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.

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.

A very Shakespeare Themed day

Yesterday was a very Shakespeare themed day. Which isn't surprising, considering I started my Shakespeare class this semester and so far it rocks. We're reading Shakespeare's later plays, beginning with Twelfth Night (which is my favorite Shakespearean Comedy ever) and yesterday I decided I wanted to watch the movie. Not knowing if there was one, I looked on YouTube first...and found the whole version of the 1996 version with Toby Smith as Duke Orsino, Helen Bonham Carter as Countess Olivia, Imogen Stubbs as Viola/Cesario, ben Kingsley as Feste and Imelda Staunton as Maria. Let me tell you, Shakespeare is awesome on his own, but put together a bunch of actors who really know how to do what they do, set the play in this Victorian-esque background, and then let what you will happen, it becomes a beautiful, beautiful thing.

After I finished my movie, I went to dinner, then read a book on the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and how it could be considered a colonial extension of Europe (this was an interesting direction for me to read in because I have Post-Colonial Lit this semester too) and after that went to go find the posse and watch a movie. We ended up watching Shakespeare in Love (another excellent film) which, as many learned men know, has in it a lot of references to Twelfth Night and, again, a lot of actors who know very well what they are about.

After that we watched Twilight, which, after following so much Shakespeare, fell farther and flatter on its face than it probably would have done if we had watched something a little less awesome beforehand. We talked through the whole movie and related why it was terrible and what was wrong with the characters (We have a theory now that Edward should be called nothing but Eddy C for the sake of his mind-altering coolness, and all were agreed that Bella is a Mary Sue.) and it was fun.

But I was still thinking alot about Shakespeare when I went to bed, including one of the discussion questions our professor is having us ruminate on, the idea of whether Cesario is a real person or not. If you haven't read Twelfth Night, here's a little summary for you: A pair of twins, brother and sister, are separated during a storm. One of them, Viola, washes up on a beach in a foriegn country. She dresses like a man to keep her options open and her safety in check, goes to serve the local duke, and ends up trying to woo the woman he's in love with for him. She falls in love with Viola/Cesario instead. Meanwhile, her brother, Sebastian, has also come ashore, and is looking for the Duke to also go into service with him. Sebastian is confused for Viola, vice-versa, and then it all seems to work out at the end. (If you want a more detailed plot summary, try CliffNotes.)

So Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Orsino finds a bosom buddy in Cesario. Sir Andrew and Sir Toby have a bone to pick with Cesario. But Cesario isn't really a person -- he's a constructed identity. I realized after class on Thursday that Cesario sounds a lot like Caesarion (as in Caesarion birth or C-section) and his role in the play bears a lot on that. His birth or creation is forced, just like a c-section is, and it is done out of necessity, when all the other options are given up on.

And it occured to me (because I am self centered, and the chain of events lent itself to it) that Cesario and Audemande have something in common. Neither one of them becomes who they are, essentially, until they are removed to this far, foriegn place. Cesario offers himself to the duke as a performer because he doesn't have any other talents. Audemande culitvates her skill at telling stories so she becomes useful to Baldwin and Sybilla. If Viola had stayed in Messaline, she never would have married Orsino. If Aude had stayed in Poitou, she never would have met and befriended all the people that she does. Both women occupy traditionally male places, as public members of a ruling party's retinue, and both are very close to their soveriegns. Is Audemande a constructed identity, too, then? I say no, because she remains who she is throughout the story. She adapts her manners and her skills to her situation, but she doesn't usurp who she is for the sake of the people who control her life.

That's about where the comparisions end (Spoiler for the end of Song of a Peacebringer -- Aude and Baldwin do NOT get hitched.) but it was still really interesting to me. Here's a play I really enjoy watching and a story I really enjoy writing, and they're remarkably similiar.

So that was my very shakespeare themed day. I hope everyone else's Friday was just as fun and exciting.

Updates!

And, after a nightmarish two weeks of school work piled on top of school work, piled on top of the Minnesota weather beginning to act like the minnesota weather and making it really hard for me to type some days, we have LE UPDATE.

We have, in no particular order,

New chapter from Mercury Gray,

Category: Kingdom of Heaven
Title: Song of a Peacebringer
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: Chapter 13
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Rating: Fiction Rated: T
Summary: Trying to escape a life with no prospects, a young woman sets sail for the Holy Land not knowing what she will find there. Armed with her brother Gregory's advice and a modicum of courage, Audemande of Vinceaux tries to make the most of Jerusalem.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4400318/13/

and a new story! I've been working on this one for a while, and I finally finished it this weekend.

New story from Mercury Gray,

Category: Kingdom of Heaven
Title: Gardens of Paradise
Genre: Drama/Spiritual
Rating: Fiction Rated: K+
Summary: While in Jerusalem, Nasir Imad Al Din meets a fellow poet in the gardens of the Citadel of David, and has a lengthy discussion about gardening, poetry, and God.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4656923/1/

and another new story, too -- this one is a Grey's Anatomy fanfic -- new territory for me! check it out and see what you think!

New story from Mercury Gray,

Category: Grey's Anatomy
Title: The Small Matter of Teaching
Genre: Drama/Humor
Rating: Fiction Rated: K+
Summary: After Chief Webber notices Christina's non-existent teaching skills, everyone's favorite perfectionist gets a wake-up call from a patient of hers on how exactly to deal with the small matter of teaching.
URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4656438/1/

Now, after that massive outpouring of creative energy, I have to go work and attempt to write a four to five double spaced page essay on the impact the Bible and the Printing press have had on the evolution of English. Ah, Linguistics class, I love you so.

But really? Really?