ideas.

From a blog post titled little bits of bone, 29 August 2009.

"Ideas happen in a frozen rush. They form always, interminable, and at unexpected intervals pop like match strikes against all of your senses. You lose track of where you are, what’s playing the radio, airing on the television, and God knows whoever and whatever else might be watching. They can paralyze or ride you to your feet, spinning, muttering as though you’re caught in an infinite conversation with the universe, with the hours, and in buckshot-like scatters of language, clips and phrases of coherency, you are abruptly speaking in the tongues of angels even if it is on the devils you are elaborating. You have lost your moorings and, aware of it, grope for both a hold as well as a hand up higher, always higher and so find a pen or cigarette, a keyboard or a drink (the very fortunate find all of these) and because the minutes are mumbling dire warnings of running out and the taste of fear in the back of your throat says sweetly this all may go pew-pew or kaboom or up, up in ashes and embers if you don’t get it out, get it down, right now, before your heart thuds another beat, you write."

Ideas have been on my mind today. Everyone asks where they come from, but what I want to know is where they go. They go to the page or the computer screen or they sit inside of you, waiting impatiently for their turn. Sometimes the last you see of them is their backs as they walk away, fade out, neglected and malnourished. Ideas can take you anywhere and the bad ones do so with elegiac smiles and beckoning hands. You don't always know they're bad until you're halfway to the end or, if you're really unlucky, not until it's all over. 

Sometimes you have to the let idea lead you where it will to find out how good it is, how good it can be. Other times it's best to get a jump on the idea, wrap it up, tuck it in and take it with you.

I'm going to go on and take the one I have now and get it down. More later. 

call me ken.

When a professor at a liberal arts college that proudly promotes their open-mindedness tells their female writing students that they should have three names to publish under – one for their primary genre, one for materials written outside of that genre, and one male pseudonym – there is something rotten in Denmark. Then we learn that the professor in question is a woman and our eyebrows rise to our hairlines.

Or do they?

I would like to imagine that this professor advised her students of this with a disclaimer stating her disagreement with the prejudice this advice implies is alive and well in the publishing industry and/or the reading public. This advice, while not direct evidence of discrepancies in the treatment of men and women in the industry, is absolutely indicative of it; and, most likely, the professor was only attempting to inform and so forewarn her female students.

Thems the breaks?


The women’s literary organization VIDA, as mentioned in the earlier post announcing the opening of Fuck Yeah Lady Writers, has found yet again that there is a sizable disparity between the number of men and women writing for major publications, and between the number of men and women being published. I have been involved of late in numerous conversations regarding these discrepancies with both writers and avid readers, the result of which is a series of impromptu interviews. This greenhorn research has failed to answer many of my questions and instead only raised others.  


This is a problem that belongs primarily to the people, not to the publishers. The publishers are looking to sell what the people will buy. Of course, as a couple undergrad business/marketing classes taught me, demand for a product can be manipulated to a degree by the seller.


Born and raised in the South, I was taught that gentlemen hold doors for me, carry my bags and invite me to order before them in restaurants. My brother and I were told this was a form of respect, one for me to not only accept but to expect in polite society. My brother was taught that did he fail to perform these duties, he was not a gentleman. I cannot say I disagree with this. Surely such tasks were being performed by men for women for centuries, long before Women's Lib. Of course, back then women were often expected to defer to men in intellectual matters and were denied many of what are now considered basic human rights and legal protections. History has cast its shadow over us and where does a modern, free thinking woman know where to draw the line? Know how? 


The line cannot possibly be drawn before the expectation to promote yourself as a man in order to be published. Can it? I have personally been advised by at least three people in the publishing industry to use the initial of my given name, to write under K. Bishop Sullivan or K. Sullivan Lingle rather than Kathleen. That is, I was told, unless I intend to write "chick lit" or "young adult".


The worst part is that I have done exactly this. I have accepted this. I have expected this. Yet this, while perhaps not outright prejudice, is certainly not respect. Therefore ought I regret it? Should I change that practice going forward? Would you as a reader be less inclined to buy a science fiction novel by a Kathleen Sullivan than you would by a Ken Sullivan? Would you be more inclined to buy a romance novel or a Young Adult novel by a Kathleen over a Ken? What about the blessedly androgynous "K"? 


