Gender Swapping

My tea fairy, Treena, recently sent me an anguished email featuring the link to an online article about the latest blight on the literary scene. The queen of vampire schmaltz has struck again, and with a new twist on the same blunt instrument. I thought we’d dodged a silver bullet when a draft manuscript of Twilight told from Edward’s POV was leaked and Stephenie Meyer sacked the idea of releasing it, but she has since re-written her horrifying-for-all-the-wrong-reasons series, this time with the protagonists swapping genders. Yup, mortal Bella is now Beau, vampire Edward is now Edyth, and werewolf Jacob is now Julie. 

It’s a new way of wringing a few more drachmas from the golden udder for sure—E.L. James has done precisely the same thing by rewriting her candy-coated S&M trilogy from the sadist’s point of view.

As my dear friend Nicole would say, BLERG.

Maybe it’s not new to take a familiar story and change the hero to a heroine or vice versa. I admit, the idea is intriguing. I’ve even spent an idle moment or two toying mentally with my own work and wondering how a female Julian or a male Cassandra might alter the plot of their respective stories. On a less daunting scale, I considered a revamp (no pun intended) of Between the Storms, but then I thought, wait a minute. I don’t have to regurgitate what I’ve already done. I can write new stuff!

Snide asides notwithstanding, change the sex of a character and you must change the story. I only got so far when contemplating the switch for my tale of a hit man on hiatus who discovers a girl washed up on the beach outside his house. Sure, female assassins exist, and the man washing up on her beach might be on the run from a control freak, but the rest of it would require more than a global replacement of character names. The villain, for one thing, would have to become female, and a man who runs from a domineering woman will be regarded with more ridicule than sympathy, possibly even by the heroine who saves his life. So the whole back end of the piece, including the resolution, would have to be redone, and if I’m going to write a story, I’d rather do it with all new characters and a new beginning.

On the other hand, I have considered taking a really badly written story and rewriting it to standard—but that would mean reading Fifty Shades of Grey first, and I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Finis?

Done!

At last, Jake’s story is finished – with a teaspoon of Whiskey White to spare! I polished him up last Friday and am ready to set him aside in favour of whatever comes next. However …

A fellow named Julian Green said, “I write my books because I want to know what is in them.” I like that quote so much that it runs as my screen saver, as a reminder that I write for myself first and anyone else second. This is particularly true because few others actually read what I write, but I think Mr. Green’s point was as much about surprising the author as surprising the audience. Letting the characters tell the story can be eye-opening for me, too. Case in point: “Between the Storms.”

I had the opening, as inspired by Alex Colville’s painting. I knew one or two things about Jake when I started, and suspected that I knew something about the girl he pulled from the sea. What I didn’t expect was the solution to another creative conundrum I’d been pondering offstage.

A million years ago, I wrote 4 (okay, 4.5) volumes of an untitled series about mortals in the employ of a group of urban vampires. I had mapped the storyline to a climax, but the actual ending eluded me. It was still a good story. I revisit it now and then, fully intent on revising, reworking, updating and finishing it one day. I’m just unsure how to make it current without rewriting whole darned thing (one of the issues with present day fiction is that outdated references can create hiccups in the reader’s flow). Now, thanks to Jake, I may have my answer and my ending. It’ll be a lot of work, but it will be fun (and a lot of work). It will take time (and be a lot of work), but I want to do it (though it will be a lot of work) because it deserves to be finished and maybe, just maybe, it will be the thing that makes me famous.

The Importance of Tea (Part III)

“Neutralitea”

Waiting for writing to happen ...

You know how I drink tea that befits my characters? Well, if I don’t get Jake’s story finished before the Whiskey White runs out, I’m in trouble. I’ve got two teaspoons and two scenes left, and while it’s absurd to believe that tea affects whether or not a project gets done, I also subscribe to professional superstition. Everyone has them, so I’m not completely off the rails by admitting this. I am also confident that I will finish Jake’s story as his tea runs out. Don’t ask how I know; I just do.

So what do I do when I’m writing myself? I had some blog stuff to do this morning and I needed tea to accompany the task. I scoured my stores in search of something unassociated with anyone’s story and made a curious discovery. I have no tea that defines Ru. How hilarious is that? Everything I have is specific to either a character or a time of day – sweet creamy black, for instance, is designated for my afternoon break-from-the-computer, and chamomile is always drunk after dinner. But for my own writing, for personal non-fiction or journaling or blogging or whatever you call it, I got nuttin’.

 

I picked White Butterfly. It’s as neutral a tea as one can get, a blank page, if you will, so devoid of either colour or flavour that one may ask why it would be drunk at all. Good question. I bought it because it’s reminiscent of apricots, and when I say reminiscent, I mean that you have to conjure it in your head, otherwise you’re basically drinking hot water. It’s tea without a character. A tea waiting to happen. Kind of like an empty computer screen or a fresh page in my blog log. Who knows what magic may come of it?

If nothing else, it got its own post!

The Gorgeous Struggle

Getting there ...

Jake’s story is almost finished. I wrote two thirds of it during my week off last month. Progress since then has been steady, but – to my mind – interminably slow. And, as is usual when fitting my writing into my life instead of the other way around, I’ve found myself struggling to get it done. The latest scene, for instance, has been written three times. The characters have reached a critical point in their relationship, so I want to get it right.

Yesterday, I revamped a few things while the scene played out in my mental cinema. Jake is sure about his feelings. Kim, not so much. Women are complicated. Jake knows that, but he’s willing to wade through the crap to have her. Only the crap is deeper than it looks. I sorta kinda knew that, given my familiarity with her background, but she wasn’t explaining it well enough to convince him. It was better to have her show him, live in his living room, just how torn she is. Enter the other man. Once he showed up, the complications became more apparent, but I was still stymied on how to describe Jake’s perception of Kim’s dilemma. So I followed sage creative advice and took a break.

