The Inspiration
One day at work, I jokingly told my coworker not to snatch. Since English isn`t his first language, he didn`t know what the word meant. And then, after I explained the word and its usage with children, he asked if kids call each other snatchers.
Snatcher. The word sounded like the name of a Dr. Seuss story.
Dr. Seuss had already been on my mind because I`d run across some of his Midnight Paintings, surrealist art he`d made to express his own dark coping habits, a theme that is also central in my story.
If you`ve been reading my blog for a while, you might know that I`m already in the habit of copying prolific authors. So with the word and target author already in mind, it seemed only natural that I turned the Snatcher into a story.
The Character
So who is the Snatcher?
I envisioned him as a petty, spiteful, and deeply insecure man. The Snatcher is snatching for two reasons.
He thinks taking their things will numb him to his own insecurities.
He wants his victims to feel just as hurt as he feels
For comedic value and to keep things Seuss-like, I wanted him to take things that seemed silly. But because of his motivations, I wanted the things he took to be devastatingly important to their owners.
The Morals & Message
Sometimes when we feel insecure we start lashing out at others. When this happens I think its important to take accountability. But beyond that I think it`s even more important (and harder) to learn to accept our insecurities and be kind to ourselves. Otherwise the guilt of how we project onto others or the shame we feel from our insecurities can eat us alive.
This is the situation the Snatcher finds himself in and the lesson I wanted him to learn.
The Writing Process
I started with a poem, an outline, and a vision of The Snatcher as a 4-part series. Even though I liked the initial rhyme scheme of the original poem, it felt too simple to carry through an entire 4-part story. A creative writing professor once critiqued me for writing a story that relied too much on a simple rhyme scheme, so I looked for ways to switch it up.
Listening to The Less I know the Better by Tame Impalas and Dreams by Fleetwood Mac helped my mind open up to different rhyme schemas.
Final Thoughts
I had a lot of fun with this story, which made the writing process fly by. The journey I had writing it was also a lot different from my usual writing process. I usually never know how I want a story to end, or have such an intimate understanding of what my character’s motivations are. It was a privilege to understand this story as much as I did.
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