Usually, I am un-prone, in writing this blog - or, more often, composing it, compiling links and commenting just briefly - to excerpting my own work. But, as it cools down (and as I remind myself I *am* an author, at all), this little moment caught me and dragged me backward ... to my work ... to the way the end of summer feels ... to characters who still keep me curious.
To summer in Ravanna, in the wee hours of the sixth century.
***
Zeniv was too hot.
The heat was so that even the touch of clothing was importunate, every sensation a molestation; odd dreams plagued and would not release her—temptations of floating in water, or hanging weightless in the open vacuum of the sky, without so much as slippers nor linens, naked as the day of her birth. Lying with the wind, moving, moving.
The swamp, the whole city, smelt of the still greenness of water, and every shimmering, muggy breath of summer seemed almost a swallow; the atmosphere touchable, rather than empty air.
And she dreamt of empty air. Her mind swirled constantly with ineffable thoughts of somehow reaching a state of touching nothing. No ground to carry her, no clothes to enclose her, no heat—no heat—no heat.
The city roiled as it cooked, Arians and Catholics finding fault in the Jews for poor weather, for dwindling stores, for slackening winds and slowing trade.
Why it should be the Jews’ fault was unclear to Zeniv; made no clearer in the conversations around her. She was privy to much of religion; but little of politics. And Christians' concern with Jews, that must be politics, or perhaps the religion percolating around her was distilled somehow. Not thick and mixed, like the water—the air—all around.
Took the water, though, to mix up the atmosphere, to roil, to topple the carefully distilled beaker that was the Court.
Deep in the morning before the longest day of summer, the loss of a ship, down with which the fortunes of a dozen Ostrogoths’ families sank.
***
I have to write the pogrom. One of the first pogroms in Christian history. It's been lurking at me for the longest time.
It touches me like a dank, smelly, humid miasma.
Showing posts with label Ostrogoths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ostrogoths. Show all posts
Monday, November 20, 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
My Research is Showing - Excerpt
There are times you just have to write the scene that follows your research. It may not be an action scene; it may not quite be a character scene. And yet, it still propels things.
Re-reading a certain passage, I found myself wanting to share. Those who've read much of my curmudgeonliness know I'm not big on excerpt-ery, but I like this scene - precisely because of the research that (ahem) bore it.
It was a whole child, four-limbed, red, wrinkled, endearingly ugly. No deformities seemed present, and the mouth and ears and eyes were clear. Its cleft was clean and correct, its anus a perfect, pale pore. Zeniv placed the baby on a stone bench, and it protested lustily, screeching at the cold and indignity. She placed soft towels beneath the child and with two fingers pulled first at the child’s right arm, then its left, its right leg, then its left. The right side felt stronger; a good sign. Left-sidedness was suspect. When she held her finger before the face of the babe, its quaking arms gravitated inward toward it, but were unskilled yet to grab her fingertip. When she gently put the finger on its chin, its eyes widened a moment, and then closed. It was aware. It seemed to be healthy.
The placenta still hung off to one side, and Zeniv reached for the knife in a sinus of her apron, and cut the cord and placed the afterbirth in a bowl. She turned the babe onto her side and brought this near, squeezing the blood from her wound into the bowl as well. The child was a squalling protest, but so tiny she was easy to hold.
Twisting long fingers nimbly as she could while one hand held the infant safe, she looped a thread of wool around the stump, and tied as close as she could to the belly, pressing the protrusion back into what would become her navel.
Then to clean the child. Natron, the magic powder that preserved the dead in Egypt, was the same magic that brought the royal infant into the world. With this and the towel under the child, Zeniv softly chafed the body, the arms, the legs. In the crevices, she dipped a finger in olive oil and then in the powder, and cleaned where skin met skin. In its still-protesting mouth, she slipped the slightest bit of it across those all but translucent, toothless gums.
The baby gleamed. She was red—flesh and more flesh, from the inside of the mouth to the feet, still wrinkled and compressed from the long stay in the womb.
Last, and softest, clean, warm water. She held the infant to soak several moments, and with free fingers sloshed water over the shoulders, cradled its head and baptized the child with warm, soft water. All protesting abated; the water felt good to the child.
