True Love and the Right Kind of Muse
IM'ing with T this morning, something I hadn't done in a couple of weeks, I finally admitted to him something I think I knew deep down but didn't think I could ever say:
Sounds simple, doesn't it?
But it hasn't been all that easy.
Writing wasn't necessarily valued in my home--yeah, I'm sure I've harped on this one a time or two over here, and I'm not going to get all weepy about it. It's a fact. And all the browbeating about how writing would never make me any money is, time and again, part and parcel of my on-going battle with writer's block.
Even when my Mother was dying and she asked me if I was writing, I didn't believe that she really wanted me to write. Years of hearing the same old harp doesn't change with one deathbed encouragement...
And I've been writing. Even making a bit of money at it. Thinking of going to journo school, too, as I have this insatiable desire to write huge investigative pieces on stuff like the porn industry.
Underneath all of it, though, is a desire to tell stories. When I was a kid, I enjoyed making up stories about one thing or another, and "playing pretend" was far more fun than playing any other game.
Fiction doesn't come easy for me though. It usually comes out of some numinous, dreamlike space, not out of life experience or any other tangible process. It comes out of a part of my brain that I need to be led into by a vision of some kind. Like a sleeping princess, fiction needs to be awakened in me.
I don't know if other women writers go through this, but, for me, it takes a Muse--the male equivalent of Dante's Beatrice, to get me to access that Special Realm where fiction happens.
So the other night, we're watching a marvelous documentary about Channel Z--that legendary Los Angeles cable network and its mad programmer Jerry Harvey. But it wasn't Harvey that got me...
What got me was a few quick scenes from one of the films Harvey brought to the U.S.-- Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight....
and, on the screen for just a few seconds, was the image of a very young Rutger Hauer.
Something inside me gasped. I'd had a "thing" for Hauer since movies like Blade Runner, the deadly dull Ostermann Weekend and the dorky NightHawks. I can't tell exactly why--maybe because he's a big guy with a funny accent. Maybe it's the blue eyes...
Yep. The blue eyes.
Blond hair.
Big, strong... very sensual...
He was just bloody freakin' gorgeous.
It was funny listening to Verhoeven talk about how Hauer was a tv actor, and because he's kind of big, "farm boy" looking, Dutch audiences didn't think he'd fit the role of the sculptor all that well...but he did...
Sometime ago, I remember reading about how Anne Rice had Hauer in mind as Lestat when she wrote Interview with the Vampire.
Made sense to me. Wonder if she'd seen Turkish Delight
The documentary showed a scene from the film where Hauer licks the back of a photograph of his lover, sticks it to the wall, kneels in front of it and whacks off.
Damn. That was hot.
Not to mention that he had a really beautiful ass...
and within me, that part of me where fiction resides, slowly began to awaken, and open up. I started to spin the tale of a man who, years ago, made an erotic film...but, unlike Hauer, slipped into obscurity....who forgot that he was a sexual being until someone touched him...
Something Important inside me feels alive again...and all it took was the right kind of muse...
Now, if it can stay alive until the story's told. That's the next challenge.
"The only thing I really ever wanted to do was write."
Sounds simple, doesn't it?
But it hasn't been all that easy.
Writing wasn't necessarily valued in my home--yeah, I'm sure I've harped on this one a time or two over here, and I'm not going to get all weepy about it. It's a fact. And all the browbeating about how writing would never make me any money is, time and again, part and parcel of my on-going battle with writer's block.
Even when my Mother was dying and she asked me if I was writing, I didn't believe that she really wanted me to write. Years of hearing the same old harp doesn't change with one deathbed encouragement...
And I've been writing. Even making a bit of money at it. Thinking of going to journo school, too, as I have this insatiable desire to write huge investigative pieces on stuff like the porn industry.
Underneath all of it, though, is a desire to tell stories. When I was a kid, I enjoyed making up stories about one thing or another, and "playing pretend" was far more fun than playing any other game.
Fiction doesn't come easy for me though. It usually comes out of some numinous, dreamlike space, not out of life experience or any other tangible process. It comes out of a part of my brain that I need to be led into by a vision of some kind. Like a sleeping princess, fiction needs to be awakened in me.
I don't know if other women writers go through this, but, for me, it takes a Muse--the male equivalent of Dante's Beatrice, to get me to access that Special Realm where fiction happens.
