Monday, March 23, 2009

Editing -- An elephant, only with more punctuation.

Editing. Everyone hates to do it, but it's the elephant-in-the-room of the writing world -- something that cannot be ignored despite the fact that everyone wants to.

And I'm not talking about the cross your Ts and dot your Is editing, either. I'm talking about the redirect the last forty pages of your story editing, which I am getting a crash course in this week as I try to do that in addition to juggling a host of other things, not the least of which is beginning my prep work for my study abroad experience this fall. (Galway, Ireland? Anyone? Anyone?)

Was it necessary for me to abruptly decide to uproot the ending and take it in a completely different direction? No. But one of my reviewers suggested it, and after much thoughtful consideration, I decided that her suggestion had a lot of merit, and it would pose new and interesting challenges for me as well as a different (and more thought-provoking) message for the reader.

Last Friday I posted the first chapter in this new and revised ending sequence, and it felt a bit like pushing the button to initiate a countdown sequence on a bomb. A very large, imposing, life-in-the-world-as-we-know-it-altering kind of bomb. Well, now it's several days later, and I still don't feel any better about it, mainly because of the three people who I can generally count on to review only one has actually gone and done it.

But I'm still having fun researching and adding new elements to my story, one of which I am shamelessly borrowing from the Arabian Nights -- the character of Scheherazade, the great storyteller who sets the fantastic and elaborate tales of the one thousand and one nights in motion. I'm not actually putting her in the story, per se, but instead I'm borrowing the concept of so skilled a storyteller and applying her to my main character, herself something of a storyteller. Her new love interest refers to her by this long and strange name, and Aude asks her tutor where the name comes from. The tutor explains the story of Scheherazade and Sharyar, and Audemande realizes what a great compliment this is coming from her love interest.

As I was sitting in the library reading The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West in between my math class and Shakespeare, I realized something very interesting about Song of a Peacebringer in relationship to the Arabian Nights. The Nights are well known for their use of a frame story (Scheherazade having to tell stories in order to be spared execution) and for their subsequent deepening levels of narrative within the narrative -- Much like Hamlet's 'play-within-a-play' plot device, some of Scheherazade's stories have in themselves more people telling stories, embedding a story within a story within a story.

Song of a Peacebringer, then has an 'intertext' or 'narrative quilt' five layers deep, something I certainly didn't plan on but was kind of pleased to discover. Let me explain:

First there's
ME, Mercury Gray, the author, telling a story about
AUDEMANDE, who is in turn listening to a story about
SCHEHERAZADE, who is telling Sharyar a story about
A PRINCESS IN A FAR AWAY LAND who is telling a story to her children about
AN ENCHANTED CASTLE.

and Voila! Intertext five layers thick. Needless to say this discovery made me feel very talented this morning.

Monday, March 9, 2009

A confession, of sorts.

So I think it's been determined that I'm an Orientalist. Edward Said would be ashamed of me. Professor Mitra will be ashamed of me. Professor Steve will be ashamed of me.

After a review last week from Axel Blaze, my original character Audemade from my Kingdom of Heaven story up and decided she didn't want to marry a Frankish knight, go back to France, and have five lovely children. No, she wanted to marry Nasir Imad al-Din al-Isfahani and make my life difficult.

I'm sure the august personages mentioned at the beginning of this blog post would chalk this sudden change of heart up to Audemande's creator's weakness for Arabic love poetry and an ongoing love affair with the image of a world that has never existed, and they'd be very right. If Post Colonial Lit is teaching me anything, it's that I'm very much an Orientalist. I love to read about "the mystic east," about Mughal India and pre-Meiji Restoration Japan and the Middle East under the Ayubbid caliphate. "Latticework, caravanserai, fountains," to quote Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish poet. "This is the Orient the French poet sees. This is the Orient of the books that come out of the press at the rate of a million a minute. But yesterday today or tomorrow an Orient like this never existed and never will."

So true, Mr. Hikmet. I'm sure you wouldn't approve of this turn either. It involves a franj woman falling in love with a poem-composing Syrian general. Somewhere everyone who fought against the image of the lacivious Arab is turning over in his or her grave. Hopefully I won't rouse too many ghosts -- this is going to be a relationship built on mutual appreciation. And I'm well aware I'm going into dangerous territory here -- now it's not just my own religious history I'm fiddling with, but someone else's. But what is art besides taking chances?

