In the Labyrinth

Time Off

 
I will be taking off the next six months or so to finish a book and re-design this blog and website. I will continue to check email and I might even manage to pop up here a few times -- but for now, the plan is to clear the decks and get 'er done. Thanks and see you next year.

****Don't fret if your comments don't show up right away. They need to be approved first -- keeps the spammers off the blog while it awaits my return.

Childhood's Wound

 

It seems that when writing fiction about childhood and rites of passage one can't escape a certain sorrow that comes with the process of maturation -- in most stories that is where the tension of the narrative lies. There are two quotations -- one recently found and one from a much older book that I have been keeping in the front of my brain as I think about broadening and deepening Zizola's character on her journey from Tuscany to Calabria. I keep these quotations pinned to the bulletin board -- to remind me that they are part of the skeleton of the narrative (and indeed Zizola's skeletons in her own story).

The first quotation comes from Carlos Ruiz Zafón's gorgeous gothic novel, The Shadow of the Wind (more on this novel as I plan a much longer review in the near future.)  "One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep."  Imagine the intensity of such felt knowledge as a child, and later, the moment of revelation about that wound that comes with adulthood. Really thinking about that moment of revelation has the potential for some richly evocative scenes, I believe -- and hopefully the power to make Zizola something other than a stock-comic sort of character.

The second quotation comes from Early Spring, the biography of Danish author Tove Ditlevsen. Ditlevsen grew up in a brutal and brutish working class family -- one that had little respect for her as girl and even less for her hopes of becoming a writer. It was a stifling, heart-breaking world and it is a marvel that she survived it and thrived eventually as an author. She muses about her experience of childhood in a dark chapter that opens with, "Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin and you can't get out of it on your own." I think this is important because it suggests that whatever self-awareness one has about the wounds of the heart that childhood may produce, we instinctively search out those who can give us a hand out of that coffin-like despair. Friends, older siblings, fairy godmothers -- even long dead authors whose works give us a view much larger and more abundant in scope than our own. Or as in  Zizola's case, a trickster and a growing crowd of difficult women.

So, what about those of you who writing something now? What quotations have you pinned up on the wall to inspire you? What fragements or poems dig into the bones of your story?

A Red Line on White Linen

One of my favorite types of embroidery is red thread on a white background. It's common enough in Romanian embroidery -- especially in the broad bands of gorgeous cross-stitch on blouse sleeves, Italian Assisi table cloths (with neat trick of being reversible), fat sprays of red Hungarian flowers on tea cloths and beautiful boarders from (the former) Yugoslavia (which tells you how old my pattern books are.) . Above is from a very vintage D.C. booklet which offered this lovely pattern in simple chain stitch with small satin stitch circles. If you are interested in getting a scan of the pattern drop me an email and I will send it off to you. Below are Yugoslavian boarders, and Assisi Dragons.

 

Reading and Writing: "Zizola Undecided" Takes Shape

 
So, "Zizola Undecided" is just a working title -- because it gives me two ways to remember what I am doing -- it's about Zizola, and it's about her figuring out who she is and what she wants -- all of which ought to take the entire novel to discover. An "on the road" sort of novel (whose open ended narrative structure I love for its freedom to discover along with the main character) has offered some killer research challenges. So I have begun to build a list of works that have been helping me immensely to get it as close to right as I can. If you are interested -- take a look at the right hand column list of books "Zizola Research,"  to which I will be adding over the next year as I work on the novel. See anything you like? Got anything to add? I am all ears and eyes.

Terri Windling: Half Price Art Sale

 
Just a quick note to mention that Terri Windling is having a half price sale of her paintings (found here on her Etsy Shop). She is raising money for a relative's medical expenses -- so it's pretty much a win-win situation for anyone interested in obtaining one of her beautiful pieces. Stop by The Drawing Board to get more information about the event.

A Writer and A Mother: I Must Be Crazy

 
I keep on my bulletin board two newspaper headlines to remind me that I just might be a few bubbles off plumb. The Milwaukee Journal (March 30, 1987) boldly states "15-year study of writers finds high rate of mental illness," while the Toronto Star (August 16, 1986) announces "Researcher probes ties between insanity and being a mother."

Wow...with odds like that, it's a wonder that I get anything done without burning down the house, or dancing naked in the front yard on a full moon with a colander on my head.