Alan Parsons has been my musical wallpaper for this story, but while making lunch I threw the Gatsby soundtrack onto the stereo and promptly remembered why I bought the darned thing. It’s awesome! I was cheerfully chopping veggies and singing along with Fergie and Jack White and Lana del Rey—and then Goyte came on. The song is called “Hearts a Mess” and it’s stunning. Weird, but stunning (hear here). I actually stopped to listen when it came on. And something so profound happened that I pulled the disc off the junky little kitchen stereo and ran it down to the big cahuna in the living room. I cranked up the volume, stood between the speakers, closed my eyes, and got it.

Ah! That golden moment when all comes clear! It happens to creative people more often than we think, but it never gets old. The puzzle piece that finally drops into place, the plug that finally fits the socket – I live for those moments, and yesterday’s was momentous. Ironically, it always happens when I’m not looking. I have battled for days with this scene and the minute my back is turned, the answer arrives in a flaming chariot. It’s proof to me that intellect consistently gets in the way of my imagination. One day I’ll learn to act quickly when a plotline gets hopelessly knotted. I’ll leave it in a pile on the bedroom floor and go distract my mind with something trivial. Then my spirit will be free to unravel the mess unhampered by a well-meaning mental analyst.

As for finishing Jake’s story … I’m on it!

 

Twitchy Tuesday

You know how I believe that Tuesday is the worst day of the week? Not so during vacation! En vacances, it’s perfectly positioned – deep enough in to have had a few days off and far enough out to have a few days left.

I’ve taken a week off work to wrestle with vampires and angels, so naturally I’ve checked the HBO listing and discovered a rerun of The Newsroom is on this afternoon (perfect for a tea break), assessed baking supplies for next weekend, and intend on a couple of loads of laundry before the day is done. I also discovered it's a bad idea to take your blog log to the beach; it gets in the way of meditation. I did take a few pictures, though. This one is my favourite, snapped a few feet from where I was sitting.



 



I'm running hot this morning, finding it hard to settle, so I'd better get my tea together and boot the writing computer. Jake`s story has a working title now - "Between the Storms" - and it's coming along quite nicely despite my interference. I reckon once I get into the rhythm, I`ll stop being a jumpy twitchy time-waster. A day this precious should not be deloped.

 

 

Research

Even when I’m not writing, I’m writing. My imagination is always floating around behind my mind, picturing scenes, overhearing dialogue, sussing out a character’s style in clothes or cars. Yeah, it looks like I know where I’m walking or I’m totally engrossed in that pile of invoices, but it’s all an illusion. A ruse to keep Left Brain occupied while Right Brain ponders truly important things like what kind of gun is sitting on Jake’s kitchen table, or what flavour of ice cream is Kim’s favourite. Jake is guessing that she’s a strawberry cheesecake girl, (she’s not); but wait. Does Haagen-Dazs still make strawberry cheesecake ice cream?

I’ve had to do some research for this story. Expert advice was called upon for the arms question, but I know where to go for ice cream. Or I think I know. Turns out there are two Haagen-Dazs websites: one for Canada and one for the US. Though the story takes place on Canada’s west coast, I had to check out both sites because no matter where they roam, my characters all share my belief that H-D is the best ice cream.

Neither site features strawberry cheesecake as a flavour, so I’ve had to amend the story accordingly. Boo hoo, eh? If only my visit to the Glock website had been so easy.

Head Games



"Pacific"



Yesterday morning, I selected the wrong tea. I thought it was the right tea (and it would have been, had the character associated with it been willing to talk). Pondering my supply, I stumbled onto a tin of David’s Whiskey White and immediately thought Good tea for Jake. That gave me pause.

Jake? Who the heck is Jake?

I picked Persian Apple and proceeded to bash my head against my desk. Finally, fed up with me bouncing around inside my own skull, Ter sent me on a walk under explicit orders to return with a decision on which story to write. I knew which one I wanted to work on, but the other two were should-ing me to distraction. A 30 minute stint at the beach and I made up my mind. Go with the one I wanted.

It turns out that Jake is the mystery man in the tale inspired by Alex Colville’s painting. Yes, Whiskey White is his tea, and when the final all-important puzzle piece dropped into place, I was off to the races. Music is as vital to my process as tea and solitude; every story I write has its own soundtrack. Julian demands Chopin, Lucius likes Def Leppard. On my way back from the beach, I was wondering what Jake would like and the answer came as clearly as the flavour of tea: Alan Parsons. It was so perfect that I almost ran the rest of the way home. I wrote all afternoon and was more productive than I’ve been in ages. It’s nowhere near done, but at least I know how it will end. It's currently untitled; the post title refers to the nonsense I put myself through before allowing myself to pick the project I most wanted to pursue.

The story began a few blog entries back, but here is the next scene. It’s almost all dialogue and not very long – I’m still trying to figure out how best to post my work when a short story for me runs longer than some novellas.

Anyway, here you go. Just a nibble. Please note the use of punctuation J

* * *

Just as he was mentally composing his message, Doug answered the phone.

“Jake! Good to hear from you, man. When did you get back?”

“Last night. Late last night,” he amended, anticipating a reprimand for not calling sooner.

“How was the Continent?”

“Cold and drizzling. Bud, I’ve got a problem.”

Doug’s bonhomie turned wary. “What kind of problem?”

“A girl washed up on my beach this morning.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was. How soon can you get here?”

“I take it she’s still breathing?”

“Barely, but yeah, she’s breathing.”

“Call the police.”

“I’m calling you. That’s close enough.”

Silence preceded a short, resigned sigh. “I’ll be right over.”

* * *