So today I'm thinking about music. Actually TODAY I'm thinking about the fact that my Western Civilization class finally added me back after dropping me the first day because I had a driver's test and didn't show up (yay persistance)and the fact that I just got a novel chapter length e-mail from a friend in China who I haven't talked to in probably a year. (Actually I've never talked to her at all the for real, in person kind of way, but we've been internet friends since we were both in high school seven or eight years ago.) A member of my crit group also just moved to Japan and another friend I've know forever is going to move there in December. Why is everyone suddenly in Asia?

At any rate, YESTERDAY, when I decided what I was going to ramble about today, I was thinking about music and so now I am about to start thinking about that again.

Music. If I were the type to use, music would be my drug of choice. I used to be a music major and sometimes it just felt like a bad addiction. I HATED being on stage. I hadn't decided to learn any kind of instrument until I was sixteen and had no natural aptitude for any of the ones I tried. And yet somehow I couldn't stop. I wanted to know music. I wanted to be music. To control with a twist and weave of my fingers the way my classmates did. I wanted it to obsorb me completely, and take me to whatever majical place it trickled down from. Becuase how could anything so sweet, so perfect, so exciting, come from our world? How could it even be compared with ordinary life?

Maybe that's why it didn't work out for me. Chopin and Motzart and Joplin and the unknown composers of folk tunes were too unreal for me. Too Other. I couldn't think of them with the casual, every day aditude the other musicians had. They played music. That was what they did. There wasn't anything special about it. It was just a part of who they were.

Some people like to say there is no such thing as inner born talent. People who say that have never seen my little brother pick up an instrument he's never touched before and start playing. Talent needs to be nurtured. It sometimes manifests itself later in life or when you least expect it, but it exists.

So my allotment of musical talent is small. That doesn't mean I don't still fiddle around on the piano from time to time. That doesn't mean that my fingers don't twitch when I hear a strain of particularly etherial flute notes and long more than anything to be the one holding that flute. It just means I know where my stronger talent lies. The one that is just a part of who I am. What I do.

Writing.

I wonder sometimes if when those classmates played their finals all they heard were their mistakes. I wonder if they agonized about them afterwards and went over in their heads about what went wrong.

Actually I know they did. I listened to them do it sometimes. "I held those notes too long. Did you notice when I acidently hit a mnor chord instead of a major?" To which I laughed nervously. Manically. I didn't hear their mistakes. What I heard was magic, otherworldly.

So then I look at my drafts. The long ones, and short ones, and finished and unfinished ones. The run on sentances and typos and over use of the word "saids" and wonder if my readers will even see those. That doesn't mean I'll ever stop agonizing over them or trying to find the exact perfect turn of phrase but I wonder if--or maybe hope that --my readers might see past the mechanics. If maybe to them the story itself will seem otherworldly.

Feminism in Fantasy Literature

There is a sub-genre in fantasy that focuses mainly on female protagonists. Robin Mckinley. Patrica McKillip. Julliet Marillier. Sharon Shinn. Ellen Kushner. They each feature a feminine prospective in a genre that is usually riddled with long lost kings and brutal battle scenes. What is interesting is the different prospectives they give and the subtle ways they show them.

Robin Mckinley's protagonists are usually very straight forward female heroes. They wield swords along side men and stand up for their gender in the face of oppression. Her heroines are proud of being women and make sure everybody knows it. This used to annoy me. A lot. When I was young and didn't realize that gender equality wasn't self evident to everyone in the world. Now I sometimes wish her heroines would relax and just be without having to prove their independence to everybody all the time but I also understand that, especially in the context of a pseudo medieval society, that isn't always an option.

Patrica McKillip is almost the opposite. I have never encountered anything resembling gender inequality in her books. She has equal female and male characters who fight battles and rule kingdoms and play music together without ever thinking anything of it. Rather than fighting against oppression her heroines serve as an example simply by living in an idyllic world where no one has ever suggested that one gender is more important or able than the other. There might be certain social expectations but even those are seldom strongly enforced.

Julliet Marillier's characters are feminists in a way that took me a book or two before I recognized it as such. Rather than fight against expectations or live in a world where they don't exist, Marillier's characters are content to be domestic and nurturing. These skills are painted, however, in such a way that they are revered rather than looked down on. Her characters recognize that their roles are just as important as the "great deeds" performed by the men and are able to unlock secrets and magic everyone else might over look.

Ellen Kushner takes yet another approach. Her male and female characters tear down the constrains of both gender roles. Within the context of a very strict society her male and female characters fuss over silk and wield swords simultaneously.

I know that over all good characterization is more important than a "positive" feminine --or male --image but when I'm working with a historical society that enforces unfair expectations I am reluctant to allow them to get away with it. On the other hand I want the setting to remain authentic without too much modern thinking infiltrating its way into my characters' heads. I strive for a balance but I think I ere on the side too much modern thinking more often than too much accuracy.

What about you? Do you ever wonder about how you are representing gender in your manuscripts? Have you noticed any other ways authors deal with it? Or do you only worry about character and let any gender issues that arise take care of themselves?

The Influence of the Theater: Symbolism and Blocking.

I am not exactly a theater buff but I sometimes take technical theater classes just for fun, and like to see plays when I get the chance. This last weekend I went to see King John with my sister(who is sometimes in plays herself and therefore an expert -- according to her at least) and as we drove home, discussing King John's crown and why she thought the two minor lords shouldn't have been the ones to hand him this all encompassing symbol of power because they did not themselves possess said power, something struck me.

My exposure to the theater has influenced a lot of the way I write.

It shouldn't really be that surprising. Everything in your life influences your writing in some way or another but there are two things that the people who seem to enjoy my writing will say about it. One is the subtle symbolism (sometimes unconscionably, but after I discover it I know that that was why I felt it needed to be there)in the characters surrounding and props and the other is the detail of my blocking. (aka beats, which I've always thought of as blocking long before I knew what beats were)I think both of these things are due to my dabbling with the theater.

A play is different than a movie in that the set is usually much more minimal and they can't do close ups to draw attention to a character's facial expression or a prop that will be important later. Everything is in the actors' movements. In what props the set designer chooses to use. And because there are so many actors and stagehands flying back and forth across the stage every time the curtain is down everything has to be there for a reason. It has to mean something or there is no point in tripping over it.

These are important things to keep in mind when you are writing a scene in a novel as well as a play. What are the characters' movements as they speak and what does it say about who they are and their part in the story? How does the set around them help express the mood (sometimes by contrast) or even insights to the character's true motives?

So now I have an excuse to go the theater more often.