Do I hear voices in my head? Sure I do...it's called writing dialog. Do I get anxious and tear my hair? Sure...it's from having a pair of risk-taking, independent children who insist on doing insane things of their own (for example sailing a 22ft sailboat across the Great Lakes in September and surviving gail force winds in the Straits of Mackinaw, or hitching a ride on a shipping boat from Sardinia to Barcelona to surprise a friend.) But hey, books get written, children grow up, and so far nobody has gotten the ax.

Photo: Joan Crawford in Straight Jacket.

The Snip of Scissors: Paper as Art

I am in awe of those artists who can create spectacular pieces of art with scissors (or exacto knives) and good paper. Elsa Mora remains one of my all time top favorite artists and her blog on the Art of Paper Cuttingis a treasure chest of art, how-to tutorials, and reflections on her art. Influenced by fairy tales, childrens' tales, and Frieda Khalo, Mora's art is rich in mythic and surreal narratives. Lovely stuff. The image above is a paper cut (which Elsa wears as jewelry) of a Frida Khalo necklace, and the two images below are Flying Girl and Open Head (which employs some three dimensional cut flowers.).

And here is a fun music video from Lisa Hannigan singing "I Don't Know" and wielding a pretty amazing pairs of scissors herself. How to make a room into a forest (which is kind of ironic because one is returning "paper" to a resemblance of its original self).

Danny Godinez: Crank Up My Heart And Take My Breath Away Guitar Work

Oh my goodness...this is one of those amazing videos of an amazing guitarist Danny Godinez playing a long solo in a live concert with Native American blues singer Pura Fe (an astonishing blues singer and guitarist herself.) Godinez just rocks the guitar from lightning fast licks, to slap work on the neck, to flamenco, to harmonics, to sawing the strings, to beating the guitar like a drum, and even at one moment singing into the body of the guitar to produce a sound like nothing else. It's intense.

Read It On The Web: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, "The Erlking"

 

The New Yorker recently published its list of "20 under 40" new authors to watch. This week's edition features the story "The Erlking" by one of the 20 under 40 authors, Sara Shun-lien Bynum (who is also the author of National Book Award Nominee, Madeleine is Sleeping.) It is at turns a quirky, funny story and disturbingly dark. A mother and daughter attend an "Elves Faire" put on by the local Waldorf School -- an event filled with the usual children in homemade fairy wings, expensive wooden toys and dolls for sale, kettle corn and guys playing banjo. Mother and daughter go there for an outing -- and though they hold hands, their minds are completely elsewhere; each trapped by a separate fantasy about what they want from the event, about what matters to them, while on the fringes of the suburban playground setting lurks the Erlking -- a malevolent figure out of the fairy tradition. It is a fabulous, chilling story and will also be published in Kate Bernheimer's new collection of contemporary fairy tales, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, coming out this fall.

*As a side note: I think The New Yorker makes stories available for free during the week of publication -- which means you may not have much time to read it online. I highly encourage you to take a peek at it before it goes -- or else, pick up a copy of The New Yorker. **The photograph that accompanies the story is by British fashion photographer Tim Walker. Check out his website to see more of his astonishing (and very yummy sort of work.)

Read It On The Web: "Hearing Voices" Shalom Auslander

 

One good reason why the internet rocks: a fabulous and very funny article by author Shalom Auslander at The Tablet called "Hearing Voices" wherein Auslander recounts the litany of disapproving, challenging, doubtful voices that enter his head just prior to sitting down to write. Ah...the confidence of even a very talented author is a tenuous thing, yet such anxiety is given a good dollop of humor as he progresses through the comments. 

"The Icarus Voice: I think I can do this!
The Daedalus Voice: I told you that you couldn't do this!
My Mother's Voice: Why must you do this?
My Father's Voice: Do this and you'll be sorry!
My Sister's Voice: This is going to kill mom.
The Ghost of Genocide Past: You grandparents didn't die in ovens so you could do this."

The voices continue with increasing hilarity, moving from pop culture such the New York Times Review of Books to the Huffington Post, to the simply bizarre intrusions of Adolf Hitler, Garrison Keillor, and James Joyce.

I also recommend stopping by Auslander's columns at the The Tablet to read other pieces (mostly funny, poginant and quite true) about the peculiar nature of the writing profession. Also of note, the wonderful art for these columns is by Joel Rosen.