Still it was not complete. One last once-over, with close attention to cleaning out the openings, making sure breathing and elimination should be free. The infant princess wailed as if she were becoming tired, her arms finding direction as if to push Zeniv away. And yet they seemed also to begin to cling to her.
She put olive oil over the little swollen eyes, which closed readily enough and seemed almost ready to be peaceful, to rest. Her body moved only to emit its tiny, wheezing breaths as Zeniv completed the first ablutions with a wad of wool dipped in the olive oil, which she wrapped with a bandage around the belly to cover the baby’s navel.
Finally, the wheezing softening and the eyes closed and tight as beans, she swaddled the child and turned, at last to look to its mother.
***
I feel like it is a lot of detail, but also that it is a brief enough expositive scene it doesn't burden the flow overall. This is close to the top of a new chapter, and so is the pause before more action--action which becomes, essentially, the first pogrom in the history of Christendom. It needs to be this quiet, and it needs to be this brief before the heat, literally, builds outside the palace. (The main sentence that is probably too much scholarship is the one about Natron.)
Of course I would be extremely grateful if anyone has feedback or reactions.
Re-reading a certain passage, I found myself wanting to share. Those who've read much of my curmudgeonliness know I'm not big on excerpt-ery, but I like this scene - precisely because of the research that (ahem) bore it.
 |
| Image: Wikipedia of course |
It was a whole child, four-limbed, red, wrinkled, endearingly ugly. No deformities seemed present, and the mouth and ears and eyes were clear. Its cleft was clean and correct, its anus a perfect, pale pore. Zeniv placed the baby on a stone bench, and it protested lustily, screeching at the cold and indignity. She placed soft towels beneath the child and with two fingers pulled first at the child’s right arm, then its left, its right leg, then its left. The right side felt stronger; a good sign. Left-sidedness was suspect. When she held her finger before the face of the babe, its quaking arms gravitated inward toward it, but were unskilled yet to grab her fingertip. When she gently put the finger on its chin, its eyes widened a moment, and then closed. It was aware. It seemed to be healthy.
The placenta still hung off to one side, and Zeniv reached for the knife in a sinus of her apron, and cut the cord and placed the afterbirth in a bowl. She turned the babe onto her side and brought this near, squeezing the blood from her wound into the bowl as well. The child was a squalling protest, but so tiny she was easy to hold.
Twisting long fingers nimbly as she could while one hand held the infant safe, she looped a thread of wool around the stump, and tied as close as she could to the belly, pressing the protrusion back into what would become her navel.
Then to clean the child. Natron, the magic powder that preserved the dead in Egypt, was the same magic that brought the royal infant into the world. With this and the towel under the child, Zeniv softly chafed the body, the arms, the legs. In the crevices, she dipped a finger in olive oil and then in the powder, and cleaned where skin met skin. In its still-protesting mouth, she slipped the slightest bit of it across those all but translucent, toothless gums.
The baby gleamed. She was red—flesh and more flesh, from the inside of the mouth to the feet, still wrinkled and compressed from the long stay in the womb.
Last, and softest, clean, warm water. She held the infant to soak several moments, and with free fingers sloshed water over the shoulders, cradled its head and baptized the child with warm, soft water. All protesting abated; the water felt good to the child.
Still it was not complete. One last once-over, with close attention to cleaning out the openings, making sure breathing and elimination should be free. The infant princess wailed as if she were becoming tired, her arms finding direction as if to push Zeniv away. And yet they seemed also to begin to cling to her.
She put olive oil over the little swollen eyes, which closed readily enough and seemed almost ready to be peaceful, to rest. Her body moved only to emit its tiny, wheezing breaths as Zeniv completed the first ablutions with a wad of wool dipped in the olive oil, which she wrapped with a bandage around the belly to cover the baby’s navel.
Finally, the wheezing softening and the eyes closed and tight as beans, she swaddled the child and turned, at last to look to its mother.
