WRITING GENDER–HUMANITY SUPERSEDES

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Not long ago, I was listening to  Krista Tippet’s National Public Radio show, On Being.  Tippet was interviewing Joy Ladin, a transgender individual, about her journey between genders.  Ms. Ladin discussed her acute observations of the outward ways in which gender is expressed–of her need, before coming to terms with her inner self, to model the observed masculine and avoid what she thought was feminine and then, when she made the change from male to female, the need consciously to observe and model the outward ways  in which women move and express themselves. (As an example, she noted her observation that women tend to use their hands when speaking and men tend not to.)

I know very little about transgender issues (other than the threat to transgender people by those who hate).  I would never be so presumptuous as to write about the matters they must deal with emotionally, psychologically, physically, or societally, and I have not raised the Joy Ladin interview here in order to do so.  (I do recommend that people listen to the interview, linked above, to gain some insight.)  But, while it makes perfect sense that, in Ms. Ladin’s circumstances, she looked to outward cues to determine how to pass or function as one gender or the other in society, it troubles me that society creates such narrow strictures of what constitutes masculinity and femininity.  And, as I listened to Ms. Ladin speak, it reminded me of how these strictures tend to affect even the ways in which writers deal with characters in fiction.

Some writers express insecurity about writing from the point of view of the opposite sex.  I am reminded of one male author’s delighted amazement at my ability to embody male as well as female characters in my novel, Tinker’s Damn.

I am also reminded of a prospective agent’s reaction to another novel of mine in which the female protagonist was an IRA bombmaker trying to get a former cohort to observe a truce with the British.  That agent asked:  Does she ever wear a dress?  Does she ever think about marriage or wish she had children? –As if, in the middle of an encounter that will affect world events, the character should stop and ruminate on wearing dresses and having kids?  Indeed, one of the reasons I wrote the novel was to create a female counterpart to the male anti-heroes of the genre–someone of tough mind and integrity, and an ability to handle hairy situations.  Why, in an international thriller, should such a female protagonist, any more than her male counterparts, spend time considering  her personal domestic issues?

When, in irritation, I mentioned the agent’s questions to a writer-friend who happens to be a Lesbian, she replied, “well, you could just go all the way and make her a Lesbian.”  I’m sure this was an off-hand reply, meant either with a bit of humor or without giving great thought to it.  But, I have wondered since whether my friend realized that her statement was feeding into a stereotype of what it is to be gay or straight, as well as male or female.

There are all these exasperating myths out there of what it is to be manly or womanly:  men like to fight, women like to talk; women are the nurturers, men are the aggressors; men want to solve problems, women want someone to just listen; men are logical, women are intuitive.

I believe that our common humanity comes FIRST.  The rest are just trappings and societal constructions.  Fiction can reflect and reinforce these trappings and constructions, or it can be a tool to change them.  And not only by writing stories about characters fighting the strictures society places upon them, but by creating characters that, by their mere existence, defy those societal definitions.  (To paraphrase the film Field of Dreams, if you write them, they will come?)

I believe that human motivations are universal.  You can create any kind of man and any kind of woman and still have them be believable so long as you capture the essential humanity that will govern their response to their given circumstances.

Humanity comes before gender.

‘TIS THE SEASON

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Happy Chanukah.  Merry Christmas.  Happy New Year.

‘Tis the season, and I am lazy.  So, instead of a new, original post, I shall post a playful poem published long ago in The Boston Jewish Times.  Once upon a time, there was a Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin.  His name was Robert Briscoe.  Briscoe had been a follower of De Valera in Ireland’s struggle for independence, and later gave advice to Palestinian Jews in their parallel struggle against British rule and for statehood.  With that very brief background, I present to you:

ROBERT BRISCOE’S CHANUKAH

They had gathered for
The Feast of Lights,
And with the last
Morsel eaten,
And a drop of wine taken,
Robert Briscoe stood
And spoke.

“I’ll tell you a tale
Of raids by night.
Of daring deeds.
Of a hero’s fight.
Of battles waged
Against great armies
By the Maccabee
Of old.”

With a gasp and a sigh
The children round
Eyed him with anticipation,
While bold Bob Briscoe
Rubbed his hands
As he prepared to begin
His grand narration.

“In the time
Of Antiochus the Fourth,
And in the time
Of Henry the Eighth,
And in the time
Of George the Sixth,
If the truth be known…
The children of Israel
Had to hide behind hedgerows
To learn their aleph-bet.
For to learn one’s
Language and religion then
Could not be done
Without let
Or hindrance.”

From the back of the room
Came a familiar groan
Of a man.
“You’re telling it wrong,”
Muttered Cohen Cohan.

But, Bob Briscoe went on.