Studies show that you would be. Publishers believe you are. 


Is it true? I honestly want to know. 


A male associate of mine told me that while he possesses no conscious bias in this regard, he refuses to read more Anne Rice after having read one of her books. He enjoys her genre. He appreciates her writing style. He likes her stories. So why does he refuse to read her books? He said it was because, as a heterosexual man, he is distinctly uncomfortable reading intense, sexual content when he knows the author is a woman. 


That is an answer, an honest answer that I can respect even if I do not completely understand it. I want more answers. I want to know why and I really want to know what can be done about it.


I am proud to be a female writer. I don't know how to let you call me Ken. 

this is not going to further my father's opinion of me.

My father, a talented writer and a journalist by trade, upon being asked what he thought of my blog said only, "You curse too much." One might think being Irish he would foster a greater appreciation for the art of invective. I guess not when it pertains to his only daughter.

Post title explained, I bring to you Fuck Yeah Lady Writers. 

It is the brain child of a good friend and fellow writer and is composed by a collection of female writers, many of whom I've had the great fortune of working with in the past.

This blog was created in response to the findings of VIDA, an organization for women in literary arts, wherein it was reported (again) that there is a sizable disparity between the number of men and women writing for major publications, and between the number of men and women being published.

In the Salon.com article “Literature’s Gender Gap”, Laura Miller writes: According to the Guardian, “four out of five men said the last novel they read was by a man, whereas women were almost as likely to have read a book by a male author as a female. When asked what novel by a woman they had read most recently, a majority of men found it hard to recall or could not answer.” When it comes to gender, women do seem to read more omnivorously than men. Publishers can assume that a book written by a man will sell to both men and women, but a book by a woman is a less reliable bet.

This is hardly an issue in the world of magazines and publishing alone. Indeed, recent studies have shown similar trends in theater and playwriting as well. In fact, according to the New York State Council on the Arts, a mere 17% of the plays produced on America’s stages are written by women. 

Why is this? Why does it seem as though the general conception is that a story about a man is universal and a story about a woman is for women? How can we examine and/or change that conception? How can we inspire more readers (and theater-goers, movie-and-tv watchers and article-readers etc.) to pick up something by a woman?

So this blog was created to celebrate the Lady Writers, to spread the word about the wonderful work being created by fearless ladies all over the world, both past and present. Hopefully this initiative, and others like it, will be so successful as to render this blog obsolete. Until then…

Fuck yeah lady writers!

the tape measure.

Most imagine their lives in linear form, years following years, birthdays celebrated in ascending numbers. They take time and unwind it. They prop it up against their experiences like a tape measure. Here, I was born. I walked one third through foot two. Next I read and on the first black truss mark I flew. But think, what if you never locked your tape measure? What if you acknowledge that you never can? Memory would walk with you, holding your hand. Déjà vu would be comprehended quick as lightning strikes. Time as philosophers have been known to suggest would coil and curve, places you have been, people you have known, dreams you have had all entangled. Is that not already true? 

The sky is so blue it breaks my soul. I have drank two cups of coffee too many, unwise when attempting to dispel nervous energy. Paper crunches in my hand, twisted, folded, and hastily smoothed out again. Hyacinth colored ink stains my hands and a poor poet steps up to the microphone to take it all away. That was where I was this afternoon. I stepped out of my car on a quick after work errand and right into a yesterday entire feet down the tape measure. Clinton Powell had talked me into performing ("Performing," he insisted, "Not just reading.") at a poetry open mic night. There I had been for years (at least three good feet), first introduced by a frighteningly talented woman who went by the name of Sista V, listening and occasionally compelled to read some scrap of an idea I'd thought grand before scurrying hastily back to what I always tried to make a corner seat. It was after my performance that night Clinton invited me to join the ranks of those who had awed me in Spitfire Poetry Group. It was then still in its infancy, but in comparison I may as well still have been in the womb. Through the course of the next years I went from an intimidated teenager to a self-possessed performer. I performed at numerous events, attended more as a member of the audience, and for a while even co-hosted a spoken word/music open mic night with a wonderful singer and songwriter named Lauren LaPointe. 