***
I feel like it is a lot of detail, but also that it is a brief enough expositive scene it doesn't burden the flow overall. This is close to the top of a new chapter, and so is the pause before more action--action which becomes, essentially, the first pogrom in the history of Christendom. It needs to be this quiet, and it needs to be this brief before the heat, literally, builds outside the palace. (The main sentence that is probably too much scholarship is the one about Natron.)
Of course I would be extremely grateful if anyone has feedback or reactions.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Time and Chance (Neither Sharon K Penman nor Ecclesiastes)
It is perhaps not the sort of admission a writer should make; but more, I suspect, than would like to admit it may find what I'm about to post familiar ...
The WIP began, as many know, as an inspiration early in the research for The Ax and the Vase. I was fairly successful, during my work on Ax, in keeping the WIP on the backburner - not using it to distract myself from frustrations with the first novel - and not letting it steal me away on its own impetus either.
And so, the WIP has been in gestation for something like thirteen or fourteen years now.
It was brought to the front burner a year and a half ago or so, but this summer I have allowed the demands of work and life and other such silliness as that to keep me from dedicated writing.
Now and then, when we're not really working on them, writers do at least pull OUT our work (or pull it up, as on electronic devices). We look at it, we pat it on its evil/cute little plot-bunnied head, we expect it to speak, and often it fails to. For all works of creative writing have a habit of acting on their own, especially individual characters, running off and doing things we had no idea were in them, creating unexpected continuity issues to resolve - they have an even crueller tendency NOT to do this when we sit and look at them, bereft of active ideas or plans.
WIPs, when you pull them out and expect them to develop themselves, will stare you down like sullen teenagers. Mute, un-forthcoming, inert.
And so, it was a surprise to me, today, when the sullen thing spoke to me.
I pulled it up just now. Peered at it a bit. Scrolled to the end, because I don't really know where it needs to end, or why it seems to end so far beyond where it begins.
I would be hard-pressed, in short, to tell an agent honestly "what is the crisis here, what needs resolving?"
As a historical fiction author, I am inordinately attached to the idea that telling the stories of history itself is important, worthy, fascinating. But where the fascination lies, I seem to be very poor at defining. Why tell it? Um. It's cool. See? Where the king goes Catholic, instead of Arian, and the entire future of Christendom - and Western Europe - is decided? Neat, hm?
Ya gotta have an MDQ. History is great, but a story isn't just the litany events leading from point A to point B, where there's a new chapter or we lose interest.
And I had no idea why my WIP was going on into three generations of women I think are each a study in contrasts, and whose lives deserve to be shared. Three is a great storytelling trope, but why was I going into character #1's mom and daughter, when it was #1 who drew me initially? What has it been, all this time, telling me that mom is necessary, that we can't stop without daughter, that #1 should *not* stand alone ... ?
And what is the title of this thing?
Titles are hard. And hard-won. Authors can be extremely attached to a title, emotionally vulnerable to the idea of changing one. They're harder to write than poems, perhaps. Or they ARE poems, perhaps.
So today, scrolling to the end, and then back to the beginning, when I caught sight of that moment when the character has just opened up our action by giving birth to #1, and she realizes she has not born a son ... one phrase caught my eye.
But; there is no later.
And that was when it clicked.
What I am writing about - and THIS, I have known for a long time, is the events that lead us into that period so many historians used to call (and, gallingly, most of the regular populace still call) The Dark Ages.
I'm writing about dissolution.
I'm writing about the end of a dynasty, not only from the point of view of #1, the child who had the wrong genital equipment, but also from the point of view of #2 - a character more vivid than 1's mother and her daughter - the freedwoman who literally births the END of the dynasty; the midwife who, perhaps, has her hands not only on the labours of her noblewomen, but on the pangs of a new era emerging.
That part came just now, just writing that paragraph. Exciting stuff; bear witness, y'all.
So the working title (and I feel it perhaps bears the wrong tone; so this too may pass) has become, Time for Posterity.
And the question is: how does it end?
How does a dynasty end? How does an era end? How does darkness begin? (Do I even believe there was an age of darkness appropriately to be named The Dark Ages - well, no - but it makes a hell of a story, and it's been sucking at me like a vortex for thirteen years, I realize.)