“It was forty thousand footmen
The evil king sent
To keep the Irish down,
And the Jew’s head bent.”

“Give it up!” moaned Cohan,

But, Bob wouldn’t relent.

“There were Judah, Eleazar,
And Simon, and John.
De Valera and Collins
And Begin, Dayan…”
Briscoe counted them out
On the palm of his hand.

“You’ve mixed it all up!”
Cried out Cohen Cohan.
“De Valera and Begin!
They’re not Maccabees!”

“Never mind,”said bold Briscoe,
“I know what I know.
For Begin and Dev
I’ve struck many the blow.
For Israel and Ireland
And the true rights of man…”

“But they’re not Maccabees!!”
Shouted Cohen Cohan.

Briscoe replied
With a dangerous ease,
“Who’s telling this tale
My good man, you or me?
Such a klop I should give
To the side of your head!”

“Such a klop you should give?”
Said Cohen Cohan,
His whole face turning red.
“When you turn all our
History inside out?”

Then, rejoined Briscoe
Turning about,
“Fenian, Israeli
Or bold Maccabee,
When the fight’s on
For freedom,
It’s all one to me.”

Bold Bobby Briscoe
Never finished his tale
Which Cohan had decried
As beyond the Pale.
But the Tuatha de Danaan
And the Tribe of the Dan
All circled round,
And joining their hands,
Danced round and round
In the flickering light
Of a grand menorah
Still burning bright
Throughout that
Eighth night.

Yes,DSCN1056

© Copyright-1992-Jessie Seigel.  All rights reserved.

THE ACTOR CAN TEACH THE WRITER…

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I just finished taking an introduction to acting class at The Theatre Lab on Eighth Street near Gallery Place.  The instructor’s lessons in how an actor approaches a script also serve as good advice for someone writing fiction–perhaps more applicable to plays, but definitely applicable to novels and short stories as well.  Here is his advice for acting:

1. examine the “given circumstances;” that is, the conditions that exist and events that occur before the play begins, and the conditions and events that will presumably occur after the play’s end (as well, of course, as examining the events occurring in the story (ie., on stage);

2. determine the various characters’ super-objectives (what is the large thing they want all through the play?);

3.  determine each character’s immediate objective in each scene.  (The principle is that in any given scene, each person wants something from the other, something that he or she wants the other to do.  The something must be tangible, although it may be very small, and may represent something intangible.  In a play, it must be something the audience can see.  And, of course, one does not necessarily get what they are after–that’s what presents the conflict necessary to drama );

4.  determine each character’s tactics or strategy (the small actions we take to try to obtain the objective; eg., flattery, bullying, bargaining, etc.); and

5. for each line, ask not how one says the line, but why one is saying it.  (The how will ultimately arrive from an examination of that question.)

Although these precepts are meant for an actor’s interpretation of a script, I think they can also, with small adjustments, serve the novel and story writer well, most especially in revision.  Items #1 and #2 are a given.  But novice writers can get lost in a scene, lose the sense of what a character most immediately wants from the other character, and how that relates to the character’s super-objective and fits into the whole of the story.  Keeping items #3, #4, and #5 in mind can help the writer sharpen such scenes.

 

BOO!

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When I was a child, I NEVER liked to watch horror movies or read horror stories.  (And yes, I am treating film on an equal footing with written stories here.  After all, film is also, in part, a written art-form.)  I did not like to be scared, or be kept awake at night in fear of things that I knew were imaginary but that gave me the willies nevertheless.  Fairly recently, however, I discovered the pleasure of watching horror movies on television where, now that I am well into adulthood, they do not scare, but amuse or interest me.

I much prefer the horror stories based on the idea of the supernatural since I don’t really believe in them.  I generally dislike the ones about mad killers or stalkers because their existence in the world is more plausible.  Even worse are the so-called slasher films apparently based only on a celebration of sadistic gore, which might encourage such in the real world.  Yick and eek.  That said, a couple of years ago, I finally watched Psycho and was fascinated to find it as much a crime/mystery story as a horror film, with an almost O’Henry-like twist when the Janet Leigh character is killed only after she decides to do the right thing (return the money).  And the shower scene was much less frightening to me than it had been when shown alone in clips or trailers.  This year, I even allowed myself to catch the tail end of Halloween, and most of The Nightmare on Elm Street (on T.V.), without ill effect.

Every year now, as a run-up to Halloween (one of my two favorite holidays, the other being St. Patrick’s Day–non sequitur: did you know that Halloween is also Samhain, the Celtic New Year?), I spend October watching whatever classic horror films I can find, usually on Turner Classic Movies.  [Another aside:  the first year that I did so, I was tickled to find that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had, in its very first year, toyed very playfully and creatively with almost all of them.]

