Wet Ink

You Are What You Love

What a day.  It was in danger of becoming quite bleak.  Constant rain and fuggy vision.  Well, to hell with it all.  So I cheered myself up with one of my favourite excerpts, which I thought I might as well share with you (spread the love, as it were).  This is from Adaptation, by Charlie Kauffman and Donald Kauffman, adapted from the book, The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean.  In the (fictional) film, Charlie and Donald play themselves -- brothers:

Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.

Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.

Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.

Donald Kaufman: I remember that.

Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.

Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.

Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?

Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.

Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.

Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

Donald Kaufman: What's up?

Charlie Kaufman: Thank you.

Donald Kaufman: For what?

What I love about the excerpt?  People will always either like or disapprove of us, but all we have to worry about is whether we like or disapprove of them -- in fact, a lot of the time, that's all we have control of!

The Secret Skin on Water

The first Science lesson I ever had involved each of us taking a beaker full of water and adding pipette drops until the level rose above the rim.  This, our teacher instructed us, as the water bloomed but did not spill, showed the skin that keeps the liquid in place.  I was fascinated by this newfound boundary, which proved things weren't as they seemed.

These days, as a writer, I’m still awed by secret skins: those boundaries that keep us feeling safe, with the hope that, if we ever break them, we won’t burst wide open.  It strikes me that most characters have something that keeps them separate from the world, and those who have no such secret skin are in danger of being hurt.  In fact, when I was a kid watching the British sitcom, Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em, I used to laugh at Michael Crawford’s character in spite of my awareness that I must strive to be stronger than him – his edges were so blurred.

 I remind myself, as I go through life, that part of my secret skin is my writing.  It keeps me grounded, safe and sane, separating me from others, and yet, in some ways, bringing me closer.

New Authors Anonymous Flash of the Week

On Becoming a Bird by Emily Darrell is the new Authors Anonymous Flash of the Week.  Lovely stuff.  You can read our flash review here. 

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

I was recently selecting texts for my upcoming Grub Street writing seminar, "Go Deeper, Baby:  Writing Meaningful Erotica."  For those of you who are taking the course, I don't want to ruin the night itself, but here are a few sneak-previews from the work of writers we'll be looking at.  All of these particular excerpts revolve around kissing -- a powerful and often overlooked erotic gesture:

From Lilian Ann Slugocki's Marilyn Monroe:  

"That's what I want: a crushing, crushing kiss.  Milk the sadness from my bones, baby.  On a bed of dandelions, baby."

From Erin Cressida Wilson's Kiss, Don't Kiss:  

"I pulled the belt loops of his painter's pants toward me, and we hovered our mouths over each other's for seconds, minutes -- then hours -- as we wanted to make the moment before the first kiss last all night long."

From Anais Nin's Fire: From a Journal of Love:  

"Midnight.  Candlelight.  A room that was Mother's--now our own.  Gonzalo's cigarette butts and ashes strewn all over.  Gonzalo's clothes on the floor, all but the white underdrawers which he never takes off except in the dark.  The pudeur of Gonzalo.  Body worship.  He kisses my feet.  Adores my feet.  Kisses my legs.  Adores my legs.  The strength of them.  Kisses one all over.  Delights over the shadows, the curves.  Raves about the space between my eyes."

From a scene in Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, in which a lady and her maid kiss for the first time:  

"Her lips part, also.  Her tongue comes between them and touches mine.  And at that, I shudder, or quiver.  For it is like the finding out of something raw, the troubling of a wound, a nerve.  She feels me jolt, and draws away -- but slowly, slowly and unwillingly, so that our damp mouths seem to cling together and, as they part, to tear."

No wonder The Cure decided to draw on such an erotic gesture when titling one of their albums, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.  Their music was a big part of my teenage years -- by turns, both vulnerable and rebellious, like the act of kissing itself.

Well, I hope to see you on the night of Wednesday April 7th, when we'll write about kissing and more.  (What fun!).

--

To read more about Go Deeper, Baby: Writing Meaningful Erotica, you can find seminar details on this page.

