Characters

A delightful aspect of creative writing in fiction is the ability to develop characters -- those I love and even those I don't, though, granted I don't do a lot of backstory on my villains. I write women's fiction these days, and, to be honest, the evil forces I'm most interested in are those in our own minds.

While my protagonist and her friends are modern young women (the story takes place within the last decade), I go several generations in their backstories and the history of the town. Several of the characters are elder women (the middle generation), and it is this interweaving of her-story that emerges.

The origin of people and place is at the old turn of the century, from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Here are images of three of those ancestral characters, although, as with other images, my characters are not identical to these -- the images have simply provided inspiration and a visual touchstone.

Vianne

Bertha Rose

Kisaiya

Another fun feature of creating extensive backstory is that I already have the bones of at least six more stories I could easily conjure to take place across the past hundred years!

Don't Ignore Oppression or Violence

I am grateful and deeply honored to have my piece "Ignoring Isn't The Same As Ignorance" published by Feminism and Religion. Many wise women post their thoughts there, and I appreciate every single one of them for sharing their ideas and insights, love and frustration, support and encouragement. May we all be at peace and live into loving voices.

Two Wise Visitors

The Highly-Skilled Spinster

"A significant number of the women in the fairy stories are self-employed, independent and skilled. They often have a relationship -- positive or negative -- with spinning. Although most women could and did spin domestically, if she became good at it, it was one of the few ways a woman could become financially self-sufficient. (Midwifery was an alternative career.) At her trial in 1431, Joan of Arc was immediately inflamed by the suggestion that she worked as a shepherdess: on the contrary, she snapped, she was a highly skilled spinster." *

* "The dignity and independence of spinning has left an odd, hidden mark on the English language. A spinster was a woman who could spin; it was as a compliment that the word was extended to all unmarried women, because it implied that they did not need a husband, but chose freely to love or live singly. 'A spinster of this parish' comes to have her banns called not from dire necessity, but from a position of equality and independence."

~ Sara Maitland, From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of Our Fairy Tales

Spinster is clearly another word that women can reclaim on behalf of empowerment!

This book by Maitland is a gem! I'm grateful that a friend living in the UK had recommended it to me. I will be sharing more from this book in the future -- text that relates to our interconnectedness with forests as well as the uniqueness of Spirit to be encountered within each diverse forestland or woodsy copse -- but couldn't resist posting the above quote on spinsters right away.

# Top Photo: "Margaret (alone at her spinning wheel)" by Frank Cadogan Cowper (English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1877-1958)

Finding Love or Allowing Love?

While it may seem like only a silly, albeit entertaining, series, Sex and the City is also about getting to know and be comfortable with one’s self and choices. Because I witness this growth process in myself, re-watching the series every few years reminds me of how we change yet stay the same. For many women, me included, we endure a long journey laden with stumbles, falls, and climbing up over the ledge, repeatedly, before we can give voice to our uniquely individual truth. And even after discovering our authentic voice, we lose and find it again how many times? And this becomes even more complex when falling in -- and out of -- love is added to the journey.

In 1998, when the series began for thirty-something Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha, I was thirty-seven. I had just been through four years of intense and major changes, had been living the single life for over a decade, and felt like I was in pretty good company with these four. Not similar on the outside, but on the inside. After all, they were more ambitious and stylish than I was, my spiritual inclinations set me apart from them, and I was a country-girl, but how could I not relate to them when I was also a single woman in her thirties trying to figure out who I was and maybe, just maybe, find love along the way? Add into the mix that in 1999 I met the love of my life, and I was hooked into every episode.

I just finished watching the series from start to finish again, including the two movies, and I laughed so hard I nearly cried sometimes! As Carrie says:

“The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all 

is the one you have with yourself. 

And if you find someone to love the you you love, 

well, that’s just fabulous.” 

Another aspect of this series that I now see, and I’m not sure I did the first time around, is how all of these women soften through their experiences while trying to retain their voices. This is not an easy task in the modern world, whether ten, twenty or even thirty years ago. When we allow love to find us, we are within the feminine essence of being; when we seek to find love, especially through a driven or desperate or demanding energy, that is the masculine. How does love come to us? And is it important to understand this?
Marion Woodman wrote that: 

“Women today are reaping the harvest of generations of rape. 

Grandmothers and mothers have adjusted to patriarchal values 

to the point of extinguishing their own femininity.”  

While at first glance, the women of Sex and the City might appear to be ultra-feminine … are they? Do clothes and make-up, style and sex appeal result in or from core feminine energy? Or do we need to look closer, to draw aside the veil? By the time the series wraps, each of the four women has found her own path to balancing the opposites of animus and anima; this meant they had to soften into their relationships and expectations, while remaining firm in Self. 

I wonder what I will think the next time I watch Sex and the City? Where will I be in my own life in another five or so years — will my voice be lost or found? What about you? 

Last, but far from least, is how much I like the friendship maintained between these women. No matter what their trials and tribulations, they were always available for and forgiving of each other. 

Here's to women, authenticity, feminine energy, and friendship!

On Voice

a shift in view

I've become more curious than ever about a writer's voice.

Who writes in authentic voice? How many of us write through the patterns of two thousand years of "patriarchal authority"? After all, "who polices questions of grammar, parts of speech, connection, and connotation? Whose order is shut inside the structure of a sentence?" As George Eliot put it, there were women "who congealed into the literary mold men made for them." (quotes are from Susan Howe in My Emily Dickinson)

I play around a lot with my own voice and style, not just in an effort to develop an authentic voice based within my personal individuality but also to tap into what I feel is a voice that spirals out of the feminine principle.

I am exploring a variety of perspectives on the essence of feminine voice, from Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice to Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, and from the work of Marion Woodman to those of Emily Dickinson, Helene Cixous, and others.

If you have thoughts or references to share, would love to hear them! Write On!

Toe-Tapping Empowerment

An awesome song I heard for the first time last night. Not a new song or artist, but new to me. :-) Enjoy!