My Kingdom for a Theme (Part III)

(I had meant to post this last summer but didn't. So while the seasonal reference is a bit dated, the excuses, particularly the last one, still hold true.)

I've put off writing about this theme for a long time. Partly because it's summer and summer is a busy time in my household. All the little fledglings return to the nest and so there's quality family time and vacations and such. Routines go fluttering out the window, following swiftly by schedules and (unfortunately) self-discipline. That one is the hardest to coax back inside.

Still, that's only one reason why I've procrastinated writing about this theme. The other is because this is a subject I'm not real keen on discussing in public. It feels like hanging transparent lingerie on the front porch for the neighbors to inspect. Well, these days maybe that wouldn't bother a lot of folks, but I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

But here is theme number three:

Beauty vs the Beast

OK, that's the cop-out, euphemistic label.

In reality, it's:

Sexual Intimacy vs Sexual Power

This theme has appeared so often and in sometimes unexpected (and uncomfortable) ways that I've finally had to accept that it is an actual theme and not an embarrassing subconscious fixation after all. (There was some relief in acknowledging that, I can tell you.)

The idea of sex both as a path to intimacy through love (requiring sublimation of self), and as a means of manipulation and control through seduction and rape (thereby establishing the dominance of self) is one that my story explores in several ways:

-- Moriana's brutal marriage, where her husband uses sex as a means of power and control;

--Saree's increasingly bizarre and disturbing discoveries as she gradually restores her lost memories and learns the truth about her relationship with a man she thought she loved;

--Yakoba's own disastrous yet empowering decision to engage in a forbidden liaison that both liberates and destroys him;

--the fraught triangle of Riordan, Alazne, and Taliyr, and particularly Alazne's own struggle to overcome culturally ingrained distrust of men and sexuality, and to find the courage to freely choose or reject a lover, with attendant consequences.

Reading that, you might get the impression that the book is all about sex in some form or other.

Thank goodness I've already posted the other two themes, so you know it's not really.

But any expression of sex and sexuality in stories tends to snag a reader's attention like nothing else will, kind of like the way one's eye will jump first to the color red in any photo or painting. My greatest fear (well, besides the one where my mother and children (why do we never worry about our fathers reading our work?) will some day read it and Wonder About Me) is that this theme will prove too overwhelming. I'd like it be subtle and subterranean, but red is not a self-effacing color.

***

In the profound stillness that preceded dawn, Alazne awoke. She had been dreaming of the man with the knife, only in the dream he held no knife and this left his hands free to do other things. As she became more fully awake, the ache of longing in her loins translated to a very full bladder.

Muttering oaths under her breath, she found her boots and thick, felted overtunic, and pulled them on. Outside, the air was breezy and cold, though not as cold as it had been in the heights. The moon was a bright feather, floating high over a pine-furred ridge. She walked beyond the camp to relieve herself and afterwards lingered a moment, staring over the black and shifting sea of grass that washed into the dark shores of the northern mountains.

Where was he now, this golden-eyed sorcerer who had fashioned a tether between her spirit and his? Even with the link gone, he haunted her thoughts and found a place in her dreams. Or was that only because the newly born desires of her flesh snatched at any stray image on which to hang a dream? The anjeli help her—even Ilari's kiss had aroused her, in spite of her anger, as though some beast now lived in her, awakened from a long sleep and ravenous for any morsel that might be thrown its way.

It was all very disturbing to have her body at odds with her will. As much as she wanted to give herself to Taliyr, she had no liking for the notion of living as his concubine or whatever name the Tsuroi had for such a woman. And perhaps he would be impatient with her inexperience and after the first time would not want her again. It was well known that the affections of a man for a woman shifted like sand under the feet, firm one moment and treacherous the next. Even her father, who was known to be a just man, treated his wives and concubines as though they were clothing to be worn and enjoyed for a time, and then discarded. She wondered, with a trace of wistfulness, if in all the world there existed a man who would cleave to a woman for the whole of his life, who would give himself to her as unreservedly as she was expected to give herself to him.

She laughed bitterly and called herself a fool. Not in her world.

Don't Stop

My long-time acquaintance and fellow writer, Diana Gabaldon, says there are three rules for writing:

1. Read
2. Write
3. Don't stop

Now the first two are self-explanatory (to me, at least): to understand how to write a novel, you have to read them. Lots of them. Reading fills the tank. Reading forges the neural pathways of plot development, teaching you on both conscious and sub-conscious levels how stories work.

Then you have to write. Not think about writing, not talk about writing, not write about writing, but Write. The. Story.

There will come moments of flagging energy, of sapped ambition, of profound discouragement. And this is where the third rule comes into play: don't stop. Because if you stop you will never finish (duh) and you will never get published.

But I discovered recently that there's more to the Don't Stop rule than I had initially realized. In addition to not quitting permanently, it also means not stopping along the way.

Not for anything. If you treat writing like bathing or eating--and you always find time for those, don't you?--you'll make writing an everyday habit, no matter what else is going on in your life.

And this has a twofold effect. First, it increases productivity. Second, it keeps momentum going and that in turn keeps the clay of the story moist and pliable. Walk away for any length of time and that clay just sits there and hardens, so that when you do return to the keyboard it takes an incredible amount of work and patience to find your way back into a story that has calcified in your absence.

This has been my biggest writing challenge. Real life interferes, things get busy, I get tired, stressed, distracted--whatever, just name any excuse, we all have them--and I would stop writing. Later, I tell myself. This afternoon. Tomorrow. The next day. Next week.

It wasn't until I began writing first thing every morning, without fail, that I realized how important that Don't Stop rule was. It is, in fact, key. Stopping is deadly. So don't.

The reason I started writing first thing every morning is because of another long-time acquaintance of mine, Vicki Pettersson. In her seminar at the Surrey International Writers Conference last year (2007) she mentioned a book she'd found helpful, called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. The principle is simple--if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, it will be the worst thing that happens all day, and the rest of the day can only get better. So to put that in practical terms, do your most difficult task, the one you're most likely to procrastinate over, first.

Well, for me, that was writing. But for the longest time I thought "first" meant after breakfast, exercise, shower, checking the headlines, answering e-mail, reading blogs, running errands...and look at that, it's lunchtime! Somehow I never got around to writing first. Then one day I woke up and realized (another one of those "duh" moments) that first meant first, literally. So now I hop out of bed, grab the laptop, climb back into bed, and start writing.

It changed my life.

Another very true and useful bit of advice I got from Vicki was to make a list of all the reasons why it's difficult or impossible for you to write, and then to admit to yourself that none of those can actually stop you from writing.

The only thing that truly stops us from writing is a decision, made somewhere deep inside, that we are not going to write. We wrap it in excuses and procrastination to hide from ourselves the awful truth that it is not actually work, chores, the baby, the kids, the husband, school, travel, or writer's block that stop us from writing--we do that ourselves. We make the decision.

The good news is, we can unmake it.