The Artist, the Villain, and the Shrink

At KL Pereira's brilliant Grub seminar "Crafting the Villain," I decided to work on the villainous side of my novel's antihero.  It was a vibrant, inspiring evening, in which we considered complexity and darkness.  One of the many helpful tasks was to list our villain's negative and positive qualities -- and this led us into a drawing / visualisation task, which I'll blog about some other time.

What intrigued me about my own antihero was how complicated the list of positives and negatives was.  The beauty of an activity like this is how it forces you to question your own creation.  Several times, I wrote down a characteristic as a negative, then wrote beside it "can be positive too," and vice versa.  For instance, Hal, my antihero, is controlling -- an attribute that can make him selfish and cruel.  However, his controlling nature makes him a brilliant artist capable of crafting to the highest degree, and it also means he's a fierce defender of those he loves -- he will not have them sullied, unless he wills it so.

Interestingly, I've recently started transferring this kind of task to my life as a whole.  Jung talks about our Shadow as being part of our creative selves: a dark drive can be transformed into a positive through the creative process.  Though we can't make anger instantly dissolve, we can use it to transform the world by marching with a banner, righting wrongs, standing up for the values we hold dear.  In fact, if we never felt enraged into action, we mightn't create half as much as we do.  "...when I was angry at something," said Anais Nin, "for example when I first came back to America and nobody would publish me -- instead of getting angry and then bitter and turning in, I bought a press and published a book.  This is what I mean by converting."*

Me, when I'm stressed I get controlling.  I start to fear for the future -- I want my life to be a certain way, and I'm worried I might not make it so.  When I see this all too clearly, I sometimes despair; but the truth is, this control is also part of my creativity.  It's what leads to me to craft my language until I feel it sings; it's what helps me to sit at the computer for hours; it makes me plumb my own talent, and it helps me understand those who are more controlling than I am or let it out in different ways.  Strangely, this controlling side means I become determined to let go, hard as this may seem, because the other side of control is creative will.

KL urged us to remember that even the cruelest villain can contain a glimmer of light.  In fact, that soft edge of humanity is what can make them relatable and, ultimately, more frightening.  How wise she is.  Through the very same process, I argue, we can come to understand our own darkness.  If our controlling side can also liberate, perhaps an urge for cruelty can even tap kindness?

Creativity, baby.  It's magic.

--

*Quoted from Anais Nin's Refusal to Despair, in A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin

Safe

The other Friday I was walking home to catch the midnight train from North Station, and as I stepped through the dark area round Haymarket T, I heard footsteps behind me.  There was no one around.  The streets were bare.  And suddenly there was a man yelling at me.  He stepped right in front of me so I couldn't pass -- so close I thought he was about to attack me -- and he yelled into my face, with frantic eyes, "I need to know how you do things round here.  How you do things round here.  How you do things."

I told him, very calmly, that I wasn't from around here myself.  And then, I stepped back, out of his space, saying, "I have a train to catch."  I walked right round him because he was in my way.

That's when he really lost it.

He started calling me all sorts of dreadful things, alluding to my sexuality, making clear he felt he owned it.  Then, following me, he cried, "You feel safe now, do you, bitch?  You feel safe now, do you?"

I strode on, could see people around me, but I could still hear him shouting in my wake.  I dialed a friend's number and had him talk with me for a while, mainly to bring myself back into balance.  Then the shouting had stopped and I felt safer.

I'm writing this down for two reasons.  Firstly, if it's late and you're around the North End, about to walk past Haymarket T, make sure there are plenty of people around -- otherwise, call a cab.  Secondly, when we write about things, we own and control them more fully.  I was sickened and a little shaken by what happened, but I knew I was okay.  

He wasn't okay though.  Far from it.

Walking on Eggshells, by Carrie Kei Heim Binas

By the way, do check out Carrie Kei Heim Binas's Walking on Eggshells, which is now up at Boston Literary Magazine.  Carrie was in the class KL and I recently taught (Monsters and Mayhem at Grub Street) and is a most talented writer.  Bravo, Carrie.  It's a great piece!

Activist? Really?