So, yaaaayyyy!
I'm about to become the AUTHOR of the Dark Ages, and I don't even believe in them!
Neato-spedito, as my brother used to say.
The WIP began, as many know, as an inspiration early in the research for The Ax and the Vase. I was fairly successful, during my work on Ax, in keeping the WIP on the backburner - not using it to distract myself from frustrations with the first novel - and not letting it steal me away on its own impetus either.
And so, the WIP has been in gestation for something like thirteen or fourteen years now.
It was brought to the front burner a year and a half ago or so, but this summer I have allowed the demands of work and life and other such silliness as that to keep me from dedicated writing.
Now and then, when we're not really working on them, writers do at least pull OUT our work (or pull it up, as on electronic devices). We look at it, we pat it on its evil/cute little plot-bunnied head, we expect it to speak, and often it fails to. For all works of creative writing have a habit of acting on their own, especially individual characters, running off and doing things we had no idea were in them, creating unexpected continuity issues to resolve - they have an even crueller tendency NOT to do this when we sit and look at them, bereft of active ideas or plans.
WIPs, when you pull them out and expect them to develop themselves, will stare you down like sullen teenagers. Mute, un-forthcoming, inert.
And so, it was a surprise to me, today, when the sullen thing spoke to me.
I pulled it up just now. Peered at it a bit. Scrolled to the end, because I don't really know where it needs to end, or why it seems to end so far beyond where it begins.
I would be hard-pressed, in short, to tell an agent honestly "what is the crisis here, what needs resolving?"
As a historical fiction author, I am inordinately attached to the idea that telling the stories of history itself is important, worthy, fascinating. But where the fascination lies, I seem to be very poor at defining. Why tell it? Um. It's cool. See? Where the king goes Catholic, instead of Arian, and the entire future of Christendom - and Western Europe - is decided? Neat, hm?
Ya gotta have an MDQ. History is great, but a story isn't just the litany events leading from point A to point B, where there's a new chapter or we lose interest.
And I had no idea why my WIP was going on into three generations of women I think are each a study in contrasts, and whose lives deserve to be shared. Three is a great storytelling trope, but why was I going into character #1's mom and daughter, when it was #1 who drew me initially? What has it been, all this time, telling me that mom is necessary, that we can't stop without daughter, that #1 should *not* stand alone ... ?
And what is the title of this thing?
Titles are hard. And hard-won. Authors can be extremely attached to a title, emotionally vulnerable to the idea of changing one. They're harder to write than poems, perhaps. Or they ARE poems, perhaps.
So today, scrolling to the end, and then back to the beginning, when I caught sight of that moment when the character has just opened up our action by giving birth to #1, and she realizes she has not born a son ... one phrase caught my eye.
Time for posterity later.
But; there is no later.
And that was when it clicked.
What I am writing about - and THIS, I have known for a long time, is the events that lead us into that period so many historians used to call (and, gallingly, most of the regular populace still call) The Dark Ages.
I'm writing about dissolution.
I'm writing about the end of a dynasty, not only from the point of view of #1, the child who had the wrong genital equipment, but also from the point of view of #2 - a character more vivid than 1's mother and her daughter - the freedwoman who literally births the END of the dynasty; the midwife who, perhaps, has her hands not only on the labours of her noblewomen, but on the pangs of a new era emerging.
That part came just now, just writing that paragraph. Exciting stuff; bear witness, y'all.
So the working title (and I feel it perhaps bears the wrong tone; so this too may pass) has become, Time for Posterity.
And the question is: how does it end?
How does a dynasty end? How does an era end? How does darkness begin? (Do I even believe there was an age of darkness appropriately to be named The Dark Ages - well, no - but it makes a hell of a story, and it's been sucking at me like a vortex for thirteen years, I realize.)
So, yaaaayyyy!
I'm about to become the AUTHOR of the Dark Ages, and I don't even believe in them!
Neato-spedito, as my brother used to say.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Dense, or Encompassing?
The work in progress has begun to insist to me that I have to work on a riot in which the citizens of my main setting burn down the synagogues.
