst-case no-hope futures. I try to keep in mind that no matter how distraught I am at any given moment, whatever is bothering me will not last forever. (This goes for good times, too. All life is impermanent.) This time, however, the dreadful sequence had taken hold and would not be dislodged.

So I did what I have been advised to do about other problems. I put my nightmare out there and asked folks what they thought. I often joke that we muddle along because we’re not all crazy on the same day. I figured that even though my brains had taken a sharp turn to crazyland, there were some saner people out there. Some agreed with me, others had their own dire forebodings, and still more had confidence that wiser heads would prevail.

After I’d calmed down, I had a serious moment of “What got into me?” I admit that I was a little embarrassed at losing it, especially in such a public way. I tried to make light of the situation by joking that aliens had eaten my brains (one of my stock explanations for moments of temporary insanity).

Then I remembered to be kind to myself. No harm had been done, after all, except to the illusion that I am always calm and rational. That’s a good illusion to shatter now and again for fear of being insufferable. Through painful experience, I’ve learned the importance of getting friendly with things that upset or frighten me. What if my lapse were doing me a favor and what might it teach me?

Once I got some distance from the moment of panic, I realized that I’d been expecting myself to progress in a straight, continuous manner. No backsliding or side tracks. No relapses. Recovery sometimes works like that, but more often it’s full of slips and detours, three steps sideways to every step forward. Just as when an alcoholic or addict “hits bottom” before they are ready to make substantial changes in their attitudes and lives, going “off the deep end” was a wake-up call for me. I saw then that I had been stressed by more than the political situation. We have two sick or injured pets, one of whom will likely not recover and will have to be euthanized. Several other challenging events have occurred that, taken singly, would be manageable, but all together on top of everything else pushed me off-center.

I’m grateful to the friends who offered sage (and not-so-sage) comments and thereby helped me to gain perspective on my own condition. I’m incredibly annoyed that the universe ganged up on me in so many ways all at once. I’m also appreciative of the experiences I’ve had (good, bad, insane) over the years that have shown me I am not invincible but that if I am willing to ask for help (and then take it), I am resilient and resourceful. I value everyone and everything in my life that helps me to keep my priorities straight.

Announcing the final Darkover novel

Farewell and Adelandeyo, Darkover

I fell in love with the Darkover series, created by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, when becoming a professional author was still my dream. I loved the world, the characters, and the insightful and compassionate treatment of themes. Many of my early short fiction sales were to the Darkover anthology series, which I eventually had the honor of continuing as editor, beginning with Stars of Darkover. Around 1999, Mrs. Bradley asked if I would consider collaborating with her on one or more Darkover novels. She passed away just as we began work on The Fall of Neskaya (DAW, 2000), which I completed. Since then, I have written eight more Darkover novels under the supervision of her Literary Works Trust. The final volume, Arilinn, was released in hardcover and ebook formats on November 12, 2024. Darkover is one of the longest-running and best-loved series, straddling the border between science fiction, romance, and fantasy. For decades, it has touched the hearts and fired the imaginations of generations of fans. The earliest published stories date back over half a century to the publication of The Planet Savers in Amazing magazine, then the first version of The Sword of Aldones in 1962 and The Bloody Sun in 1964. You can find the list, both in order of publication and Darkover chronology, here. For the last quarter-century, I have striven to tell the best stories I could, always staying true to the spirit of Darkover and its amazing people.  Now the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust and I have agreed to bring the saga to a close with Arilinn, a heartfelt love letter and farewell to the series and its fans. I hope that if you have enjoyed my Darkover stories, you will check out my original work.

-- Deborah J. Ross

 

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Arilinn will be available in trade paperback in November 2025. It is currently available in the following formats:
Kindle: https://buff.ly/4cfj5Xm
ePub: https://buff.ly/3XiCZwA
Audiobook: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/arilinn/800413
Hardcover: Amazon (perfect bound) https://buff.ly/48QprMG, or ask your bookstore to order hardcovers (with dust jacket) from Ingram, using ISBN 978-1-938185-83-0.

In Troubled Times: Annoyed? Irate!

Following the 2016 election, I wrote a series called In Troubled Times. It seems appropriate to post these again now

As the days post-election melt into weeks, I observe myself moving from disbelief to despair to relative calm . . . and now to feeling just plain annoyed. I am tired of the news being dominated by one horrible announcement after another, and even more tired of how much attention is paid to the continuous verbal effluvia flowing from the president-elect. I am tired of being jerked around emotionally by a bloviating buffoon whose chief delight seems to be keeping everyone else off-balance. I’m tired of every conversation about the news beginning with “Guess what outrageous thing president-elect/his newest appointee/some member of Congress just said?”

