I Bought My "Bitch" Hat at Office Max

Generally, I’m the easy-going type. I get along with most other people and I generally don’t get into any sort of confrontation. This is due to my tendency to apologize immediately if I feel like I’ve accidentally insulted someone. Like most women, I probably apologize too much. But, I don’t like people not to like me. I’m sort of a “can’t we all just get along” type. That is, in my real life.

In the fictional world I create on paper (read: Word doc), I am the bitchiest of pirates. I break people up, just to get them back together. I wield my sharp sword (read: pen, er… read: keys on my keyboard) and slice happy families apart. I wreak havoc among perfectly laid plans, messing up perfectly comfortable lives, all in the name of telling a great story.

The bitch hat (it's a figurative hat, of course) is my greatest writerly supply. Because, that part of me is what helps me tell good stories.

If I sat at my computer and happily allowed my perfectly contented characters to move about in their perfectly comfortable lives (or even their not-so-perfectly comfortable lives), then what kind of story would that be? It’d be the perfectly boring story that no one would want to read. We live to see people overcome obstacles. It’s what keeps us reading, so we can see how it all works out.

But, sometimes being this bitch hurts the sweet, can’t-we-all-get-along part of me that wants everyone to like me. At times like that, I have to ignore the characters in my head calling me names (“You big meanie!”) and pull my bitch hat down over my ears so that I can continue to slice and hack away at their lives.

It’s hard for me. My heart hurts for them. However, I know it will all work out in the end. I know that when the time comes, I’ll be able to hang my bitch hat next to my computer and let the romantic part of me that is dying for everyone to be happy write everything perfect again.

Thank God for my bitch hat. My computer, my post-it notes, they pale in comparison to how important it is to my writing. I’m not sure how I could have the tough love to do what I need to do to these fictional people without it.

I always wonder about writers who don’t let their characters get their happy endings because they never get to take off their bitch hats.

I’ve read all sorts of stuff in my English major/English teacher lifetime. I swore that American authors, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, wouldn’t have known a happy ending if they fell in one. People who write horror, like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, never get the satisfaction of HEA, at least not the way I write it. I picture them writing “the end” and then going off to therapy or to their priests, complaining about the darkness of the world.

I’m so glad I get to spread a little light.

If you’re a writer, how do you feel about causing turmoil in your characters’ lives? Are you of the yay, free therapy school or are you (like me) of the “when can I get to the HEA” school? How do you approach writing conflict in your stories, as I’m certain my “bitch hat” method isn’t the only one out there?