Growing up, most of my closest friends were Jewish. My oldest friend, TEO The Elfin One, is not merely Jewish, but a teacher - a rabbi - as is her husband. I have known *about* anti-semitism all my life. But I have never KNOWN it.
To face this aspect of historical fiction, to know it must be a part of my own work, is not exactly difficult for me, but it is of course distasteful.
I've blogged before about how much I dislike writing battle scenes.
But writing what is, essentially, one of the earliest pogroms in what isn't even "Christendom" at this period ...
Ugh.
And it's not merely the content that daunts me, it is the wider prospect of the scene, as a part of its world.
Mr. X and I were emailing yesterday, and he was (as he has always been) one of my favorite readers, all "ooh and ahh" that I wrote the atheism post in like 15 minutes (I had been thinking about it for a day - if not, in some form, for months or years beforehand), and discussing the WIP and generally being that guy and that brain who ruined me for all the other guys' brains, and he said that this scene was going to be dense stuff.
And I thought about that.
And I realized that, if it were dense, it might almost be easier. Something that is dense is, perhaps, also self-contained. It has a shape, and boundaries ...
And this scene is encompassing, instead.
I need to contextualize this scene, this moment, this city of Ravenna in the year 519. It needs to be clear to see, in its place within Theodoric the Great's rule, and alongside Italy itself in this period ... when an old king has taken it on as his kingdom - and has no heir. It needs to have a view to Constantinople, which was becoming the new Rome, and where the Nika Riots would follow soon enough. It needs to find its place and focus in the larger picture of what people will insist upon calling the "Fall" of the Roman empire - and its connection to the imperial structures of Rome and of Constantinople, and also the so-called "Barbarian" cultures flourishing just to the north and west of Ravenna.
I need, too, to see the finer grain - to set this moment in the lives of my characters, and the marshy port city they occupied, to understand the weather and the moment and "why here"/"why now" ... The divisions between the minority Ostrogoths and the diversity of this place - the very scent of the wind, and the heat of the day ...
It's scary stuff. And not least because it is a riot, a racist mob setting fire to houses of worship.
And then comes the question.
How do I set this in the picture of the world I live in, myself?
Growing up, most of my closest friends were Jewish. My oldest friend, TEO The Elfin One, is not merely Jewish, but a teacher - a rabbi - as is her husband. I have known *about* anti-semitism all my life. But I have never KNOWN it.
To face this aspect of historical fiction, to know it must be a part of my own work, is not exactly difficult for me, but it is of course distasteful.
I've blogged before about how much I dislike writing battle scenes.
But writing what is, essentially, one of the earliest pogroms in what isn't even "Christendom" at this period ...
Ugh.
And it's not merely the content that daunts me, it is the wider prospect of the scene, as a part of its world.
Mr. X and I were emailing yesterday, and he was (as he has always been) one of my favorite readers, all "ooh and ahh" that I wrote the atheism post in like 15 minutes (I had been thinking about it for a day - if not, in some form, for months or years beforehand), and discussing the WIP and generally being that guy and that brain who ruined me for all the other guys' brains, and he said that this scene was going to be dense stuff.
And I thought about that.
And I realized that, if it were dense, it might almost be easier. Something that is dense is, perhaps, also self-contained. It has a shape, and boundaries ...
And this scene is encompassing, instead.
I need to contextualize this scene, this moment, this city of Ravenna in the year 519. It needs to be clear to see, in its place within Theodoric the Great's rule, and alongside Italy itself in this period ... when an old king has taken it on as his kingdom - and has no heir. It needs to have a view to Constantinople, which was becoming the new Rome, and where the Nika Riots would follow soon enough. It needs to find its place and focus in the larger picture of what people will insist upon calling the "Fall" of the Roman empire - and its connection to the imperial structures of Rome and of Constantinople, and also the so-called "Barbarian" cultures flourishing just to the north and west of Ravenna.
I need, too, to see the finer grain - to set this moment in the lives of my characters, and the marshy port city they occupied, to understand the weather and the moment and "why here"/"why now" ... The divisions between the minority Ostrogoths and the diversity of this place - the very scent of the wind, and the heat of the day ...
