High Drama Blogfest Entry

This is not an action piece, but feel it has subtle drama.  And it is a piece entered for DL Hammon's High Drama Blogfest.  Click over there for a list of other entries, and to visit DL's great blog.


Drama Piece
Sweat. It slides down my jaw line, around the blemish on my chin, and drops onto my chest. There it hesitates, soaking briefly into that one spot before continuing its run. I feel it in an almost sensual way. The sweat slides from my collarbone to the ever-widening expanse between my breasts. It pauses again here, before taking the plunge over my (clavicle?), turning beneath my sagging right breast, crossing my rippling ribs, and joining the bathwater. 

It is gone, but I can still feel it on every point of its path.

Can I sink below the water? How much skin can I cover with this half-filled bath? There's never enough hot water for a full tub.

I try anyway, creating a aquatic frame around my face. My legs are stuck over the end of the tub like an undiscovered corpse. I fold them crossways and hold them under water; it takes work to keep them from floating. But my stomach still rolls above the surface. It takes all the muscle control I have to create a concave belly, pressing my back to the bottom of the tub.

Now my knees float to the surface. I can't keep it all under. I choose the stomach.

My ears are beneath, and the world is quiet. I can hear something bumping. Footsteps? Did they discover me so soon?  I'm not ready.  I need silence just a bit longer.  Please!

No. Its my own body, my heart beating its time. I've never heard it quite like this. Then I realize I can feel it in my fingers, which are grasping the swan-neck faucet I didn't know I was holding onto. I must have used this leverage to push myself beneath the water, and kept hold as a precaution. I don't remember being so cautious before.

But the pulse continues. I hear it underwater a millisecond before I feel it in my fingers.

Bump.
da-bump.

Bump.
da-bump.

Was that a missed beat? An extra beat? Panic takes over for a moment and I hear the thumps quicken...Is a killer hiding in my chest? Am I dying? Should I end it all now, in the half-filled bathtub?

Wait.




The extra beat is just my bones—when I turn my head the joint makes a sound...it's like...It's just stupid. I laugh inside a bit, but not too much.

Then I sit up. Better wash now, before the world notices how long I've been in here.

Who am I kidding.  There are already real worries headed my way, real thumps in the hall.  If I can just reach that towel in time...


Please check out the post below for a very important award to a fellow blogger!

A Writers Know Award to give!

I haven't given one of these in a while.  In fact, I haven't done any award posts in a while (not complaining!  they were getting a little much for a bit there).  But this one is special.  This one is solely for the purpose of celebrating the writing accomplishments of those in our writers' blogosphere.

Today, we celebrate Victoria Savaadra, who finished her second manuscript (correct me, Victoria, if this is wrong) early Monday morning.  Yay for the newly completed Silver Touch!

So, I'm brushing the dust off of the 'Writers Know Award' and passing it on to a hard-working writer.

Victoria--there are absolutely no requirements with this award.  How cruel would it be to demand something of you after you just wrote 50-thousand words?  Just bask in the glory of your achievement, and feel free to pass this on to anyone who completes their MS.  Again, congratulations, Victoria!  Impressive.

*So sorry I didn't get the 'Writers Jailed' post up on Friday.  I have been working so hard on these Literary Movement pieces that I ran out of energy!

Literary Movement Series: Beat Generation

"...Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.'s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles' free booze. They're only Beat, y'know, when it comes to work..."

And so the term beatnik was born.  Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote this in an April 2, 1958 article, combining the name of Russia's Sputnik with the Beat Generation, and implying they were "far out of the mainstream society" and "possibly communist."

But these were not the original Beats.  These were the offshoots, the visible and physical elements of the Generation that outsiders could grasp.  They were lazy, sloppy and, for the most part, parodies of the message Beats were trying to convey.  (In New York in the 60s, you could Rent-a-Beatnik, just look in The Village Voice.)

So we go back to the beginning...In the 1950s, the original Beat writers met in NewYork, and later in San Francisco where they pushed the San Francisco Renaissance, which encouraged this city as the center of American avant-garde.  Those central figures were Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (not a part of the San Francisco meeting), Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso.  Between them, they pushed the boundaries of acceptable literature and lifestyle: openly discussing "drug use, sexuality (in particular homosexuality) and criminal behavior without condemnation, and sometimes with approval" (source).

