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Making Something Ugly

09 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by Loree2e in 15 Habits, Fiction, Writing

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[This was originally a draft post from the 15 Habits of Great Writers series that I never posted. I’ve added to it in order to check off my “write 500 words every day” goal. (I needed a little assistance because I am limited on time and inspiration this morning…I’m taking the kids to Monterey Bay Aquarium) ]

Day 7: Start something that you know will be difficult and thus have been avoiding. Doesn’t matter if it’s ugly, as all art starts out ugly before the artist finds the beauty in it.

I’ve always liked to think about what the world would be like if gender roles were reversed. What if long ago, there had been some event that established a maternalistic society? How differently would society have evolved? Or would it be more interesting from a creative writing perspective to just take the current world and flip gender roles in order to highlight the inequalities? I thought about this idea again while watching the movie Magic Mike last week. It was an odd blend of male stripping/dancing and character drama (thank you, Steven Soderbergh). I can’t help but think that if this had been a movie about a woman stripping and dancing in order to make money so she can pursue her real dream of “respectable” artistic work…oh, wait, that was Flashdance.  Anyway, this (ugly) piece of creative writing comes from that idea of a world ruled by woman:

I am tired of living this boring life, he thought, as he lifted the dining room chair and deftly manuevered the vacuum cleaner, sucking up the leftover flakes of the croissants he had baked for Jacinda. He found some fulfillment in managing their home and in his daily trips to the local Manifestival arena (Just last week he defeated Artemisas in wrestling. Jacinda seemed proud and pleased that her husband had established himself as the one of the strongest men in their town) but he felt something was missing. Why should the women be allowed to work outside the home and travel for business and earn their own paychecks, but not men? He had always loved doing the crossword puzzles in the newspaper and enjoyed writing letters for correspondence…he had once written a short story in school that had earned him high marks and he had been elated until the teacher remarked that it’s too bad that men don’t work in the arts., he would likely have been a good writer. Best to stick to mens’ work, using his natural strength. History had shown that women were smarter and better able to manage complex projects and large groups of people. Leave the easier work, like domestic engineering, to the men. He set the vacuum cleaner down and thought of the essay he had submitted to their city newspaper’s non-fiction contest, using his initials so the editor might assume it was a woman writing. The deadline was last week and he constantly checked his mailbox for some sort of notification. His daydream was interrupted by the sharp shrill ring of their kitchen phone. 

Starting something I’m scared of

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by Loree2e in 15 Habits, Writing

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Tags

15Habits, fiction, Hawaii

Day Three: Start something I’m scared of.

I’ve always wanted to write a book or screenplay based on my high school years in Hawaii, but I wasn’t sure what the driving story would be, or who the characters should be, and so on, so I always felt overwhelmed and afraid of taking the first step.

Today, I started.

Here’s the first page I wrote:

She exited the jetway and walked into the open air terminal. The thickness of the air enveloped her like a spiderweb. It was sweet and heavy and after a few syrupy breaths she realized that beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and upper lip so she removed her sweater and let the tropical air settle in to her skin. The length of their journey from the east coast had worn them all down to where their senses were dulled, but the overwhelming floral scent woke them up enough to lift their weary eyelids and admire their new environment. Flowers and greenery seemed to be everywhere, growing alongside the walkways and strung up in beautiful loops, offered for sale by small, dark-skinned women wearing loose, colorful dresses (she would later learn these are called muumuus, a Hawaiian word for “cut off” because the dresses were made without yokes so the missionaries wouldn’t be so hot in the tropical heat). Looking out beyond the airport, to one side was a wall of green, mossy mountains, and to the other side, nothing…just sky and clouds and…home. No, she had to remind herself, this is now our home. For the next three years, anyway. What lay across the miles of ocean used to be home but now it’s just a memory. There is no going back to the life I had in Virginia. She wondered what her friends were doing at that moment…their time was now 6 hours ahead of hers. Not only had she physically been removed from her friends but now they lived in different time zones. The sight of the exotic flowers in the terminal and the new smells emanating from food stalls were her wake up call that “this ain’t Kansas, Dorothy.” Hawaii may be a state of the United States of America, but it was the exotic, distant cousin to all the white-bread family members back on the mainland. She wondered if Alaska had the same, isolated feeling of being so geographically removed from the rest of the USA. As she would learn soon enough, many of the people of Hawaii felt as remote as the state itself, wary (and perhaps weary) of visitors. To them, she was essentially a three-year tourist.

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