It's scary stuff. And not least because it is a riot, a racist mob setting fire to houses of worship.
And then comes the question.
How do I set this in the picture of the world I live in, myself?
Monday, August 17, 2015
SEXY SEX SEX SEX (... or, "Also, I Write")
For an author’s blog, there’s been precious little word around here lately about actual writing, and work in progress. Skipping over the inevitable excuses, I’ll admit there’s been LESS going on here of late, but thank goodness it’s not nothing at all.
Early in vacation, I was struck by some thoughts on the facts of life as it were; the expectations we place upon sex – today, or “in the past” – and how immutable these feel to us. Sex has always had a pretty high importance to human beings; at a guess, even before history got onto the subject, paternity and the apparent magic of a human being coming out of another one, seemingly out of nowhere. Its intensity of pleasure has long been tied to its importance in interpersonal politics, and perhaps the development of moral expectations was inevitable, given the esteem we place on lineage across all cultures.
These days, the idea of sex as a tool is generally considered rapacious beyond all sanction, and dismissed (again, across, at the very least, quite a *few* cultures) as immoral and crude. Bargaining for position by assuming certain - *ahem* - disreputable positions is, after first being offensive and manipulative, at bottom pathetic. It hardly fails to HAPPEN; indeed, some folks I've been aware of personally prove to me the phenomenon is not limited to the dregs of society. Entire industries and reality entertainment genres (*) thrive on the commoditization of "fairy tales" and wealth-as-romantic-glue, and there has been draconian conditioning, in the past thirty years, tying distinctly to certain gender roles/expectations and material outcomes. Hooray for marketing.
(*This, by the way, is not intended to refer only to romance competitions, but also to huge swaths of HGTV programming, mythologizing the importance of McMansions, settings, vacation stylings, and the types of couple-dom we should aspire to emulate; but at least they've embraced diversity in that last item, somewhat.)
American culture and pop culture have a uniquely slutty-yet-judgmental thing going on, wherein the increase in sales of lives for entertainment and prizes has produced that rarest of "guilty pleasures" - the right to judge others wholesale even as we simultaneously are enjoined to wish we had something we could sell for a good price.
"In the past", though ... transactional sex represented a wholly different market.
As was still true when I was growing up, and remains so for some today, girls and virginity were a whopping big deal. Speaking fundamentally to the importance of that lineage I mentioned above (read: PATERNITY, specifically), virginity took on an aura of magic which imbued it with an almost terrible power. To this day, PURITY is still subject to the curious confluence of desire and defense which mark something which is wanted precisely for the value in its own termination. Lifelong chastity may garner the golf-clap of social approbation. But it's the virgin on the marriage market who's long been an actual *prize* - sought for, competed over; her extinction the very highest tragedy and the greatest sacrifice to the gods.
Coming alongside paternity arise the subjective motivations - virtue and submission and status and all the tantalizing stories we've told, as humans, about the power and magic and pleasure of sex.
For a while there, the completely absurd working title for the work in progress was "Matrilineage" - not because even for a moment I ever thought that was remotely good, but because the WIP is a novel of women. Three generations, their experiences and their points of view. The midwife who spools from one of their lives to another has always been a prominent force, and she has begun seriously to develop. This is a woman whose life revolves around the reproduction of others.
The one male character who has developed any voice at all is: an illicit sexual partner.
Illicit sex had, fifteen hundred years ago in an Ostrogothic court barely a generation old, what you might call Serious Consequences. Particularly for a princess to be used in the marriage market by a king already proven canny in such alliances, and still in the process of using even chronologically advanced and legitimacy-compromised offspring in it.
Virginity was quite the big deal for a princess. Its being disposed of, deals still must be made; and advantages still could be constructed by marriage.
Many of the marriages in the WIP are matters of pragmatism, and some may have been more removed from romantic concerns than is generally popular to write about without the remediation of a little bodice-ripping on the side. The Ax and the Vase touched on this, and I even alluded to the ancient practice of a small country capitulating to the Roman Empire in order to get its protection, as a similar dynamic to certain marriages. In the WIP, the analysis will be much closer to my characters' hearts - and bodies - and I am intrigued not only by the possibilities, but by the implications. The perspectives are so necessarily unfamiliar, and I enjoy getting outside my own expectations (not only in my writing).