It was an hour in my life that has passed on the tape measure, but today I was back there, feeling everything all over again. I was holding a mic in the basement of a pool hall bar, swallowing so much stage fright that I all but screamed my first lines. I was bending over a table, words tripping in a rapid, inspired exchange with Clinton regarding rhythm and dust in the blood. I was hauling a speaker half as big as myself out of the trunk of a car, laughing along with my friends at the image and the irony. I was there. The taste of coffee was in my mouth and next that of craft ale. I was there with jittery fingers making meaningful looks at the clock and the sign-up sheet. Time worn wood creaked beneath stacked heeled boots and there was somebody taking over the world with a handful of words about lying down. 

The tape measure eventually snapped back into place, revealing the long yawn of inches lined up between then and me. I let it go without longing, with no feeling of regret. It was beautiful then and it is beautiful now. Time can't fade it for me because my tape measure is unlocked. As my departed friend would say (is undoubtedly still saying somewhere between five feet, eight inches and now), I took it all joy.

the jugular.

Go for the jugular. This was the advice of Peter Christopher, late author, teacher and friend. Described by his peers as one of the bad boys of fiction, I remember him as a charismatic, slightly rumpled realist who just wanted someone, anyone, in our class to stand up and shock the ever living shit out of him with their story. He was not easily impressed, not by a long shot, but what made him exceptional was that he was always willing to be impressed. 


This is what I learned from him. Some of these things I knew before I met him, but even those he taught me how to make better, how to make beautiful. 


Begin with a brick. A small piece of the construction, but a heavy piece to drop through the silence of a page.


Show the story, don't tell it. He would cross out adverbs, eliminating them like rats trying to chew through the walls of literature. Don't say that the wind is blowing, show the reader the rattle of the branches, shaking like a skeleton to shed its rotting skin.


People don't speak in paragraphs. Dialog is an art. Wielded wisely, it can make the mediocre great. It is often less about what is being said and more about what is not being said. The unspoken and the unspeakable often reveals a great deal about people (characters). He mentioned the screen writer Aaron Sorkin as an excellent example of what to do. If you're not familiar, go watch the first four seasons of The West Wing for which Sorkin was the primary writer. Hell, go watch it again even if you've seen it before. It will teach you a thing or two about how to write dialog even if you're penning a novel and not a television show.


Go for the jugular. Pull no punches. Dive in head first. As Christopher's friend and colleague, Eric Nelson, wrote of him, There was an intensity to his writing that was like a slap in the face – the kind that says “wake up, the world’s on fire.” This intensity, this ultra-real style of writing, is exactly what Christopher meant every time he ordered us to go for the jugular. 


The written word can save the world. Enough said.

first amendment aside.

Dear Mr. Shun-the-Non-Believer,

It was Jorge Luis Borges I was attempting to channel last night when confronted with your incredible pigheadedness. He said, "God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us," a sentiment with which I whole heartedly agree. 

I cannot fathom what prompted you to ask me with what authority I dared to be composing a novel whose central character is an angel (of sorts). You were the instigator of our conversation, having discovered from a mutual friend that I, too, enjoy writing; and when you asked me what I write about, I answered, "Everything.". "Fair enough," you said, and laughed. This made me inclined to like you, which just goes to show how poor my judgement is three whiskeys under. "But really," you persisted, "What are you writing about now?" 

This is where I erred. I dared to actually tell the truth, thinking fortune had stumbled me pleasantly into the path of a kindred soul. "An angel," I told you, warming to the subject, "An archon. She's the central character and - "

That was as far as I got. The expression on your face stopped my words, caused me to replay them in my head in an attempt to ascertain what I had said was so psychotic as to earn that look of yours. I was still trying to figure this out when your face shifted yet again, features flickering out from beneath the tumult of angry bewilderment and onto the shores of patronizing intensity. "Don't take this the wrong way," you said this very, very slowly, "But what makes you think you're an authority on divinity?"