So the other night, we're watching a marvelous documentary about Channel Z--that legendary Los Angeles cable network and its mad programmer Jerry Harvey. But it wasn't Harvey that got me...
What got me was a few quick scenes from one of the films Harvey brought to the U.S.-- Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight....
and, on the screen for just a few seconds, was the image of a very young Rutger Hauer.
Something inside me gasped. I'd had a "thing" for Hauer since movies like Blade Runner, the deadly dull Ostermann Weekend and the dorky NightHawks. I can't tell exactly why--maybe because he's a big guy with a funny accent. Maybe it's the blue eyes...
Yep. The blue eyes.
Blond hair.
Big, strong... very sensual...
He was just bloody freakin' gorgeous.
It was funny listening to Verhoeven talk about how Hauer was a tv actor, and because he's kind of big, "farm boy" looking, Dutch audiences didn't think he'd fit the role of the sculptor all that well...but he did...
Sometime ago, I remember reading about how Anne Rice had Hauer in mind as Lestat when she wrote Interview with the Vampire.
Made sense to me. Wonder if she'd seen Turkish Delight
The documentary showed a scene from the film where Hauer licks the back of a photograph of his lover, sticks it to the wall, kneels in front of it and whacks off.
Damn. That was hot.
Not to mention that he had a really beautiful ass...
and within me, that part of me where fiction resides, slowly began to awaken, and open up. I started to spin the tale of a man who, years ago, made an erotic film...but, unlike Hauer, slipped into obscurity....who forgot that he was a sexual being until someone touched him...
Something Important inside me feels alive again...and all it took was the right kind of muse...
Now, if it can stay alive until the story's told. That's the next challenge.
photo courtesy of Paul Verhoeven.net
posted by Tish Grier at 6:22 PM
5 Comments:
I've wondered how it is that people "pick" different genres - short stories, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays and screenwriting...
I have the feeling it's more like the genre picks you, but am not sure just how and why creativity manifests in certain areas for certain people.
Fiction is almost always more naked than non-fic, I think. We bear as much as we hide in the process. I never thought I was a muse person until it occured to me that for years I'd been visualizing a dark, strong guardian angel standing over me when I write, ready to pull me back from the dark places from which fiction springs if I couldn't find my own way out.
I've also been told to think of writing as being whispered to one trusted person and him/her alone. It makes me feel less exposed that way.
darius...I agree with you that the genre picks the writer. Perhaps it's temperment, or another trick of our brain-wiring that does it.
the feeling I always had with story writing was that it was like birthing a baby. These things grow for me in a way that doesn't really make logical sense.
Terry...I agree about fiction being more naked for alot of us. we're creating these little worlds, and have to pull something out of ourselvs (or out of some collective unconscious) to make the characters believeable. Another funny thing about it for me is taht when I'm writing it, everything sounds familiar--but when others read it, they hear the different voices.
I've very excited about this particular story that I'm working on. The p.o.v. is different than before, and the voices are stronger. I've also made the decision not to share too much about it with anyone until it's finished. Some people find it beneficial to read parts of a story before it's finished, but to me it's kind of like adding something to a cake after it's in the oven.
terry and tish:
you write so articulately about the writing process.
I, too, so often feel more "naked" in writing fiction. I once wrote a short goth piece that took place in the bowels of the earth. There were cages and whips, and allusions to S and M. I wrote it for fun, but when people read it (it was published in a local zine), I began to get strange looks. As if I were somehow the main character.
As if.
(I was.)
As you say, terry, "we bear as much as we hide in the process."
I'm looking for the "strong guardian angel standing over me when I write, ready to pull me back from the dark places from which fiction springs if I couldn't find my own way out".
If either of you have a spare one to lend me (and he is allowed to look like Rutger Hauer), send on a "wing-ed flight" to Asia.
It's hard to pull back from the dark places, which is why I resist writing fiction.
Therefore, I blog.
shamash...
oh, I've *so* been there before with main characters! Perhaps it's because I'm a devotee of the Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway schools of fiction writing, my main characters esp. have to put some of my Self in them.
I think it's only in time, as we begin to meet people who leave strong impressions in our lives that we are able to develop characters that are less about ourselves....
as for the angel, I used to have one that looked like a black haired heavy metal singer, and another that looked like Jim Morrison. Both served me well, and I think they're still out there in the ehter, if you'd like either one :-)
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