In Ax, this practical use of marriage as a tool got quite a light touch. To really explore the unpleasantness, though - and in ways it isn't always perceived by modern authors and audiences - excites my wee and paltry brain. It's bouncing around like Colin (if you aren't a Hitchhiker's fan, the link probably won't help, and if you are, you don't need it: so skip the click either way - it's Wikipedia anyway, and I know how people can be about the 'pedia).
Suffice to say: inspiration. It's happening.
So yay for sex!
Early in vacation, I was struck by some thoughts on the facts of life as it were; the expectations we place upon sex – today, or “in the past” – and how immutable these feel to us. Sex has always had a pretty high importance to human beings; at a guess, even before history got onto the subject, paternity and the apparent magic of a human being coming out of another one, seemingly out of nowhere. Its intensity of pleasure has long been tied to its importance in interpersonal politics, and perhaps the development of moral expectations was inevitable, given the esteem we place on lineage across all cultures.
These days, the idea of sex as a tool is generally considered rapacious beyond all sanction, and dismissed (again, across, at the very least, quite a *few* cultures) as immoral and crude. Bargaining for position by assuming certain - *ahem* - disreputable positions is, after first being offensive and manipulative, at bottom pathetic. It hardly fails to HAPPEN; indeed, some folks I've been aware of personally prove to me the phenomenon is not limited to the dregs of society. Entire industries and reality entertainment genres (*) thrive on the commoditization of "fairy tales" and wealth-as-romantic-glue, and there has been draconian conditioning, in the past thirty years, tying distinctly to certain gender roles/expectations and material outcomes. Hooray for marketing.
(*This, by the way, is not intended to refer only to romance competitions, but also to huge swaths of HGTV programming, mythologizing the importance of McMansions, settings, vacation stylings, and the types of couple-dom we should aspire to emulate; but at least they've embraced diversity in that last item, somewhat.)
American culture and pop culture have a uniquely slutty-yet-judgmental thing going on, wherein the increase in sales of lives for entertainment and prizes has produced that rarest of "guilty pleasures" - the right to judge others wholesale even as we simultaneously are enjoined to wish we had something we could sell for a good price.
"In the past", though ... transactional sex represented a wholly different market.
As was still true when I was growing up, and remains so for some today, girls and virginity were a whopping big deal. Speaking fundamentally to the importance of that lineage I mentioned above (read: PATERNITY, specifically), virginity took on an aura of magic which imbued it with an almost terrible power. To this day, PURITY is still subject to the curious confluence of desire and defense which mark something which is wanted precisely for the value in its own termination. Lifelong chastity may garner the golf-clap of social approbation. But it's the virgin on the marriage market who's long been an actual *prize* - sought for, competed over; her extinction the very highest tragedy and the greatest sacrifice to the gods.
Coming alongside paternity arise the subjective motivations - virtue and submission and status and all the tantalizing stories we've told, as humans, about the power and magic and pleasure of sex.
For a while there, the completely absurd working title for the work in progress was "Matrilineage" - not because even for a moment I ever thought that was remotely good, but because the WIP is a novel of women. Three generations, their experiences and their points of view. The midwife who spools from one of their lives to another has always been a prominent force, and she has begun seriously to develop. This is a woman whose life revolves around the reproduction of others.
The one male character who has developed any voice at all is: an illicit sexual partner.
Illicit sex had, fifteen hundred years ago in an Ostrogothic court barely a generation old, what you might call Serious Consequences. Particularly for a princess to be used in the marriage market by a king already proven canny in such alliances, and still in the process of using even chronologically advanced and legitimacy-compromised offspring in it.
Virginity was quite the big deal for a princess. Its being disposed of, deals still must be made; and advantages still could be constructed by marriage.