In honor of today (October 31st), I shall briefly list some tropes and devices, natural and supernatural with which writers of the horror genre play:

1. “A basket full of kisses for a basket full of hugs”:  variations on The Bad Seed (the sociopath who is charming and takes people in, but will kill to get what he or she wants; often presented, as in Poison Ivy or some of the Babysitter films, as the outsider who inveigles his or her way into a family in order to replace one of its members);

2. “Enquiring minds want to know”:   variations on Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or Frankenstein or The Fly (the  scientist who becomes obsessed unto madness by his pursuit of experiments that the scientific community does not accept as valid, or whose experiments go awry, endangering himself and everyone else);

3. “Curiosity killed the cat”:  variations on Pandora’s box (someone uncovers a long lost artifact or totem with dangerous properties attached to it–could be a poison; could be a curse; could be a spirit let loose);

4.. ..But why will you say that I am mad?”:  variations on The Tell Tale Heart or The Turn of the Screw (stories that turn, ultimately, on whether the protagonist is the victim of supernatural happenings or losing their mind.  Eg. In Theodore Dreiser’s The Hand, a murderer is certain he is being threatened with vengeance by the man he killed while doctors explain it as physical illness.  Is it physical illness brought on by his guilty conscience or truly the hand of his victim?);

5.   “That’s the thing about prophecies–they’re tricky…”:  A prophecy is usually subject to misinterpretation.  Greek myths about the oracles, and even Shakespearean plays (eg. Macbeth) are rife with prophecies misinterpreted or misunderstood by those who hear them.  This prophecy problem is plainly referenced in the first season of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy goes below to meet the Master because of a prophecy that she will do so.  But, he informs her that prophecies are tricky–if she had not come down, he could not go up into our world.  Also, though the prophecy also states that, in the encounter, she will die, Xander revives her with CPR, and she then confronts and defeats the Master–who, apparently, has also not taken account of the trickiness of prophecies;

6. Vampires, zombies, cat people, werewolves:  Zombies seem to me to be rather one-dimensional entities with not so much room for character development.  Admittedly, my viewing or reading of this genre has been minimal.  But the definition of a zombie–“a will-less and speechless human capable only of automatic movement who is held to have died and been supernaturally re-animated”–would support my view.  Vampires and zombies  are very popular these days.  Though vampires have been somewhat more interesting than zombies, in my opinion both have—or should have–reached a point of over-saturation and subside for other tropes.  Ditto the werewolves (except for Oz, of course!)  But mine seems to be an opinion of one.

As presented on film, Vampires, cat people, and werewolves have a psycho-sexual context–the animal within us–that keeps them somewhat interesting.  Though it would be more so if those that used them created some new interesting play with them rather than repeating over and over the same basic story.

There are many other tropes–the haunted house (or apartment, or old hotel); the spirit that calls one; spiritual possession requiring exorcism  etc.  The most interesting of these, I think, are those that are somewhat ambiguous, applying a psychological or philosophical underlay.  (I found the Exorcist interesting not because of the horror but because of the priest’s struggle concerning his faith.  Of course, I first saw it in black and white on a six by eight inch t.v. screen.)

Those that I find the least interesting are the attackers–be it Michael Myers or Freddy, who, like the Terminator, are machine or machine-like in that no matter how many times you do something that should kill them, they just won’t die and keep on coming.  It may work in the moment to scare, but it is a cheap way to do so, without much more than that visceral fright to make it interesting.

There is much more that could be said or analyzed, but I have been tippling as I wrote the last part of this—my own unusual but pleasant and quiet Halloween celebration–along with much consumption of dark chocolate.  And so I will end my post here and go off to watch the remainder of horror movies at my disposal this evening.

Happy Halloween.

p.s.  Alfred Hitchcok (whose horror has extensive psychological undertones) and Stephen King (whose works have extensive sociological undertones) would require entirely separate and extended posts for which, at the moment, I have neither time nor sufficient sobriety to address… .   😉

 

 

COMING UP FOR AIR

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I used to write in coffee shops.  I used to listen to the hubbub surrounding me in a busy restaurant.  Or travel the Metro, absorbing the sights and sounds around me.  And interact with strangers, some of them people from faraway places.  Have little adventures.  In pushing my way through the first draft of the new novel, I hid myself away from all that.  The first draft is finally done.  (Yay? ) But, I’ve been left feeling stale from the routine and from lack of contact with a wider world–or as Brendan Behan allegedly said of the Irish–my “raw material.”  I have been feeling trapped by routine, have been feeling that there is nothing new, locally at least, that would bring me back to life.  But, sometimes the smallest encounters can do the trick.

