Notes on the writing life: villains and loving-kindness
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Clearly, a lot of us are feeling caught on the treadmill lately. Thanks for all the e-mails and comments. It’s always some consolation to know you’re not the only one feeling that way.
Last night was the last class in my winter writing workshop and we wrote our way into love, including the hard discipline of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a specific mindfulness practice that starts with love directed inward and then moves out to increasingly wider circles. You start with directing love toward yourself, then a loved one, then someone you’re neutral toward, and end with people you don’t like or the whole world (which you also might not like sometimes). Loving-kindness was the subject of a podcast I listened to this week about loving your enemy and in our class, we tried to find some good even in the people and things we most despise. It wasn’t easy.
As difficult as it may be, this is a good practice for writers, too. Every story has a villain, a force that your heroine has to fight against. There’s a part of us that wants to make those villains evil just for evil’s sake. Simple black and white. The hero is good, the villain is evil. Why is the wicked witch of the west wicked? Because she’s wicked, right? Except clearly the answer to that question was interesting enough to launch a very successful book and musical.
The best villains are complex. Likable, even. There’re not all bad. Sometimes you feel sympathy for them, even though you don’t want to. My favorite villain of all time is Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s bad, but also the most interesting character on the show. What Joss Whedon did especially well in Buffy was to make villains who sometimes had more insight into the heroes than the heroes did themselves. Spike is a truth-teller. How irritating is that—the person who fucks with your life speaking out loud the ugly truths you’d rather not face?
Oh, Spike, how I miss you.
The bottom line is, everyone has a backstory. Even the bad guys. Which just sucks. Why should I have to spend a minute of my day thinking about why that asshole in my life is an asshole? As we discussed last night, loving-kindness isn’t about making life better for that asshole, even if that might be a secondary effect. Loving-kindness is a way we take care of our own anger and hatred, which are never good things to be carrying around. The greatest victory over the villain in your own life is to never give them one more single moment of your time, energy or thought. That’s the aim of loving-kindness.
If you’re interested, here’s a basic metta meditation to start with, in which you substitute whoever you’re directing your loving-kindness energy toward:
Notes on the writing life: villains and loving-kindness
Notes on the writing life: villains and loving-kindness
Notes on the writing life: villains and loving-kindness
Clearly, a lot of us are feeling caught on the treadmill lately. Thanks for all the e-mails and comments. It’s always some consolation to know you’re not the only one feeling that way.
Last night was the last class in my winter writing workshop and we wrote our way into love, including the hard discipline of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness, or metta meditation, is a specific mindfulness practice that starts with love directed inward and then moves out to increasingly wider circles. You start with directing love toward yourself, then a loved one, then someone you’re neutral toward, and end with people you don’t like or the whole world (which you also might not like sometimes). Loving-kindness was the subject of a podcast I listened to this week about loving your enemy and in our class, we tried to find some good even in the people and things we most despise. It wasn’t easy.
As difficult as it may be, this is a good practice for writers, too. Every story has a villain, a force that your heroine has to fight against. There’s a part of us that wants to make those villains evil just for evil’s sake. Simple black and white. The hero is good, the villain is evil. Why is the wicked witch of the west wicked? Because she’s wicked, right? Except clearly the answer to that question was interesting enough to launch a very successful book and musical.
The best villains are complex. Likable, even. There’re not all bad. Sometimes you feel sympathy for them, even though you don’t want to. My favorite villain of all time is Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s bad, but also the most interesting character on the show. What Joss Whedon did especially well in Buffy was to make villains who sometimes had more insight into the heroes than the heroes did themselves. Spike is a truth-teller. How irritating is that—the person who fucks with your life speaking out loud the ugly truths you’d rather not face?
The bottom line is, everyone has a backstory. Even the bad guys. Which just sucks. Why should I have to spend a minute of my day thinking about why that asshole in my life is an asshole? As we discussed last night, loving-kindness isn’t about making life better for that asshole, even if that might be a secondary effect. Loving-kindness is a way we take care of our own anger and hatred, which are never good things to be carrying around. The greatest victory over the villain in your own life is to never give them one more single moment of your time, energy or thought. That’s the aim of loving-kindness.
If you’re interested, here’s a basic metta meditation to start with, in which you substitute whoever you’re directing your loving-kindness energy toward:
What do you find hard about loving your enemies?
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Thanks as always for reading, friends! Please share the love with whoever you think might need it today!
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