Wet Ink

To Jot or Not to Jot?

I went to Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference last Sunday.  A terrific day for enthusing.  But what I often find at a great conference is there's just so much to scribble down.  "That's a good point," I think in seminar 1.  "So's that," I add, half a second later, and I spend the whole day jotting and not truly basking in the moment.  

What I've found in the past few years is that important points stay with me, especially if I've listened in a really present way.  Often, being a feeling-type, my thinking's driven by passion, or enthusiasm, or anger, or another immediate mood.  The more space I give myself to feel, the better my absorption and clarity of mind.  Oh, if you knew how often I've urged students to just listen!  Young folks sometimes think, because of what they've been taught about rules, that listening equals sitting in silence.  They literally don't understand what it is to actively listen.  And it takes a good teacher to educate them this way.

My favourite session of the day was a Flash Fiction panel, led by editor Tara Masih  of Rose Metal Press. She gave a brilliant introduction on the rise of Flash, (did you know the first short-short was in a women's magazine?).  As the discussion commenced and the speakers joined in (Dinty W. Moore, Stace Budzko, Pamela Painter, Steve Almond ), I found myself swept up by their passion for this form, its compression, its ache for structure, and it's short, intense gasps.  I didn't scribble one single note, just kept myself with these marvelous speakers.  And I swear, I left proud, with a book list in my head.

Had I sat there, doggedly taking notes, I'd have given myself less space to feel.  Perhaps you're a feeling type like me, or maybe you're led by your thinking.  We all have both, but one can drive the other, and I find it's useful to know how I work.*  Notes can be great.  I'm not cussing them.  I'm just saying it's good to know why you're at a conference.  Me, I needed inspiring, picking up.  And that was more important than a range of notes and facts.

And know what?  Thanks to Stace's "Jumpstart Your Writing", the scribbling I did do was creative.  I left the building with a flash piece of my own.  I'd call that productive, wouldn't you?

--

*If you'd like to find out more about whether you're primarily driven by your thinking or feeling, you can take a slimmed down version of the Myers Briggs personality type test here.  If you come out with a T in your result, your feeling is probably driven by your thinking (in other words, your thinking can enable your feeling, and it's what you naturally tend to do first).  Similarly, if you come out with an F in your result, your thinking is probably driven by your feelings.  Remember though, typologies, though useful, are a rough guide -- you can change in your life, and you can also change in your  mood!  Plus the real test is far more detailed.  If your result doesn't feel/seem right, then perhaps it isn't.  Always important to remember that -- psychodynamics isn't the only theory out there.

Close as Scent

I spend a lot of time trying to describe scent in my writing, particularly when working on scenes that involve intimacy.  Of course, there are whole novels where this sense is central.  Take Patrick Suskind's incredible Perfume, where a man with an unusually sensitive nose becomes obsessed with a woman's natural aroma; or Lily Prior's Nectar, a zany erotic novel in which the protagonist's extraordinary pheremones force those nearby to fall deeply in lust.

I met a woman on a train who'd just split up from her partner.  She seemed desperate to talk about it and opened up easily, saying it was never right anyway - she could tell from his scent.  "He just didn't smell like I wanted him to.  I'm not talking about aftershave, or lotion, or sex.  I just mean when we were together, the way his skin smelt."  This, she claimed, showed they just weren't suited in an intuitive, chemical way.  She went on to tell me what she'd heard about child bonding.  "Many parents like how their babies smell," she said.  "The kids give off pheremones.  It makes their carers stay close."

Yeah.  Perhaps we don't give scent enough credit.

But smells are hard to describe.  What is in that aftershave that draws you so?  What's the stink in that cheese that makes you throw it out?  Words are wonderful, but not always substantial... though I'm guessing there is a way of describing most scents, which, when it's done well, is powerful.  In Karen Russell's short story,  St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, the pack of girls, who were raised by werewolves, describe the home where they're being trained in human behaviour:

"Everything was smudged with a human odor: baking bread, petrol, the nuns' faint woman-smell sweating out beneath a dark perfume of tallow and incense."  

I love the mix of specifics in here, and the way they create such a strong sense of scent.  I'd never have thought of putting tallow, petrol, sweat and dark perfume together, but by doing so, Russell gives an intense impression of a life navigated by smell.

I remember being in a strange city when I was sixteen, and as stood staring at a dress in a shop, someone behind me covered my eyes.  It was one of those games of the time -- Guess who I am.  Though I was about to say, "I give up," I got a sudden drift of perfume, and in that moment, all became so clear.  "Sarah?" I said, and I was right.

It was a funny moment.  She was the last person I'd expect to see in the middle of Peterborough Shopping Centre.  No wonder she looked so agog.  It made me laugh.  How had I known it was her, she asked.  It's not like I could see her.

It ain't all about sight.  We seeing folk forget that, at times.