Yesterday, I went to Staples to shop for a new printer (my six-year old HP just broke down and I need to print NOW).  Afterwards, I wended my way from Metro Center to Roti on K Street and went in to have some lunch.  At another time, or for other people, the crowds of office luncheoners and their noise might have been highly annoying, but for me, it was like coming up out of a deep sleep.  It had me blinking and looking about in wonder at all the activity.

Many of the tables at Roti are set up as long common tables where you may be sitting next to strangers.  I sat at the end of one of these, and three African men took the space along the table to my right (and opposite each other), waving to a smiling fourth, who was still in the long food line, to join them.

While eating, I was reading “Afterward,” an interesting ghost story by Edith Wharton, but having trouble concentrating because of the insouciance of the company to my right.  They were chattering on loudly in a language I could not understand.  Often, even when I can’t understand a language, I can make out where one word ends and another begins, but in this instance, beyond the rounded vowels and consonants, it sounded like babble–though clearly it was not. Although I could not make out a word, their wholesome, cheerful laughter and the happiness evident in their conversation was contagious and lightened my own spirit.  I was very curious as to what the language was and where they were from.  From his looks, I thought that one of the young men might be from Ethiopia or Eritrea.  (This guessing game is an extension of my curiosity about various English language accents–English, Irish, Australian.)  My curiosity comes only from being a frustrated Henry Higgins, but one never knows how people may take such questions these days when there is so much anti-immigrant meanness about.  Nevertheless, when there was a lull in their conversation and one of the young men caught my eye, I asked what language they had been speaking.  He very sweetly volunteered that it was Amharic, and that they were Ethiopian.  When I noted how cheerful they had been, he told me that they are all accountants, that they work for different firms in the area, and that they get together for lunch.

It is small encounters like these that stimulate my sense of creativity.  The mood, the flavor of their interaction, their friendly comradeship, their genuine enjoyment at getting together–the feeling of it stays with me.  As ordinary as it is, it takes me out of the realm of my ordinary. It also reminds me that, in aid of my writing, I need to get out more.

PLAY

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For those writers who may, at the moment, feel bogged down by their work or by the heavy intrusions of life and the wide world, I highly recommend a book entitled Steal Like an Artist, 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, by Austin Kleon.  Along with good advice, Kleon’s book has about it a cheerful creative abandon.  His feeling of freedom is contagious–the ultimate in the sense of play necessary for creative work.

Amongst Kleon’s words of wisdom, culled from others, is that nothing is completely original.  Creative work always builds on what came before.  (I’d add that that is true whether the creator realizes it or not.)  He notes that we learn by copying (not to be confused with plagiarism–read the book! ) You begin by copying those writers/artists you like, and end up unable to do so adequately, but in the process, find something else original to you.  (Who wants to be a mere imitator anyway?)

The Kleon book has much advice that we writers may already be aware of, but forget when we feel weighed under–advice like:  “The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself,” or “write what you like” (rather than what you “know.” –something that I strongly advocated in the very first  post of this blog).  However, my favorite advice from Steal Like an Artist is:  “If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”  –meaning, of course, that if you are the most talented person in the room, you’re not being intellectually challenged in a way that will make you grow and expand.

I’m not generally one for motivational books of any kind, but this one replenishes my spirit every time I read it!

(For a full dose of Austin Kleon’s playfulness, see his website at www.austinkleon.com.)

“To Ruffle Feathers”–An Etymological Lesson at the Zoo

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To “ruffle someone’s feathers” is defined as “to do something to cause confusion, agitation, irritation, or annoyance in that person.”  Being a city girl, I never gave the etymology of the phrase any thought until I was visiting the National Zoo yesterday and found the flamingos in an uproar.  Two human engineers had entered their enclosure to deal with some problem in the enclosure’s little artificial stream, and every time one of the humans came in or out, flamingos fled towards a far corner, flamingos made very loud noises and pecked at each other, and flamingos raised their wings as if to shepherd the rest away from the perceived danger.  Each time their agitation began, the flamingos’ very neat feathers rose like heads of hair vigorously rumpled until they stand messily on end and in need of a good combing.  As the engineers worked in their one spot and the flamingos calmed, their feathers settled neatly against their bodies, only to ruffle again when the engineers moved. Thus, the engineers literally ruffled the flamingos’ feathers.

Irrelevant but interesting addendum:  there were also a large number of pintail ducks treading in the enclosure’s stream.  Unlike the flamingos, they were unflappable.  As the engineers worked, the ducks simply swam, en masse, to the side of the stream.  They then waddled calmly out and stood in the grass facing the stream, attentively, but quietly waiting for the engineers to complete their work, at which time, the ducks reentered the water.

Add this as a random occurrence that can at some time inform one’s writing.