On Monday, along with my writing friend, Mike Schiavone, I attended Ethan Gilsdorf's Grub Street seminar on Guerrilla Book Promotion.  Ethan raised many wonderful strategies, but I was also struck by a comment someone made about royalties and money.  High earnings?  For writers?  We all thought that was a hoot.  

The thought of "art versus money" reminded me of a recent chat with my friend, KL Pereira, about how I wish I'd been more of an activist, to date.  "I've only marched with a banner twice," I explained.  She gave me a nudge.  "What about Art2Art?" she said.  "That's activism.  And the way you write erotica?  And speak out about sexuality?"  These, she argued, are active and out-there.  And she's right.  I believe that the world would be a more peaceful, thoughtful and respectful place if we put greater emphasis on creativity and stopped denying the importance of sexuality.  At Art2Art, I go so far as to stand on a soapbox about self-expression.  (Just for a moment, though.  We're there for the art, not my rant.  Snort).

Interestingly, I've often been told I'd suit a career in advertising, though the suggestion is usually made with my imaginative energy in mind.  While I'm a big fan of several adverts (Guinness?  White horses?  Wowzers!), I couldn't bring myself to promote whatever I was given.  In order to become brazen about getting people to accept something, I have to believe in whatever that "something" is.  And brazen, my friends, is what I become when I talk about respecting our creative needs.

If you, like me, feel this way about creative expression, then consider calling yourself an arts activist.  Why not?  I think I might bring out our more extraverted sides!  Activism has gained a strange connotation, I think, of being violent, crazed and stormy...  But that ain't my take.  As arts activists, we can stand on a soapbox about our work, sing about art, wave a banner...or the quieter among us can simply start more gently, maybe getting a web presence, for instance, and letting others know we're there.  Whatever our chosen level, it's all about being active on behalf of the projects we love.  

After all, isn't that all activism is?  Seeking to change things, with a passion?

Art, Embedded

Today, Sue Williams, techno-whizz extraordinaire, learned how to embed videos into Blogger-type blogs.  This means you can now view the youtube vids of writer Randy Ross, stand-up comedian Jerry Fireman, and writer Stace Budzko, on the Art2Art site.  Nice work, guys.

Embedding.  Lovely word.  Romantic, don't you think?

You Can Never Own Too Many Hats

We all know that reading for pleasure is important in itself, yet no matter how enjoyable a friend's draft may be, we'll look at it in a different way to a novel we bought in a bookshop.  Not only is that vital, it's also good for our development!  Back when I trained as a teacher, one of the first things we were taught was that learning is deeper when it's active.  So if you read a piece with an aim in your head (e.g. to make edits or see what works) you interact with it more fully than if you're simply following the story.  In other words, we learn more when we know why we're doing something.  It's all about activity and role.  

Part of my job as an editor involves reading book-length manuscripts and considering whether they'd be suitable for publication -- a different process to assessing shorter fiction.  It becomes vital to keep the arc of the whole book in your head.  Whether I reject or promote, I have to write a short report, so I'm always looking for evidence of what works and what doesn't.  If I lose myself in a manuscript and forget my editor's role, that, my friends, is a very good sign.

Those of us who cross genres often own another hat.  Having seen how erotic writing is so often spoken down, I still don't widely publicize my pen name.  If you want to know it badly enough, I'm sure you can find it out, but I should think this requires a fair bit of work.  Besides, the benefits of having a pen name are huge!  When I'm wearing my erotica hat, I feel utterly free to express myself -- I'm direct, full of feeling, attuned to sensation; there's no fear in me at all.  I even think I possess a different voice.  I'm still accountable, of course, because the name is legally mine, but I know I am free to reach my given audience without offending those who'd only read my literary work.  Truly, I think my erotic fiction is more daring and in-tune because I write using a pen name. 

I should add that I'm a fan of real hats, too.  I've got this fabulous pageboy cap that I tuck my hair into, and it always makes me feel slightly cheeky.  Who knows...maybe when I don it of a morning, the work that tumbles out of me is especially impish.  ;)

P.S. Speaking of other hats, my writing group's chapbook blog, Authors Anonymous, now has some exciting new links to film and stories.  We also have a new Flash of the Week!  Tadaaaa!