Many of the marriages in the WIP are matters of pragmatism, and some may have been more removed from romantic concerns than is generally popular to write about without the remediation of a little bodice-ripping on the side. The Ax and the Vase touched on this, and I even alluded to the ancient practice of a small country capitulating to the Roman Empire in order to get its protection, as a similar dynamic to certain marriages. In the WIP, the analysis will be much closer to my characters' hearts - and bodies - and I am intrigued not only by the possibilities, but by the implications. The perspectives are so necessarily unfamiliar, and I enjoy getting outside my own expectations (not only in my writing).
In Ax, this practical use of marriage as a tool got quite a light touch. To really explore the unpleasantness, though - and in ways it isn't always perceived by modern authors and audiences - excites my wee and paltry brain. It's bouncing around like Colin (if you aren't a Hitchhiker's fan, the link probably won't help, and if you are, you don't need it: so skip the click either way - it's Wikipedia anyway, and I know how people can be about the 'pedia).
Suffice to say: inspiration. It's happening.
So yay for sex!
Sunday, December 9, 2012
The Quote
Following up in a way on the Historically Accurate Sexism post, I want to take a look at the single sentence from my research - found years ago, actually, while working on "The Ax and the Vase" - which forms the basis and informs the context for Novel #2.
I've been calling the thing "Matrilineage", for the record - though I have zero attachment to this title, and would surmise no agent nor publisher in the world will go for it. As I get more into the work, a new one may present itself. And in any case, not all titles are allowed to stand (I will even accept it if "Ax" is changed).
The novel will follow the lives of Audofleda, Amalasuntha, and perhaps Matasuentha. Audofleda was the sister of Clovis I - so it is perhaps obvious how I came across her. She married Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king who killed Odovakar - famed, himself, for putting an end to the Roman Empire. Unlike "Ax", this work will focus on female characters. It also isn't told in first person, which I am relishing quite a bit.
The quote above goes beyond much of the wisdom of research I've found up to this point, in that it takes the snapshot of "ass-kicking Ostrogoth women" and puts a frame on a greater context. Amalasuntha bore the grandson of Theodoric, and when that child died, she became queen regnant in a time during which, shall we say, if not sexism, a certain lack of feminine monarchical opportunity marked the period. Ama was educated, no beauty, a great nonconformist, and a woman with her own mind.
So the challenge not to write a Mary Sue is fascinating.
And the quote above is my guidepost. Her education is irrelevant to everyone around her. Her ABILITY is irrelevant.
But she is the child of Theodoric, and was mother of a king.
Her charisma will, I suspect as I work to build her character (at this point I am still in her teenage years), build on the same basis as her father: Her Amal royal heritage, her lineage, her right - not by gender, but by charisma of the blood - is the glue by which she binds herself to the throne.
The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them. --Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers
I've been calling the thing "Matrilineage", for the record - though I have zero attachment to this title, and would surmise no agent nor publisher in the world will go for it. As I get more into the work, a new one may present itself. And in any case, not all titles are allowed to stand (I will even accept it if "Ax" is changed).
The novel will follow the lives of Audofleda, Amalasuntha, and perhaps Matasuentha. Audofleda was the sister of Clovis I - so it is perhaps obvious how I came across her. She married Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king who killed Odovakar - famed, himself, for putting an end to the Roman Empire. Unlike "Ax", this work will focus on female characters. It also isn't told in first person, which I am relishing quite a bit.
The quote above goes beyond much of the wisdom of research I've found up to this point, in that it takes the snapshot of "ass-kicking Ostrogoth women" and puts a frame on a greater context. Amalasuntha bore the grandson of Theodoric, and when that child died, she became queen regnant in a time during which, shall we say, if not sexism, a certain lack of feminine monarchical opportunity marked the period. Ama was educated, no beauty, a great nonconformist, and a woman with her own mind.
So the challenge not to write a Mary Sue is fascinating.
And the quote above is my guidepost. Her education is irrelevant to everyone around her. Her ABILITY is irrelevant.
But she is the child of Theodoric, and was mother of a king.
Her charisma will, I suspect as I work to build her character (at this point I am still in her teenage years), build on the same basis as her father: Her Amal royal heritage, her lineage, her right - not by gender, but by charisma of the blood - is the glue by which she binds herself to the throne.
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