The first work to bring the Beat Generation to the public was Ginsberg's Howl.  The graphic sexual language led to an obscenity trial, but the form took like wildfire.  Ginsberg utilized a no-restrictions, spontaneous style that took on the experiences of his friends and, in particular, a mental patient named Carl Solomon (also a writer, Report from the Asylum: Afterthoughts of a Shock Patient).  Through Solomon, Ginsberg attempted to take on, albeit indirectly, his own mother's schizophrenia and lobotomy.

The Howl obscenity charges were actually brought against the domestic publisher--Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore.  Freedom of speech won out when Judge Clayton Horn ruled the poem was of "redeeming social importance."  And the publicity helped further the reach of the Beats.

Note for film lovers: Southern Mystery Cities' favorite James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in the 2010 film Howl, directed by Rob Epstein.  Anyone who saw Franco in Milk or the TV movie James Dean knows he can jump into someone else's skin with ease.


But from where did this new generation of bucking the norm come?

Following the world wars, popular society seemed to need order, but a strong intellectual undercurrent revolted and the Beats were part of this revolt.  The improvisational elements of jazz were a huge influence (think spontaneous riffs and Kerouac's spontaneous prose), as were the elite-attacking elements and performance art aspects of Dadaism and Surrealism (think action paintings of Jackson Pollock and the montage element of Dadaist Hannah Höch).

"For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."  Hugo Bell, leader of Zurich Dada movement

So, while the Beats certainly bucked the norm, they weren't alone.  They had their influences and they had their predecessors.  Tuesday, we discussed how Romanticism came from the postwar era and post-revolution minds of Europe and North America.  So did the Beats stem from the buttoned-down post-war culture, fighting the constraints of society and releasing the forbidden passions.

I can't get into all the Beat writers here.  Burroughs' Naked Lunch speaks to the BG's nonlinear style, while Kerouac's On the Road shows stream of consciousness and breathing in literature via the connecting dash.  Think about journaling, and ad breathtaking imagery and a view into the subconscious.

We end with the words of modernist poet William Carlos Williams, who spoke of Ginsberg's ability and effect:

"...He proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith--and the art! to persist."

Photo info:
First, centered: Ginsberg and Kerouac, from this site, click and see artists' renditions of the BG
Second, right: City Lights Bookstore
Third, left: William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, 1980, San Francisco Art Institute

Next...
Monday: author Elizabeth Spann Craig
Tuesday: Realism
Wednesday: The Lost Generation
Thursday: Modernism
Friday: author Stephen Tremp

Note: I apologize for the late-morning posting.  Struggling with Blogger's autopost system.

The Lion or the Snake?

My 2yo is into storytelling.  She tells some wonderful tales, minus most of the conjunctions, of course.  Saturday she tole me a story of a lion and a snake (her current favorite topics).  Someone turned into a lion and someone turned into a snake...and I asked her, "Which was scarier?  The lion, or the snake?"  She said, "The lion.  He had huge claws."

The lion is a large animal, equipped with claws, yes, and sharp teeth made for ripping into flesh and muscle.  Its mane is magnificent and somewhat terrifying when sweeping over a victim.  Its power is unquestionable and, I'd imagine, it is near-impossible to escape a lion unless one is armed.

The snake is small--usually.  Long and slender but fear-inspiring nonetheless.  Some can wrap themselves around a victim and squeeze until dead.  But most deadly snakes just bite.  The venom in this reptile runs the gamut from irritating to deadly.

So, which is scarier?  The large animal that shows you death before it arrives, kills you in a bloody, brutal way, and from which it is nearly physically impossible to escape?  Or the small one that sneaks up on you or slithers into your path, strikes quickly and without warning, causing a slower onset of pain and, may times, death?

Now for the writing connection...You knew it was coming!

Deciding on the lion or the snake is an important point in a writer's process.  The type of book you are writing can hinge on this decision.  Is your antagonist a methodical criminal who uses the sneakiest of methods?  Or a blatant psychopath who leaves trails of horror and gore in his wake?

Does your book lull the reader with beautiful language and glorious passage, then BANG! hit them with a surprise twist?  Or does it smash them in every chapter with action and consequence?

Which type of writer are you?  The lion or the snake?

