Wet Ink

For All My Brothers and Sisters

I'm the first person to congratulate anyone who has a great family, though I reckon many families have their problems.  I was confronted today by a passionate expression of how family is the origin of all that is good and true.  For some of us this is accurate, but for others we learn about the deep stuff in spite of our families.  In fact, there are many fabulous folks with zero blood relatives at all.

I'm a fan of stories that deal with the problems of family life, and I've a particular fondness for tales of struggling orphans.  Lyra in Pullman's Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass on US soil) is a wondrous, gutsy, parentless kid who finds her real "family" as she tries to save the world.  Among these new kindred are an armoured bear, a pack of thieves and a boy with a magical knife...  See, Lyra isn't a snob.  She knows that strange ain't bad.

For me, where the notions that it's "all about family" go wrong is when they assume family only means bloodline.  Consider those of us whose parents abused us when we were young, or put us in danger, or abandoned us.  In truth, folks who've known such troubles often find a way to grow and love in spite of the past, and that's big stuff.  I'll freely admit that family can be beautiful and powerful -- I've seen it hundreds of times and it's no doubt the truth -- but just as we try to avoid assumptions about gender, sexuality, race and creed, so we should spare a thought for various family situations, and how they're not always so rosy to reflect on.

You can find family anywhere, of course.  Good, loyal kin.  And whenever I see this expressed through story, I breathe a little easier.

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Speaking of family we discover as we journey, my friend Tara Masih has a wonderful blog post here today.  Do check it out. Also take a peek at K.L. Pereira's wonderful Dead Diciples blog.

Lyon Bell's Headshot (or Nothing Below the Waist)

I was listening to In Bed with Susie Bright the other week (oh, I love her!), in which Susie was interviewing Jennifer Lyon Bell about her erotic film, Headshot, which is changing the face of erotica.  In short, the sex-scene shows a man being pleasured by a woman, but the viewer never sees below the waist.  Apparently, the scene is intensely erotic while also showing nothing explicit whatsoever.  The vulnerability on the male actor's face and the situation are apparently so intense that the scene is feeling-driven.  Hence the fireworks.  

The old cliche that the most important sexual organ is the brain certainly stands true here.  Lyon Bell's film was inspired by an Andy Warhol movie in which a similar scene was shot, but it was a silent film that gave the viewer little relationship to the protagonists.  In Headshot, Lyon Bell wanted to provide a narrative -- characters and story that would add intimacy and stakes.  She speaks of her love of Story -- how opening us to characters makes our experience closer and deeper; in effect, more enjoyable.

I believe the closer we are to human emotion, the more connected we feel; and I reckon that's the same in any story, no matter what its aim!

You Can't Take the Grrr Out of the Girl

My dear friend, Cathy Elcik, sent me this Animal YouTube video to bring me good vibes.  Well, I always was an Animal fan.  He may even be my favourite Muppet.

Get in touch with your inner monster and do it quick.  You deserve it.

The Storyteller

Sometimes, my attitude to life is a tussle between two points-of-view.  See, like many of us, I've another persona inside me:  the Storyteller.  This Storyteller stands at my ear and says it doesn't matter what my story is, as long as I choose to live it.  She tells me a home is only a place: be it Britain, America or the South of flippin' France, it's somewhere I can exist.  Don't worry so much about who loves you, she soothes, just worry about who you love; and don't be tied by situations -- create, create, create.  Be flexible, live in the moment, don't stress about what you can't express; everyone feels sorrow -- it's a part of being alive.

The one time I merge with the Storyteller is when I'm sitting writing.  Then I only hear the story.  How freeing that is.

Writing On The Dark Side

Sometimes R. gets home to find me in the dark, tapping away at the keyboard, enthralled by whatever I'm working on.  He thinks this is hilarious.  Why don't I put on the lights, he asks.  It would only take a moment.  He says I'm like a monk, cloistered away.  

Yup.  He's right.

My new computer has a backlit keyboard.  Not that I look at the keys so much (I touch-type, so there's no need) but it does provide an extra glow that's comforting, in its way.  This encourages me to keep sitting there in the dark.  But I admit I enjoy the metaphor of writing on the dark side!

I love Jung's theory of the Shadow and am using it, thematically, in the novel I'm writing.   When we strive to only face our goodness and deny the darker side of ourselves, this kind of repression takes up a lot of energy.  The unconcious mind becomes desperate to relieve itself of this pressure, so it pushes its own darkness onto other people -- in other words, we project our own faults onto others to save us having to accept them in ourselves.  "A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way," said Jung, "and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour."

