A Mermaid Story

I came across a site I quite like, and the fellow over there is having a flash fiction writing challenge–a fairy tale upgrade in less than 1,000 words. The site is terribleminds.

The fairy tale upgrade is this.

The Mermaid

There are other fish in the sea and June Mintz is a fish that keeps getting reeled in. She tells herself to swim on by, to ignore the bait, but there is a weakness in heart that makes her bite.

Trent O’Connor lives to sail the sea of love and he is not a man who throws fish back. He has a smile that charms, but that is not what catches June the first time. He looks at her and says things like, “Tell me about that.” He says, “That must have been hard for you.” He says, “You’re a strong person to have gone through all your problems and survived.”

June believes the things he says means he cares. She thinks he is interested in where she has been and where she is going. She hopes that she is going into his arms and into his heart. But these are not the places he wants her to go.

Trent sees the harm he causes no more than a fisherman sees the blood on a hook. He notices, but he forgets. He says he remembers the important things.

This summer is long and hot. No breeze stirs the water. June stands on the pier and looks at the shadows of fish darting under the surface. Trent is talking to another girl back on the grass. The girl is pretty and young, shining in the heat.

The water shows the empty blue sky. June sips her wine and tries to remember why she accepted this party invitation. What fish has ever caught a fisherman?

She wonders how the ocean would feel on her skin. The girl’s laughter drifts over the grass and out over the water. The hot air is hard to breathe. June thinks about how there are so many fishermen in the world with nets and hooks. Every breath gets harder standing on the pier.

Trent is watching the shimmer of the girl’s hair, when the hostess taps him on the shoulder. “Have you seen June?” she asks.

“June? Oh. She’s on the pier.”

“No. Her glass is on the pier. And her purse. But I can’t find her anywhere.”

Trent, the girl, and the hostess walk onto the pier. They stare at the water. Something splashes off in the distance. “Look,” says the girl. “Did you see that fish?”

“I didn’t think there were any fish that size this close to shore,” the hostess said.

“Maybe it’s a mermaid,” Trent said. “I’d sell my soul to catch one of those.”

Coffee, Action Figures, and Love

Yes, my David Lynch coffee and my Captain Jack Harkness action figure

The other day one of my students (remember, my students are all adults) said (with affection) that I was a child inside. This was because I said I was going to the midnight release of the last Harry Potter film.

Since I don’t have any friends who will stay up that late, I’m going on my own–as I’ve done four other times. I went to the midnight release of the last book too.

A few weeks ago I agreed to pay extra money every month so that I could get Starz and see the new Torchwood on Starz.

Oh. And I keep an action figure (usually of Captain Jack Harkness) to take pictures of in different places when I’m out. And these pictures often involve cups of coffee. My son, so far, thinks this is a normal thing to do.

Sometimes I get flak acting this way at my age.

Isn’t Harry Potter for children?
You keep an action figure in your purse? Why? (And “why” is asked in a way that means the speaker isn’t interested in understanding the answer, they just want you to know they think you’re doing something you shouldn’t.)

I also spend an inordinate amount of time making stuff up and not cleaning the apartment.

But you’re not published?

Well, I want to create characters other people love as much as I love Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman. Or Harley Wescott and Lilith Bascombe in The Truth about Unicorns.

I love people who dress up as characters and wait in lines for days. People will say, “Don’t they have anything better to do?” To which I’m tempted ask, “And what better thing are you doing with your life exactly?” What is better if the alternative is staying cool and bored?

Of everything that might be wrong with my writing (odd sentence structure,let’s say, or incoherent plot perhaps), the one thing I really want are characters that stay with people. Characters you’d want to hear from again. Characters people would wait in line for or even want to carry around in a purse.

Not there yet.

What characters would you wait in line for a chance to meet again?

Faking

I got through high school and college without a boyfriend. I had a few dates, but no one you could call a boyfriend. (By boyfriend I mean someone who would actually refer to me as his girlfriend.)

those college days

So after dating (and I use the term loosely) guys who seemed incapable of anything resembling a actual relationship, I was willing to be someone else.

A friend set me up on a blind date–the reason she decided he and I would make a good pair was that he was taller than me, the general belief being that no relationship begins when the woman is taller than the man. Fine. All my blind dates had been based on height.

We went on a double date to see a play, and while sparks didn’t fly, when he called me to ask me out again, I said yes.

The thing about seeing a play is that you don’t talk much. And when you’re on a double date, you can let the other established couple do all the talking. You can end the evening not revealing much about yourself at all.