*Snake photograph courtesy Randy L. Emmitt

Tomorrow...
Return to Literary Movement Series: Beat Generation
Friday: Writers in Jail
Monday: LM Series-Realism
Tuesday: LM Series-The Lost Generation

Literary Movement Series: The Romantics

At a time of political and social turmoil, but also one of great independence, Romantic literature was born.  It was born of revolution and of pain.  It poured from artists like strong wine, and it filled the cups of everyone--not just the elite.

Where Dante wrote the first vernacular piece of literature in his Divine Comedy (approx 1308), the Romantics pushed the idea even further to incorporate the common people in thier work.  Much of this can be attributed to the fact mentioned earlier that this movement was a byproduct of war--the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and the first world war, the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).

What does war do to people?  It tears lives apart, brings commoners in contact with the social elite, causes a near-universal hardship, and wrenches emotions from bodies that never existed prior.

It is this emotion, this passion, that is Romantic literature.

There are three commonalities in all Romantic lit: nationalism, idealization of nature, and freedom of thought and expression.  Nationalism can be conferred as a direct result of the wars which helped bring about the movement in the first place.  And, as can be expected, this varied from country to country in its importance.  For example, Spanish Romanticism was regional, written in the local languages of the areas inside the country.  Therefore, nationalism was a relative term.  Braziliam Romanticism, however, came in three parts.  The first period was highly concentrated on a national identity and often centered around the heroic Indian.  The second was more influenced by Europeans, Byron and Goethe.  But the third took on the social problems striking the country such as the abolitionist movement.  A national commentary, if you will.

American Romanticism is decidely different, as is our custom here in the U.S.  It began with the Gothic writers we talked about yesterday--Poe and one I failed to mention, Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The darker elements of AR (American Romanticism) can be attributed to German Romanticism, which took on these motifs and incorporated gothic elements.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's seminal piece The Sorrows of Young Werther created a tormented protagonist oft-mimicked in Romantic and later works.  It was also a highly personal piece of expression.  The writer said he "shot his hero to save himself," in reference to his own obsession with a woman.  The misunderstood loner living on inspiration rather than societal norms is furthered by famed British Romantic Lord Byron.

Almost as important as the movement itself in America, is the Romantics' influence on Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  American Transcendentalism began as a protest against society and culture, in particular against the intellectualism of Harvard and Harvard Divinity School.  However, where AR concentrated the emotional and physical expression, AT took on the spiritual, claiming this transcends the physical and cannot be reached through organized religion, but rather through the intellect.

Another aspect Romanticism holds in common with Transcendentalism is a concentration on nature.  In a world heading toward the Industrial Revolution, it is no wonder artists would grasp onto the seemingly innocent rural life (Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield), the simplicity of the wilderness (James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales), and human nature in contrast to puritanical New England (Hawthorne's anything!).

Though largely unread in her lifetime, one of my favorite poets can be seen as the epitomy of American Romanticism.  And so we end with these lines from Emily Dickinson.

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

Were I with thee,

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile the winds

To a heart in port, --

Done with the compass,

Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden!

Ah! the sea!

Might I but moor

To-night in Thee!

*Picture information:
Top left: La liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix
Next, left: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich
Right: daguerrotype taken of poet Emily Dickinson at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary

Next...
Wednesday: a break--The Lion or the Snake?
Thursday: Beat Generation

Literary Movement Series: Gothic Literature

Flying buttresses and soaring peaks.  Pointed arches and dark moors.  These are images that spring to mind when we think of the word "Gothic."  And the architecture and setting of medieval times is essential to the understanding of Gothic literature.

A Gothic work combines horror and romance, but not necessarily the romance one associates with Nora Roberts.  The horror is conveyed in the subject, setting, or conflict of the piece, while the romance can be a literal one between characters, or an idealized goal.

Another aspect of Gothic literature is the extreme.  Extreme emotions and reactions are documented.  Some of the reactions are decidedly unexpected for the circumstance--thrill to fear, joy from pain.  Think of Mina's reactions to Dracula in Stoker's book, or Frankenstein's ignorance of his Elizabeth's pain in Shelley's.  In modern fiction we would call such encouraged reactions to negative circumstances evidence of a psychopath, but such is not the case in romantic lit.

Why such dark settings and horrible happenings?  The early Gothic writers reacted to their surroundings--the medieval ruins and the dark and terrifying times they represent, the inevitable decay that comes with being human as represented by these crumbling edifices.  (From the latter you can see the correlation to creating someone who is immortal, i.e. Dracula.)