If we were writers who never wrote in the darkness, maybe we'd be cutting out a vital part of our stories.  We often know our characters' faults and try to love them fully, regardless, and sometimes we also know what they project onto others.  As writers, when we work on dark material we might start to acknowledge our own Shadows too.  This, claims Jung, is a moral process, for by knowing our darkness we can learn to control it and stop it from harming others:  "Everyone carries a Shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious one always has a chance to correct it...but if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected." 

But to be frank, the real reason I write in the dark is because I'm too fixated to switch on the light. 

Talk about obsessed.  Snort.  

Yours truly is featured on KL Pereira's Dead Diciples blog today.  Am really very proud.  No doubt KL will be featured here soon, inspiring lady that she is...watch this space.  We're monstering together! ;)

Baby, This Ain't No Draft

I love it when writers talk about life as a creative process, similar to telling a story but with only one draft.  It's a powerful concept and one that encourages us to take responsibility.  It also reminds us to be gutsy and artistic; in other words, some chances are worth taking because they enrich our life's canvas.  Making stories, after all, isn't just about fantasy -- real life is a creative work-in-progress.  The greats say it better than I do, of course, so here are a few individual takes:

"Now the will to create, or creative will, which pursues the artist and haunts the artist, I found to be applicable to our individual life, to our personal life, as it is to a work of art.  That is, we do have a will, a possibility, and a potential to change ourselves, and doing that is not an egocentric or turned-in activity.  It is an activity that ultimately affects, influences, and transforms an entire community.  So I feel the great changes in the world will come from a great change in our consciousness.  We have become more aware; we must not despair."  

Anais Nin, in "A New Center of Gravity," an essay from A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin

"Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."  

Rainer Maria Rilke (with thanks to KL Pereira, dear friend and talented writer, who keeps her exciting new blog here).

Jung, on a patient who always ended up attacking her employees, including her doctors:  "She was a very stately and imposing person, six feet tall -- and there was power behind her slaps, I can tell you!  She came, then, and we had a very good talk.  Then came the moment when I had to say something unpleasant to her.  Furious, she sprang to her feet and threatened to slap me.  I, too, jumped up, and said to her, 'Very well, you are the lady.  You hit first -- ladies first!  But then I hit back!'  And I meant it.  She fell back into her chair and deflated before my eyes.  'No one has ever said that to me before!' she protested.  From that moment on, the therapy began to succeed."  

From Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G.Jung.  NB. Jung always afforded his patients the privilege of honesty.  He spoke what he felt, what he believed to be fair and authentic.  And from there, they began to rework their lives.  

"When lovers have sex that doesn't result in pregnancy, it becomes radiantly apparent what OTHER lasting results come from sex: intimacy, self-enlightenment, a source of strength and tenderness and imagination that really can't be uncovered in any other way."*

Susie Bright in The Sexual State of the Union

There.  Let's go create.

By the way, if you're interested in hearing audio recordings of Anais Nin reading and speaking, visit this site for wonderful downloads.  (Honestly, pages like this are true gems.  Thanks so much to the creators).

Give Like a Lover

I just had to point you in the direction of Carol Edgarian's wonderful letter to a young writer, in Narrative.

A Glowing Debut

I'm excited about a forthcoming story collection by Tara Masih, editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.  Tara's work is so musical and meaningful -- this promises to be a wonderful book.  Why not come along to the launch party on Thursday February 23rd at the Brookline Booksmith?  I hear it's going to be an intriguing night. ;)

Also, read a great interview with Tara about many aspects of the writing and publishing process.  Free advice from a real pro.

 

Jung for the Storyteller

I return many times to a great webpage that lists several deep and challenging Jung quotes.  Each of these excerpts from Jung's work provides a rich way of thinking about our selves and our characters.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.  Many are quite profound.  

Here's one I love:

"When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer."  C.G. Jung in The Stages of Life (1930)

Courage, friends.  When we emerge from the darkness, the light shines bright.

For All You Heroines, Whatever Your Bra Size!

Right.  A bit of cheering up is in order.  Have a look at this wonderful list of female superheroes with visuals to boot.  It's from a site that's for men, so do keep that in mind -- you might see the comment about men wanting to see sexy heroines and not "ugly" ones...hmm, the word "ugly" is subjective of course!  (As Violet Blue reminds us, everybody's somebody's fetish).  In short, I like the list because of the visuals.  Many of we women love seeing fantasy females kicking butt, but while so many of these images cheer me up, I think it's important to remember that these characters are all about a certain kind of fantasy -- real women aren't like this, and neither should we aspire to be so.  With their pumped up lips, outrageous boobs, and lipstick that's still perfect after they've leapt from a fiery tower block, many female superheroes aren't meant to portray reality.  Many are fantasy.  Bubble bath.  Chocolate-coated mallows.  