He showed up for our second date wearing running shoes, jeans, silver belt buckle, and a plaid short-sleeve shirt. I wore a copper-colered silk blouse, dressy black shorts (pleated and almost to the knee), black stockings, and black flats. And he said, “It’s too bad that’s not a skirt.”

My roommate said to him, “The thing you want to say is, ‘You look great.’”

He looked back at me. “You do. You do look great.”

This, I thought, was going to be a wasted evening.

But okay. Open mind! Positive thinking!

Then I had to climb up the steps of his oversized pickup truck with gun rack.

Open mind! Ooo! Look at that red flag! Isn’t it pretty?

When we pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, my mind made a foolish decision. I decided to barely speak to him and to tell him next to nothing myself. I decided not to be me. I would be the way I thought a desirable girl was supposed to be.

I’d be rubbish at it, of course, and he’d never want to see me again.

All through dinner he talked. I’d ordered a salad, which I’d never done before on dates because salads are too girly and I like to eat. I nodded, and said things like, “Really?” and “Hmmm.” and “Oh, interesting.”

He said, “So, you’re working on some kind of paper thing?”

“Yeah. My Master’s thesis–but you know, I like have to do it.”

He changed the subject. “You’re thinking of joining, what is it, the Peace Corps or something?”

I shrugged. “I’ve filled out the paperwork and had my interview.”

“But you might not go, right?”

I shrugged and changed the subject.

At the end of the evening, I let him come upstairs. My roommate wasn’t home. When he said I was amazing, I assumed this was just talk to let him stay until morning. He told me I was the most interesting girl he’d ever met. “Maybe so,” I said, ” But you’re still going to have to leave soon.”

He said he thought I was “the one.”

He said a few more ridiculous things. They were things no one else had ever said to me, the sorts of things a lovestruck boyfriend ought to say. But he wasn’t my boyfriend and after a while I made him leave.

And that, I thought, was that. I’d talked about almost nothing and let him think the night would end differently than it did. And he lived over an hour away. Surely he wouldn’t call back.

Well, he called. A lot. He sent flowers. He sent a teddybear. He sent a poem. He told my friend that he knew I was the right woman for him.

When my friend asked what I had done to the poor guy, all I could say was, “I wasn’t even me!”

I did feel bad I’d led him on, but I hadn’t thought it would actually work.

I was angry though that apparently the only way I could get a guy to pursue me was to lie. From the moment I’d ordered that salad to the moment I kissed him goodnight at the door, I had been faking who I was. The fake me was called amazing.

The real me…not so much.

All these years later I remember this and wonder about my writing. All the rejections and no agent calling me, I wonder–what about my writing should I change? What would make my work desirable? Maybe I should write about completely different things in completely different ways.

I worry that I would have not to be me.

And then! And then I would have an agent.

But it might be an agent who likes teddybears holding heart-shaped balloons.

To Write or Not Write That Sex Scene

Why not fade to black and leave it all to the imagination?

The reader’s imagination is a great thing and shouldn’t be underestimated.

The comments on yesterday’s post made me think about several issues when deciding whether or not to write a sex scene. I’m no expert at writing such things, so this is mostly thinking out loud.

There are all these categories! Porn, soft porn, erotica, romance… Some people may argue that some of of these categories are the same. That may depend on if you think any a picture of a naked lady is always porn that should be hidden in the back of a closet or if it is sometimes art that should be displayed in a gallery.

Strictly speaking I’m not writing a romance. The genre of romance requires the happily ever after ending. So if you want your book to be in that romance section of the book store, you must have a the-couple-gets-together ending. I don’t have that kind of ending.

And I’m not writing a book, but a short story. Still—-there is no happy ending.

Even if I keep the sex scene in the story, I don’t think it qualifies as porn. Porn doesn’t give two fig leafs about relationships and complex emotions. My story is—-or I hope it is—-about my main character’s conflicted feelings.

I don’t think my story qualifies as erotica either. And what, might you ask, is the difference between erotica and porn? I found this interesting perspective here. Since my main character is male and I never say what is going on the minds of either the girlfriend or the other woman, the story doesn’t seem to meet the basic criteria for erotica.

And well, good golly, that’s not what I’m trying to write!

But if you write a sex scene are you automatically in one of these categories? I shouldn’t think so. I hope not.

I find it odd that people who have no hesitation in writing violence—-using various instruments used to puddle brains on the floor—-become squeamish about writing a sex scene. Sex is at least a normal part of life. Most people are going to have sex. Not that many people (one hopes) are going to butcher their neighbors. Of course, it is probably just such familiarity that makes the subject difficult.

Of course, we’ve all heard—-and any glance at advertising will tell you—-sex sells. This isn’t enough of an argument to include a sex scene, unless selling is all you’re interested in. First, there are people who don’t want to read stories with sex scenes. Second, nothing should be in a story that doesn’t reveal character or move the plot.

