May is here! And I don’t know what you’re writing these days, but I’m taking a giant stab at Story-A-Day May. I’ve managed it before, but I’m not sure this time how chemo treatments are going to get in the way. To be accurate, how the side-effects are going to get in the way.
But don’t we always have things to get in the way?
I like to post my stories in their rough, rough form over at my other blog The Fairy Tale Asylum. If you’re participating, let me know.
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.”
Have you ever seen something–a garden gate perhaps, a picture hanging on a cafe wall, an odd, unexpected object in an odd and expected place–that made you stop and look again. That stirred your heart, maybe your gut, a place deep within?
I love connecting with a picture, a story, a random object.
Imagine if something I made did the same for someone else. Even if I never publish anything, connecting with someone through something I created would mean wonders.
When I was 16, I read this book, The Truth about Unicorns. I’ve blogged about it before. I loved that book so much, when I got to the end, I went straight back to the beginning and read it again. Why did I love it?
I don’t know.
But that book reached me. Maybe this is problem. I want to write a book like that book made me feel.
Or how Watership Down made me feel.
Or The Phantom Tollbooth.
Mama Day.
But how does one write a book like that?
I don’t know. But that’s why I write. Eight novels and a pile of short stories, and I haven’t written that story yet as far as I can tell. I believe in that story, and one day I’m going to write it.
What book do you aspire to?
I think the loveliest time of the year is the pub date, I do. Don’t you? Course you do!
Wait. What?
(A gold star to whomever gets the reference in my blog post title.)
I’m taking part in Story-a-Day May. Are you? I’ll post the stories over at The Fairy Tale Asylum. At the end of the month I may be locked up with rest of the inmates…
Do you participate in writing challenges?
*
For artists–or rather for parents of artists–remember Youth Tube at Plum Tree Books. We are always looking for submissions of children’s art.
So.
I finished (well, as much as I ever finish) the story I was pontificating about yesterday.
The problem with talking about things is that I leave the conversation wondering why I make such a big deal out of…whatever. Now I feel this story has an impossible burden placed upon it.
At this point I don’t even think I can tell you what the story is actually about.
Why did this story even occur to me? Hey, where do these ideas come from anyway?
Oh well. I’ve got lots of other stories to work on.
Phttht.
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!
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.
I’ve just killed someone. Well, a fictional someone. A fictional character that I quite liked.
She was young. And sympathetic. I wanted her to live, but that seemed…so unlikely. I’ve killed characters before…this one just bothered me more than usual.
Maybe I’ve watched too much of Stranger than Fiction.
Am I killing a character because it makes sense or for shock value or to end the story when I can’t think of anything else?
How do you know?
How many characters have you killed? Do you ever bad about it?
This may be the end.
Well, of the whole National Blog Post Month is over for me. Whew. I tried this a couple of years ago and it may be a couple more years hence before I do it again. Maybe! You never know.
In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out at the roller rink because that is what I do.
my speed skater
The first time he put on a pair of roller skates was at a birthday party. We rented the quad skates (you know, traditional skates), and he got on the rink and fell. He fell. He fell. He fell. He cried. He fell.
He wanted to go back. We went back, and eventually he managed to stay up all the way around the rink. Then he saw Rollerblades. We rented Rollerblades. He didn’t fall so much. He got faster. He began participating in the open session races–the races during regular public skates times, races that are just for fun, and where most participants stumble along and barely stay up. He began winning all those races–until speed skaters showed up.
“Mom, can I do that?”
I saw how fast the teenage speed skaters went around the rink. “You don’t really want to do that, do you?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Rollerskates (yes, that’s what all the kids call him and he gives skate lessons) encouraged my son to talk to the speed skate coach. The coach said he’d seen him skating during open session, and sure, he could come watch a practice any time.
I rather hoped that the first time my son saw a serious spill, he’d change his mind.
The coach lent us a pair of speed skates (because they are insanely expensive and you want to be sure you’re going to stick with it before spending that kind of money).
My son goes to every practice–4 days a week. Usually two hours at a time. Practices are boys, girls, women, and men. Ages 5 to 50. At meets you only get a medal if you place. Lots of kids and grownups go home without medals. They don’t give ribbons or anything for showing or participating or for being a good sport. If you win, you get your medal (sometimes trophy!). If you lose, then practice more.
racing
He has fallen and lost skin. He has fallen on his face. He has been kicked by skates. He has seen other skaters lose skin to the floor. Bloody patches the size of a baseball. Bruises. Twisted ankles. Pile ups. Crashes into walls.
My son is 8.
My nerves are getting stronger.
Speed skating is not a popular sport around here and most people have no idea what we’re talking about. My son is the only kid at his school who speed skates. Roller skate, sure. Other parents look at me as if I’m nuts. And there is no skate season. Skate practice is all year round.
But you can see the writing metaphor here, can’t you?
You start writing. Stories fail. You keep writing. You practice regularly! You might win–publication! You might (most likely) get nothing. Practice more! And other people will look at you as if you’re nuts. You may not literally bleed (should hope not!), but metaphorically you will. And it’s all year round.
What isn’t all year round (thank the merciful heavens) is Story-a-Day May. But that crazy month is over and I’ve written story 31! This doesn’t mean I’m done writing stories, of course. (Of course!) But tomorrow starts The Summer of Submission.
Write. Edit. Submit. Write. Edit. Submit. Write. Edit. Submit. Around and around we go.
What are you submitting these days? Come on. Put on your crash helmet and go!
I may be excited.
my art of the imaginary lake
No. Definitely.
I have story and my art published over at Scheherezade’s Bequest! Please take a look.
The online journal has lots of great stories and links.
Wahoo!
And as always, I’m putting up some of my other stories over at The Imaginary Lake.
Thanks to everyone who has encouraged and supported me. And you keep writing too.
