This time of the year seems when I do a lot of thinking and find some things to regret. This is one of them.
There seems to be a kind of trend where writers are afraid to show their work to their families, most often their mothers. There might be violence in your book or copious amounts of blood. There might be political opinions that differ from those of your parents or your protagonists are hooliganish liberals when your parents are on the more conservative side. There might be sex. There may be guns and swords and religious views that don't line up with what your family believes.
What if my mother sees this? appears to be a question that holds many a writer back from digging deep.
I have that problem in a different but similar way. I'm not worried my mother will read my books (she doesn't know about them and her English isn't good enough. The best she'd do is an attempt at the first page before giving up.) but at the same time I'm sad that I'll never be able to show her what I do and the art I create.
It's not about sex (although she'd frown upon this) or religion or differing political views. The one big thing she'd never understand about my stories is the violence and the realism. Unlike my grandmother, dearly missed, who was a realistic and headstrong person much like myself, my mother is more of the head-in-the-clouds type.
If she read any of my stories, her first question would be:
"But why does it always have to be violence?"
Just like when in my younger years I was still optimistic enough about her to share it was always:
"Why must all the characters be gay?"
There's a reason I don't shy away from violence in my books and think that those stories that have some aspects of it are my best. As much as I hate it and would love to read/write about unicorns and gentle fairies in beautiful forests every day, violence is a part of real life, and if I am writing about real life (which I try to do) then there will be injustices. There will be psychological pain, there will be real pain, and sometimes there will be murder, abuse, and occasionally even darker themes.
Don't get me wrong. It hurts to write those things. It hurt deeply. But in the world we live this represents real life. And that's the reason why I can't show my mother or even tell her about it. My mother lives in her own fairy world. In her opinion, if you ignore violence, it doesn't exist. If you don't think about murder, then murder doesn't happen. If you don't think about blood and someone getting beaten up and worse because of the colour of their skin or their sexual preferences, then racism and homophobia doesn't exist. If you don't talk about injustice, political and otherwise, then injustice will eventually go away.
Mother, this is not reality, but I am too tired of arguing about this any more. I argued about my gay characters too often. I argued about why I drew two boys kissing. I defended why I liked seeing two gay men openly hold hands in Germany (the most progressive place I'd been on holiday back then). These days, no more.
Mother, you are free to think what you please, but that does not mean your opinions are free of consequences. On the contrary, it's the reason why we can't be friends, as much as that hurts me. But I'm not prepared to defend again and again why I must write about things that are real. I'm not prepared to argue with you (again) why it is important to speak about unpleasant things in order to change them in real life. Finding these things out is every person's own responsibility and it's not like I haven't tried. I understand now that some minds resist change or don't want to see it because it's too painful. I find it difficult to respect those minds. I'd prefer to live in a painful world that I can hope to better than to live in a made-up fantasy where nothing bad ever happens if you don't think about.
That is the reason why my mother will never see my work. I'm exhausted and my heart is tired. I can't convince her. And I'll not keep defending myself for trying to improve the world.