Well, how a character thinks and feels about sex reveals character, and whether or not the character has sex probably does move the plot.

But in the story I’ve been working on, can the intimate relations between the characters be off-stage?

The tension in the story starts with will he or won’t he cheat on his girlfriend? And I really want the reader to sympathize with my main character. I may loathe the likes of David Vitter and John Edwards (the list is long there, but we don’t have time for that), but I also don’t think every person who cheats is an automatic sleaze. That’s too simplistic. If I’ve done my job, you might think the character an idiot, but you might feel kind of sorry for him.

And I don’t want the reader to think the main character has left his moral conflict at the door.

To up the tension in the story, the main character may very well be caught. Sure, the girlfriend could catch him by finding a letter, lipstick on his collar, or text message, but let’s be honest, that just doesn’t have the immediate drama of being caught in flagrante delicto. I’m not saying he is caught. (spoilers!) But he might be.

And what I would really like if I could pull it off is to create a conflict for the reader—-to want him to get away with what he’s doing but not want him to hurt his very nice girlfriend, to want him to get what he wants but to feel bad for rooting for him.

This isn’t going to be a story for people who live in a black and white universe.

This brings me to a conversation I had with coworkers last week. It was a conversation that got a tad bit out of hand, and it started with the question: what is sex? Trying to come up with an answer led to more questions such as is oral sex sex or is rape sex. I am so not trying to answer those questions here (we didn’t really answer them at work either–thank goodness), but it seems that if you’re going to consider whether or not to write a sex scene, you ought to be clear about what you mean and what that might encompass.

This sure is an awful lot of rambling on for a story that may not even be any good. But at least you’ll know a lot of thought went into it.

Your thoughts would be appreciated!

Slippery Little Bastards

I really good at not writing sex scenes.

I was, after all, raised not talking about lots of things. In fact, by my teenage years, I was an expert at figuring out what my family was not talking about.

The more I didn’t talk about the things, the happier everyone was with me. There have been times in my life where attempting to talk about certain things has rendered me unable to speak at all. And relationships ended badly—-or strangely—-because I would look at them silently. Well, look away from them silently.

Girls are supposed to love talking to their boyfriends about the status of their relationship, right?

If I felt that a relationship needed discussing, I just stopped talking to him all together.

But okay. I’m a writer.

I wrote a fair number of letters. It is my fervent wish that these letters have since been thrown away by the recipients.

So I don’t write letters anymore. I write stories. And in stories certain things must be written! Deep emotions and thoughts and reactions must be expressed!

Such emotions, thoughts, and reactions can be expressed in small gestures—-like handing someone a cup of tea. Or, you know, in sex scenes.

The last few days I’ve been working on a difficult short story. I hate admitting to that because if you read the story you might be mystified as to why I think it is difficult, but my way of looking at things has mystified a lot of people. One more won’t hurt.

But why is the story difficult?

The main character is cheating on his girlfriend. And the story is about his emotions, thoughts, reactions to his infidelity. So, it kind of seems necessary that the infidelity is in the story. Am I wrong about that?

Am I finding the story difficult because I find writing such scenes difficult or because the story is rubbish? I could give up.

But I don’t want to.

Here is where I pull out my hair, hit my head on my desk, and shout, “Stupid words!” Sigh. No. Words aren’t stupid. They’re slippery little bastards.

Maybe the Stars Know

You may belittle horoscopes. As well you probably should because there is no sensible reason to think anything light years away can guide you anywhere in the tiny swath of land that is your life.

All the same, I like my horoscope–and I don’t see why you have to believe something to enjoy it.

Here is my Rob Brezsny horoscope for this week:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): According to the *Guinness Book of World Records,* the longest love letter in history was written by an Indian man named Harish Kondakkuli. The gushing 143-page message took him over three months to complete. Oddly, it was addressed to an imaginary woman, since there was no one in his life he was actually in love with. I encourage you to consider the possibility of exceeding his achievement in the coming weeks, Libra. You’re at the peak of your ability to express wickedly delicious passions and profoundly tender intentions. There may even be a real person, not an imaginary one, who warrants your extravagant outflow.

I’m hoping this means I can write a wickedly delicious passionate story with profoundly tender intentions… What would that story be about?!

Can a story be a love letter?

Well, this posting every day for the month of May is almost over. Thank goodness.

And so is Story-a-Day. Whew. And while my horoscope suggests I could write a 143 page love letter, I could barely manage a proper paragraph for today’s story. Today’s story is, in fact, not the longest but is the most ridiculous. But it’s done!