Recommended Reading
The problem is everything
There are articles and essays I wish would go on forever. This is one.
In the past I’ve suggested, “Show your reader their worst fear happening to a character, then show how the character survives that fear, and your reader will love you.”
In this essay, the author states:
There are few lessons that stay with us longer and deeper than those which strike mortal fear in us and then propose a way out.
Check out this article about Christmas and Dickens and so much more:
Britain is Haunted by Dickensian Ghosts
Let me know what you think.
Calls to mind your line near the beginning of “Nonfiction”: “All my books are about a lonely person looking for someway to connect with other people. In a way, that is the opposite of the American dream ...”
A Christmas Carol draws from one of Jesus’ parables (Luke 16:19-31) in which a rich man, condemned to hell for being wealthy and not caring for the poor, pleads for a ghost to be sent to warn his five brothers. No ghost is sent in the parable, so Dickens sends them.
Do you believe that objects retain memory? As in a house retains the events that happen in the house, and carries those events with it, which is interpreted as being haunted. I love this idea because I love old beat up things.