It’s one thing to be appalled and frightened by the statements of politicians now in power. There’s a time to focus on politics and a time for other parts of my life. It’s quite another to have my thoughts and days hijacked by irresponsible sensationalism. Not to mention counterfactual (aka “lies”) distortions. Remember the meme of the person who can’t sleep because somewhere on the internet, someone is wrong? When my brain gets taken over by provocative statements, that’s where I am, duped into a cycle of research and refutation. It’s a gazillion times worse if I give in to a lapse in judgment and actually reply to one of those folks-who-are-wrong. That never ends well, no matter how many times I persuade myself into believing otherwise. Social media do not, by and large, promote genuine discourse, but I get sucked into trying. Of course, the responses only get me more wound up. That’s my responsibility, because I know better. But I really would like to be able to glance at the news or visit a social media site now and again without having to fend off the lure of the outrageous.

Why is the fruitcake (and surrogates) dominating the news? I swear, every time he twitches a finger (especially in proximity to his cellphone), it makes headlines everywhere. On his part, the tactic of controlling the dialog by throwing out pompously outrageous lies is nothing new. That’s how he dominated the primary debates. He got billions of dollars worth of free air time during the general campaign by poking one hornets’ nest after another. Now he’s doing it on an international scale. And the news media buy into it every time, battling the hydra that grows a hundred heads for every one they whack off with facts. We’ve gone from sucking all the oxygen out of the room to sucking all the oxygen out of the news sphere and now the world.

I draw the line at sucking all the oxygen out of my head. Okay, I’m not hopeful that the media will take my suggestion to just ignore any sentence that includes “Trump” and “Tweet,” nor am I a good enough nerd to reprogram my computer to do that for me. Nor do I want to shut myself away from news of any sort. For one thing, I know myself well enough to admit that would be too anxiety-provoking. I will likely do better when I become better at not responding to trollishness.

But right now, mostly I’m annoyed to the point of being downright pissed. I recognize that anger can be friend or enemy. It’s energizing, which can be exhausting if I spend too much time wound up, or focusing if I master it. If I give in, I run the risk of descending into petty insults and ad hominen fallacies. Or I can use it to point the way to improvements in my own attitudes and behavior. What’s getting to me, and why? My anger can show me the line between things best shrugged off and those that call for action.

This, however, is how I feel today:

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes

Water on Ancient Mars?

 We all need a break from political news, so here's a cool story, slightly condensed, from Universe Today on the presence of water on ancient Mars.

There was Hot Water on Mars 4.45 Billion Years Ago

Earth and Mars were very similar in their youth. Four billion years ago, both planets had vast, warm seas. But while Earth retained its oceans, the waters of Mars evaporated away or froze beneath its dusty surface. Based on geological studies, we know that Earth’s water cycle seemed to have stabilized early. From about 4.5 billion years ago to today, water has had a stable presence on Earth. For Mars, things are less clear. Clay minerals cover about 45% of the Martian surface and date to what is known as the Noachian period, which ranges from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago. During the Amazonian period, which dates from 3 billion years ago to today, Mars seems to have been mostly dry. We have little evidence of the earliest period of Mars, known as the pre-Noachian. But a new study peels back the Martian ages to give us a glimpse of the first epoch of Mars, and it comes from a Martian meteorite known as Black Beauty.

This new study doesn’t focus on Black Beauty as a whole, but rather on small crystals of zircon embedded within it. These crystals can be dated to 4.48–4.43 billion years, meaning they formed in the Pre-Noachian period. What’s interesting is that the crystals have layers of iron, aluminum, and sodium in a pattern known as oscillatory zoning. Since zircon is igneous in origin, this kind of banding is almost unheard of in zircon crystals. On Earth, there is only one place where such a pattern occurs, which is in hydrothermal geysers such as those found in Yellowstone National Park.

The presence of these crystals in Black Beauty proves not only that Mars was wet during the Pre-Noachian period, but that it was geologically active with warm thermal vents. Similar vents on Earth may have triggered the formation of life on our world. Whether life ever existed on Mars is still an unanswered question, but it is clear that the conditions for life on Mars did exist in its earliest history.

Reference: Gillespie, Jack, et al. “Zircon trace element evidence for early hydrothermal activity on Mars.” Science Advances 110.47 (2024)