Greatest Uncommon Denominator / Field Guide Flashes

I just had "How to Recover from a Hundred-Year Sleep" accepted by Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine (GUD). Lovely news.  The piece is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with a twist.  Many thanks to those of you who read and helped me edit.  The story will be published in Spring 2010 (Issue 6).

Don't they have great cover art?

Also, Tara Masih has posted my story, Filthy Little Things.  It's displayed beneath the exercise that prompted it, which was created by Stace Budzko, a close friend and highly talented teacher-writer.  This task of Stace's is excerpted from a book forthcoming by Rose Metal Press called "The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction", ed. by Tara Masih.  Check out Stace's prompt and my story here.  You can also buy the book!

Know-It-Already

"What's the point of telling a story everyone already knows?"  It was HP again, aged 13, know-it-all supreme in Class 9B English.  His boots were on his desk, his ankles crossed, an eyebrow cruelly sloped.

I said if he took his feet down, I'd try to explain.

He granted me the favour, with a snort.

My answer went something like this:  Changing a story that your reader knows already can comment on that story in a whole new way.  Also, you can create an inner-circle of readers, and those of us with knowledge of the original version will understand the irony you bring.  How satisfying that is!  For a moment, we're like spies.

That word -- spies -- made the whole class sit forward.  Lily W. cracked her gum.

The class already knew the tale of Icarus who, through his pride, created a pair of wax wings.  You know the story yourself, perhaps?  He flew too close to the sun and of course, the wax melted.  After a quick recap, I read 9B "Mrs. Icarus" by Carol Ann Duffy.  In this poem, the narrator claims she isn't the first "to stand on a hillock, / watching the man she married / prove to the world / he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock."

It took me a long time to quell 9B's laughter.  Even HP gave his neighbour a nudge.

Years later, when 9B had become 11S, we'd have stories of our own.  I'd be able to tease HP about the time he fell off his chair, and he'd rib me about the fact I'd always called him "outrageous".  When he left for college, he'd peck me on the cheek and say I was the only teacher who'd ever made him laugh.  See, stories aren't just about fairy tales and books, and sections in the paper, and soaps on the box.  They're about relating.  Being a group.

And that day HP laughed about Icarus, I saw something new in those eyes.

Flowers for the PA

When I was young, my father employed me as a filing clerk in his office.  This job was so darn boring that the occasional bout of typing, albeit standard letters, felt like a privilege.  In fact, the first work I had where I wasn't employed by Dad was in a trashy clothes store when I first moved to Cambridge.  Here, I was expected to learn all sorts of codes.  Knickers, I remember, were always 33.  Socks were always 1.  Shirts?  I forget.  This was the info you typed into the cash till so the item's price would pop up on the screen.

Since then, I've worked as a teacher, a freelance writer, an educational freelancer, a proof reader of crosswords, a nursery assistant (that's kids not plants), a National Examiner, and an assistant ed. for a literary magazine.

But it was only as a teacher that I ever had a secretary, and even then the admin staff were so overloaded that most of the work stayed with us.

As writers, we have to keep our own records, type our own letters, proof our own work.  When our computers crash, we try and fix them.  When our ink runs out, we buy the cartridges ourselves.  And are our inner assistants paid?  Are they heck.

So I mark today as Inner PA Day.  Take that secretary you can't live without for a coffee or a glass of wine or something even stronger.  Chocolate cake?  Do it.  Ice skating?  Sure.  

Because if you don't value your staff, what you got to go on?  It's a well-known fact.  Look after your own. 

Knickers, Knickers, All the Way

As a Brit, I can't stand the word "panties".  For me, such items are knickers or pants.  But of course, if you're American, knickers are old-fashioned things that come down to your knees: Victorian attire, not modern-day undies.  Naturally, pants in US-speak are what we Brits commonly know as trousers.  (I'll never forget a Brit mate of mine chortling away when an American friend announced she'd be wearing black pants tonight.  "Too much information," he joked.  "Keep it to yourself.")

But for many English folk, the word "panties" is slightly unsavoury.  There's a dash of the pornographic about it.  Decent women wear pants.  Scarlet women wear panties.  It's the kind of word that makes your solid British lass go, "Ew."  

So here I am in Boston, USA, often writing erotic tales for US readers, and whenever I use the word panties, something inside me cringes.  I'm perfectly fine when the underwear comes off and I don't bat an eyelid when the spanking begins.  But the word "panties"?  It don't feel right.  Oh, I've forced my characters to wear little lycra shorts, thongs (oh, many a time), bikini briefs and such, when really I want them to be wearing knickers because, guys and gals, that's my natural word.

