(edit: I posted this before your above comments about datura...)
Never been a big fan of the "rules" of any medium, though Vonnegut's guidelines can be used to good effect sometimes. They're too specific for me. "A character must" / "A sentence must". O'Connor wrote a number of essays on her technique. I remember one in which she said something along the lines of: "Don't think. Just write a word, and see where it takes you." This is better advice than Vonnegut's. The worst thing you can do, often, is to fill your head with literary theory before you even start constructing the narrative. I learn theory, so I can forget it.
It's a bit off topic, but I'm not sure I understand your logic about datura. You guinea pigged a brew, like throwing yourself in front of a bullet. You admit you don't have much experience with the drug. And you conclude that it is the "worst fucking thing ever" and "scum". "Fuck this drug" you say. I've read so many reports of inexperienced users taking relatively large - or unknown - amounts of datura and concluding the same thing. I don't really see the difference between you and them. Aside from the fact that you intentionally had a bad experience to prove to them that the drug is evil - which it isn't. Maybe I'm missing something. It just frustrates me when I hear people say things like "Fuck Amanita Muscaria! This drug sucks balls!" or "Datura is the devil!" Because both drugs are actually quite wonderful if treated with the proper respect. It makes more sense to me to educate people by showing them how to consume delerients, while taking the proper precautions. While your intentions were noble and selfless, I think you went about it the wrong way. You need to be concerned about yourself as well as others when exercising harm reduction techniques. Intentionally inducing a bad trip with a substance you know nothing about is not a good idea.
Again, I'm sorry you had a bad trip. But, don't take it out on the drug.
Back to the theory stuff. My problem with these rules is that a lot of students take them on board. And, as a result, stories end up resembling each other - at skeleton level. Predictability and cliche result from adhering to guidelines. My least favorite of those rules is: "Every character should want something. Even if it is a glass of water." I get that he's trying to raise tensions to a maximum level. If every character in your story has a motivation towards something, then you can play them off each other. And their interactions become more complex, psychologically. But that doesn't need to be the case. It gets boring, if we know that everyone has an agenda. And, it's not realistic. Some writer's tend to overload meaning into their work. Like Shakespeare. "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." People do waste time in real life. Stories should make good economic use of the space required for them to exist, but there needs to be room for the narrative to breathe. A lot of "great writers" try so hard to be clever that they end up suffocating characters and other aspects of their work.
Glad you're feeling better, man. My double vision is fading also. I'm having morphine nightmares now. Scary stuff. But, at the same time, kind of exilerating. Need sleep.
I agree with you in the sense that I used faulty language, I'm highly dramatic at times, I use it for my writing.
I agree it's a sacrament, would rather give belladonna or mandrake a go but titrate up. I was irresponsible and let this woman keep dosing me only later exclaiming "you took a rather small dose." Foolish to trust someone of that ilk, but I have very few friends/soulmates in the world and I thought I could help.
I don't condemn it at all, rather my bad experience. I didn't intend to marginalize, I just had a strong first experienced, and it wasn't as though I didn't like it, it was just to delerient to bring anything useful back from the experience. I have an 8 hour period of anterograde amnesia, leading me to believe this was a HIGH dose.
Different strokes. But I agree with you about the harsh language, I was just striking out at my actions and projecting them onto a spiritual plant, which is fairly ironic, but irony be damned. I had work to do that day and should have said NOPE as soon as they asked. Sorry, not your man. Then move on. Nice guys finish last.
I also don't know why they wouldn't just brew ayahausca, as that to me is the ultimate spiritual antisceptic, shit throw some mandrake root in there, but we're getting off topic now.
Let the record state I have no set logic about datura, it just seemed after reading copious amounts of information over ten years, that it didn't "sound fun." IE: dysphoric. This is a sweeping generalization, and a wrong one. I should have taken an allergy test, waited six hours. Then try again a week later. I was dumb and didn't, and got what was coming to me.
My actions are my only true belongings.
Thanks for the PM and the calendar update.
On the vonnegut stuff:
I just found them interesting. I haven't any formal training in writing, aside from reading I don't know, a shit ton of books all my life. Most of my prose and other literary device I use comes from this on a subconscious level, and any writing guidelines I take with a grain of salt.