The first Gothic romance is said to be Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto.  Walpole published this work from his own printing press at his Gothic revival home, Strawberry Hill, in 1764--seventy some-odd years before the Victorian-era Gothics we associate with the movement today.  It was in those Victorian times that the most famous Gothic works came to press--Dracula by Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was actually written earlier in the century, during the Romantic period (the subject of Tuesday's post!).

It was also at this time that we cross the Atlantic for the birth of American Gothic, launched by the father of the detective novel, Edgar A. Poe.  Many point to Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum as the ultimate example of early American Gothic literature.  I, however, see a stronger strain of the new style in such works as The Black Cat.  In Pit and Pendulum, Poe tackles the external theme of the Spanish Inquisition, pain imposed on the body, and supernatural intervention (e.g. rats eating away the rope to free the victim from the pendulum).  In Black Cat, Poe turns the terror inside the human body.  The setting is still strongly atmospheric--a dark basement, a one-eyed cat named out of ancient mythology, a devoted wife, a house consumed (literally, by fire) by the evil within its walls.  But it is the inner turmoil that separates this work from, say, Stoker's Dracula, where all the fighting (save the revenge and love themes) is physical.  Poe's narrator is overcome with the nightmare emanating from his revived cat, and kills his wife.  It is at this point the here-to-fore tormented narrator becomes calm and calculating--meticulously describing the way he bricks his wife's body within the basement wall.

"I quivered not in a muscle.  My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence."

Courtesy: the V&A online, by Alphonse Legros

(A brief aside: the turn to an internal conflict may be attributed to the coming importance of psychology in the 19th century.  The first sketches of the modern field can be seen in 1802 with Pierre Cabanis, though the first center of psychological study was not founded until 1879, by Wilhelm Wundt; and Sigmund Freud did not begin his work until the 1890s.)

It is no wonder the Gothic and horror-filled mind of Poe birthed the first detective novel, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841).  And Gothic mores are still rampant in the mystery works produced today.  Think of the depressed and hard-luck atmosphere in James Lee Burke's work, the twisted romances portrayed by Daphne du Maurier, or the social commentary and even neo-Gothic dress in Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. 

The most famous socially aware crime novel of our time is To Kill a Mockingbird.  And Pulitzer Prize-winner Harper Lee was very much a writer in the Southern Gothic style.  She took the post-slavery South, added crime (rape, murder), social problems (segregation, ignorance, prejudice), compelling characters (child narrator, single father lawyer, misunderstood and mentally handicapped neighbor), and Gothic symbols (dark oak tree with hidden secrets, mob-rule violence, villains and heroes), and created a lasting work of fiction.

How do you incorporate Gothic literature values in your work?  Were you aware of the Gothic literary movement's presence in your work before reading this?


Next in Series:
Tuesday, Romantics
Thursday, Beat Generation

Photograph identification:
Top, left: Westminster Abbey, London
Second, right: Bath Abbey, Bath, England
Third, left: Strawberry Hill, near London

Sunday Foreign Post Roundup

1. MWU University--classes for mystery writers!  Find all the info on Alan Orloff's site.

2. Jen's Book Thoughts presents her Five--and these are all books you should read.  I recommend 4 of the 5 authors--highly!

3.  Someone has an agent!  Exciting news from Mercedes Yardley.

4.  Talk Taff becuz youknowzitmakezsense, like, innit?

5.  We all know DL Hammons, but do we all know how creative he is?  Check out this post called Bump, and follow the directions to add to his lists.  Your blog will get exposure, and so will your creativity.  But is it a match for his?  (I found DL's link through writer Glynis, so she gets some credit!)

6.  And the fruit of DL's labors...the linkiest post you'll ever see!  Check out all the goodies in the comment section, from bloggers galore!

7.  Margot Kinberg asks the best question...When did it all start for you?

8.  She runs...And she matters.  Two posts from moving writer (or writer on the move, depending on the post) Tabitha Bird.  Look for Tabitha guest blogging here soon!

9.  Is there a tough part in your MS?  Are you stuck on one word or one character that/who just won't budge?  Try Jan Morrison's Friday Challenge at Crazy Jane, to unstick your stuckables.

Literary Movement Series starts tomorrow!  Gothic Lit on Monday...See you then!