Truth is, if you're writing for a different audience, it's hard to work out where you end and they begin.  Do you sacrifice your own word for their enjoyment?  Or do you stick to your guns and feel easier about it?  These days, I don't feel comfortable with either "panties" or "knickers", but I tend to use the former if I have to make a choice.  Why?  Because I'm subbing to a US editor who might well be thrown into confusion.  Clarity is important.  Without it, a reader loses out. (And let's face it, my dear US friends, for you "knickers" ain't sexy).

I will say this.  If a narrator I'm working with has an obviously British voice -- the sort you expect to be rich with dialect -- it's knickers, knickers all the way.

And perhaps, after a while, I'll get used to the word panties.  If I just keep writing it.

Panties, panties...

Ew.

As Her Fingers Crush the Metal Jug

There's an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer  called Graduation Day, in which Buffy cures Angel (the vampire she loves) by feeding him her blood.  He's sick, has little control, and together they collapse as he drinks at her neck in a frenzy.  Angel, I should add, falls between Buffy's thighs.  As he drinks, she grabs a metal jug that tumbled during the struggle and, being a girl with super-strength begins to crush it -- a sign of the torment she's in.  Her fingers indent the metal, deforming it, squeezing it down.  

Of course, it's widely accepted that the vampire motif represents, in part, the carnal side of desire; and Whedon and team play on this brilliantly.  Safe to say the scene is intentionally erotic.  Hell, it's downright suggestive.  But the sexiest action, in my opinion, is the crushing of the jug.  The teeth on the neck?  Well, yes.  The fact he falls on her in such a position?  Obvious stuff.  But her hand crushing that metal jug?  It communicates an extreme and it does so through action, which is why, I argue, it has such a potent effect. 

The reason I'm yabbering on about this (ooh, the spell check doesn't like that,) is because I recently read an erotic story by a writer unknown to me.  I'm not going to rat on her -- the story wasn't so bad -- and suffice it to say the book will have sold well.  But what snapped me out was how often she focused on object. She referred to what was being touched over and over again, and regularly spotlighted how that object felt.  (Nipples hardening, that kind of thing).  Here's my take:  The arching of a spine, the clutching of a sheet, the rolling of a body -- these make a scene erotic.  And if these movements can also suggest sensation... well, you're sold.

So, out of the following simple sentences, which is more sensuous?

"His hand was on my thigh."

"His hand moved up my thigh."

"His hand slid up my thigh."

My thoughts:  The first achieves no movement and hardly any sensation.  The fact the last two put the stress on the verb, providing a sense of movement, makes them more effective.  But in the final one, the verb provides not only movement but also sensation.  That's what makes it more apt.  We're focused in on the action because the verb does so much work.

On a similar rant, when you use a cliche you immediately snap out the reader.  So describing a climactic moment as a bursting dam, just serves to make me giggle.  Not only has it been used too many times, but it also relies on exaggeration to communicate an extreme -- never could a climax be truly akin to a bursting dam.  (If it were, we'd have to call the fire brigade or something.  Snort.)

This is why Buffy's hand, as it squeezes the metal jug, is sexier than naming a body part.  It shows rather than telling; it communicates sensation; it takes us to an extreme without the use of cliche.  

And darn, it works.

P.S. It just occurred to me to add that context is important too.  Sometimes "His hand was on my thigh" is far preferable to the others because it suits the context.

Who to Please?

Last night, Wayne, Jerry and myself ran the third Art2Art.  It was a wonderful evening and a real pleasure to host, though as in any event of this size, there were naturally stresses.  As I dashed from A to B, trying to work out how to deal with the lost items, how to organise the acts, and what to do about the folks who'd pulled out with no warning, the problems of my writing were what burst to the fore.  How, I found myself asking, can I write this novel?  At times, it seems so complex, and yet I can't stop.

This comes after a difficult week in which I feel I've lost my inner compass.  My stoical writing group have been reading my novel two chapters at a time, and the feedback I'm getting is conflicting.  They're a talented bunch of readers who are faithful to the cause -- and this has nothing to do with their gifted insights -- but the takes of these four folks, right at this moment, differ so dramatically I don't know where to turn.  From "I wouldn't change a thing" to "I'd change the whole lot", I'm left with the question:  Who am I to please?  

And the answer, of course, must ultimately be myself.

Two dear friends, Cathy and Steve, have given me this advice.  Work for yourself first, then later, open the door.  This is described beautifully by Stephen King in his wonderful book, "On Writing".  First, he says, we must write "with the door shut".  In other words, the opinions of others mustn't be sought.  Only in this quietness can we find our real characters and the real words to express them.  Later, when we've let the book rest and come to it with fresh eyes -- only then, should we consult another.

I've made the decision that I need to shut the door.  I opened it too early.  Time for some calm.

And isn't it interesting that, while running around at Art2Art, this writing problem was what burst to the fore?  Once I'd chatted it through and gained a little insight, I was able to sit back and enjoy what was for the most part an extremely enjoyable night!  

Sharing, when it's time, is the most pleasurable of things!