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Well, I just submitted my research prospectus for the story I need to write for my creative writing class. I said before that I was finally going to tackle “The Wendigo Killers,” which has been kicking my ass for over two years and just refuses to budge. I lied.
Allow me to digress for a moment before continuing. I’m hooked—again—on folk music. I’ve been listening to little else since I started school. There’s that age-old, tired question that writers hate: where do you get your ideas? While it’s never a single thing, I get a lot of my ideas from folk music. In fact, my two most recent sales (”Black Jack Davy” and “Working Out Our Salvation”) stemmed directly from folk songs.
Many, many folk songs aren’t very nice. In fact, there’s a lot of violence and murder behind those lulling tunes. Consider the lyrics of “The Butcher’s Boy,” “Banks of the Ohio,” or “Ommie Wise.” Creepy, chilling stuff. A shocking amount of violence directed towards women too.
Woody Guthrie wasn’t shy about violence either. His did his part to glorify killing during WWII. Which brings me back to the research prospectus I wrote, which sprung directly from Guthrie’s song “Miss Pavlichenko.”
In short, Ms. Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper in WWII and picked off no fewer than 309 Germans in about ten months of combat. Fascinating stuff surrounding her rise to prominence and slide back into relative obscurity during the Cold War. Not a lot of personal information out there about her, which is sort of a dream come true for a fiction writer. Artistic license and all that.
The audiobook du jour is Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and, unsurprisingly, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I can see how it could frustrate some readers because of the inherent (and intentional) contradictions riddling the story, but Heller drops in grim reminders of the reality of the war, which stand in stark contrast to the absurdity surrounding it. Jaw-dropping in places. Masterfully done.
I’m already a third done. Candide by Voltaire is on deck. That Audible subscription is looking more attractive all the time.
Current Mood: Fine | 
Currently Listening To – Bob Dylan – “Time Out of Mind”
2 Comments
I think they riffed on Mrs. P. in the movie Enemy at the Gates — haven’t seen it all the way through, so I don’t know if they were literal or just borrowed for the character.
Dr. Phil
Yes, I believe they did. I saw that movie a long time ago and I thought it was a little better than okay. In doing my preliminary research for the story, I found they have a character named Ludmilla who isn’t all too integral to the story.
I might read the book “War of the Rats” which the movie was based on. Depends on how much research I need to do for the story but I mentioned both book and movie in my prospectus.