So, in response to this turn of events in my Kingdom of Heaven story, the readingand research list for this week looks like this:

Music of a Distant Drum. An anthology of classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew poems. I read this today. Those 9th century arab poets really knew how to turn a phrase. Some of the best love poetry I think I've ever read.

Arabic Script. A book on the art of Arab calligraphy. Beautiful work. It's making me want to learn calligraphy in any language.

Becoming Muslim: Western Women's Conversions to Islam. Because the contents of this book may become necessary to the direction of the story. I still have to look into this.

EDIT: Success! Apparently Aude doesn't need to convert at the end of the story! Women in Islam, by Wiebke Walther, tells me that Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women, but Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire (which I own, by the way -- wonderful text) only mentions women who converted and my hasty scanning of the Qu'ran online seems to indicate otherwise. I think I need to find out which theology professor teaches the Islamic studies course here...

Islamic Art and Archaeology of Palestine. I get to design Nasir's house, and I needed suggestions. I at least know they weren't all zenanas and flowering gardens.

Night and Heros and The Desert: An anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. More poetry. I am a glutton.

Di'bil b. 'Ali. A poet of the Ayubbid period, so someone who would have been Nasir's contemporary. I need him for stylistic purposes. 12th century arabic poetry has a very set form, and I have a feeling I'm not talented enough to recreate that in translation, because of course I will be composing thier love poems in English.

The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival. Fascinating book -- started some of it last night at dinner. The Author mentioned Orientalism in the introduction.


Yes, it's going to be an interesting next few weeks.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Public Enemies!

Today the Trailer for Public enemies came out, and I have to tell you, I'm just as excited for this film as I was when I first heard they were filming in and around the city of Chicago. (As a native of the Chicago Suburbs and something of a sucker for Chicago crime history, this piqued my interest immediately)



You can see at least one Chicago landmark, the Great Hall of Union Station, in the trailer.Oh, Union Station, how fond my memories are of you. I remember walking into that room and thinking, "This building was made for films about the 20s." Wonderful piece of Chicago architecture history, something that also fascinates me.

You're probably wondering why I'm writing about a movie trailer on a writing blog, but I promise to make this legitimately about writing (or reading, actually.)

Public Enemies the movie is based loosely on Public Enemies, the book by Brian Burroughs, a wonderful history of America's greatest crime wave, and the personalities behind it, including the fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigations. I read the book back in January, and loved every minute of it -- Burroughs takes a very narrative approach to retelling history, and the non-fiction reads a great deal like fiction, which I suspect is the reason they decided to make it into a movie. It's a little hard to follow at points, probably because Burroughs follows several different criminals, and the G-Men who pursue them, simultaneously; One chapter will deal with Dillinger in September and the next will deal with Baby Face Nelson in the same frame of time, and the next after with Bonnie and Clyde during the same September. Then he returns to Dillinger.

It makes sense to follow the events in this fashion, since Burroughs is writing about these men to show the evolving process (or lack thereof, in some cases) of the FBI, which, during this period, was under the command of J. Edgar Hoover and still trying to figure out what the ideal FBI agent followed in regards to process, how he looked and who he answered to. I'm interested to see Christian Bale tackle Melvin Purvis, the agent responsible for the Dillinger case -- according to Burroughs, Purvis was, like many agents in his day, little more than a pretty face with a Southern accent, a good education, and no clue about how law enforcement really worked. One of the things that I enjoyed about "Public Enemies" is the frank, no-nonsense way Burroughs dealt with the extremely human errors and flaws of his characters -- none of the vast cast of this Depression are heroes in any sense. Bonnie and Clyde are two-bit, second rate criminals put up on a pedestal because they made a good story, Dillinger is an image obsessed playboy, and Hoover is a man in charge of running an agency that has little jurisdiction and little clue about how to use the little power they do have.

So -- Public Enemies. Go read the book. If you like the book, go see the movie! Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotilliard, David Wenham, Billy Crudup, Channing Tatum, Carey Mulligan -- it's a great cast with some great names on it and I'm sure it'll be a great show.