So let's write and show real women too.  While superheroes are fun to look at, we're infinitely more impressive. ;)

 

Wonder Woman doing her thing.  Artist: Terry Dodgson.

P.S. A superhero's guide for writers dealing with rejections:  The people who don't want you aren't right for you.  I'm learning this.  Slowly.  ;)

Just a Little Soul

Yours truly has just placed twice in the same contest (Soul Making Literary) and I'm tickled pink.  I received:

First Place, for Poised, Like Jellies, in the Carolyn A. Clark Flash Fiction Prize

And

Third Place, for The Moth Catcher, in the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize

Poised Like Jellies is forthcoming (shortly) at Narrative, and you can read The Moth Catcher here.  Many thanks to the judges and organizers.  A lot of hard work and thought goes into literary contests and it's much appreciated.  Thanks also to my much-trusted editors who really are the mutt's nuts.

Tomorrow?  Tiramisu and Baileys, baby, yeah.

Yes, an Iguana!

I'd been having real problems finding one of my characters.  He was an older man who'd inflicted a lot of cruelty on a protagonist I treasure -- understandable, I suppose, that I should find him hard to connect with.  All my defenses were up.  It wasn't that I didn't know what he'd done, or the life he'd led, or the reasons he was cruel; it was simply that I couldn't visualise him or know how moved and felt.  My writing about this character was flat.

Well, this morning I sat down with a blank piece of paper and listed his physical attributes.  I tried to stare at his face in my head and see him answering the door.  Were his movements quick or slow?  Heavy or light?  How did he cough?  What were his aches and pains?  As I formed my list, an image came to me suddenly -- yes, he was like an iguana!

Hot on the scent, I found some youtube videos of iguanas (for instance, here and here) and wow, there he was.  My old man has the slack neck of the creature, the small dark eyes, the predatory stillness.  He doesn't move like an iguana, but he pauses he's still like one.  In short, the creature helped me by enabling a sense-connection.

Who's to say how we tap our characters?  While I'm sure the iguana isn't the traditional way to go (!) it was my writer's intuition that brought me there.  Whether I'll use the iguana as an image I'm not yet sure, and if I did I'd try to make it understated.  In retrospect, perhaps it was the old man's physical presence I was having problems with, which makes sense considering the physical violence he's bestowed as a character.  Somewhere in my subconscious I didn't want to connect with his body, his skin, or how it felt to be in it.  In short, it was his animal side I was lacking.

So thank you to the natural world.  Iguana...I owe you one.

Conch

I keep forgetting to let you know that I've a short-short, called Conch, in the Grub Street Free Press right now.  If you get the free newspaper, do look me up.  The article is by Stace Budzko, who teaches at Grub and set the exercise in the first place.  Mike Schiavone whose Sweat Angels I love, is also featured.  

More soon.  I have some great quotes to share with you folks.  My reading life at the moment is great.

The Butterfly Effect (In Other Words, Our Chapbook)

My writing friend said to me the other day, "I need you to change the title of your current chapter."  When I asked him why, he said, "Because I've used it already."  Seriously...I'd unwittingly nicked his own chapter-title and passed it for my own.  He knows I did it unconsciously and of course it's also a compliment to his work, but it goes to show how our influences can so often touch us unawares.

Speaking of influence, my writing group and I have written our own flash fiction chapbook, Authors Anonymous.  (Why that title?  You'll have to wait and see...).  The slender little book showcases our work, and reveals how we've influenced each other whilst also valuing our individual voices.  In its way, it speaks to group process and how enriching this can be.  Exciting!  I'll let you know when it finds a home.  

For those who haven't yet heard, chapbooks are neat little volumes, usually containing a set of poems, flashes or just one short story.  They are the smallest of books, with an intimate print-run that captures only a select and meaningful audience.  Plus, with unique little covers and a slim collection of pages, they're an absolute thrill to hold in the hands.

When I ordered a copy of Randall Brown's Mad to Live, I was afraid I'd missed the boat.  A print-run of 1000 means you have to get in there quickly with a chapbook, especially when a writer is as talked-about as Randall.  Fortunately Flume extended the print-run, so I was able to get my paws on a copy; and it was a real privilege: beautiful work.

I'm all for the smaller things -- the touch of an arm, the wink of an eye.  The Butterfly Effect says the movement of an insect's wings in China can cause a storm in NYC.  Well, according to scientific discourse that's not necessarily true (here's a cool blog post) but hell, I'm a writer and I enjoy the metaphor.  The smallest story can make the biggest difference.  

Whispers in the cathedral are more dangerous than gargoyles.

Small things count.  Oh yes.

Blog Down

Folks, I won't be blogging for a couple of weeks.  Hope January is going well for you all.