"Oh, no. I'm writing a work of fiction," I hastily reassured you, thinking of the book in question and really not wanting anyone to imagine that it was even remotely based on my actual religious beliefs. 

That ought to have cleared the air. You and I should have been able to go on from there to happy discussions about writing techniques, writer's block and even self-righteous expressions of indignation over some so-called author who can hardly write themselves out of a paper bag becoming a national bestseller and why, God, why? But no. You, you ridiculous man, you opted to berate me instead for my daring, for my ignorance, for my supposed promotion of false ideologies to corrupt a soul-hungry populace in need of guidance rather than trash talking prophets.

What. The. Hell?

Fiction. Fake. Not real. Make believe. Hell, if you like, I'll tack a disclaimer of this nature to the front of my book. Trust me, sir, I have even searched my pockets and checked under my couch cushions since our conversation just to make sure I'd not received and then accidentally misplaced the holy spirit or even the mandate of heaven and have a care lest my misuse becomes despotic and some new emperor of the ink should rise. This is not the Gospel According to Katie. This is a story, made up out of my head, with little bits of brain and bio matter undoubtedly still clinging to every syllable.

Yet maybe like Warren Ellis, tongue-in-cheek, claims, when I write I am Holy. I can't be touched. I can destroy your faith from my chair. If that's the case, sir, maybe your faith was not so very "faithful" to begin with. Maybe you are one of the soul-hungry denizens, desperately reaching in your subconscious not for something new in which to believe, but for something with which to assure yourself what you do believe in is right. 

What, if in your opinion I've no authority to write even fictional stories with angels in them, do I possess the authority to write? An autobiography? Are you not familiar with the writing theory that all good writers ultimately are writing about themselves? Do you mean to tell me that Shakespeare ought not to have written Henry V because he was not a king nor had fought in a war? That Orson Scott Card should have ignored ideas of future societies and that, God forbid, Hemingway should have only written about drunks? 

You, sir, have left me flabbergasted. I remain,

Sincerely,

a believer.

post script:

But please remember my fondly

I heard from someone you're still pretty

and then they went on to say

that the Pearly Gates had some eloquent graffiti

like 'We'll meet again' and 'Fuck the man' 

and 'Tell my mother not to worry' and 

angels with their great handshakes

but always done in such a hurry.

So please remember me finally

and all my uphill clawing, my dear,

but if I make the Pearly Gates,

I'll do my best to make a drawing of God and Lucifer,

a boy and girl, an angel kissin' on a sinner,

a monkey and a man,

a marching band all around the frightened trapeze swinger.

- The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine.

apropos.

It's amazing what writers will ask a person. What is even more amazing is what writers will consider to be a perfectly legit question at, say, two o'clock in the bloody ante meridiem. If the question is posed from one writer to another, then all bets are off. The questioned might not be capable of stopping herself from launching into paragraphs of tangential, so-called "answers" that might cause normal people to feel as though they've been assaulted (molested?) by an O'Brien's dreadful-to-hold-onto nothing. 


One writer needs a biochemical weapon idea to give to a space pirate. Another writer is trying to come up with an appropriate character name that will become adopted as a title (such as "Ceasar", but, you know, not). Someone else is forgetting that they are, in fact, on the intertubes and it would probably be faster to look up the name of the Union general who went against Lee in the Battle of Sharpsburg than ask you who may or may not recall that particular history class (McClellan, if you're wondering). 


These are merely some of the more recent questions, demands and/or pleas that have been put to me seemingly apropos to nothing. Only, of course, they are relevant and even the afore-mentioned endless, "nothing" answers often are. Why?


Because like I said in an earlier post before I hauled my blog here, ideas happen in a frozen rush. They form always, interminable, and at unexpected intervals pop like match strikes against all of your senses. You lose track of where you are, what's playing the radio, airing on the television, and God knows whoever and whatever else might be watching. They can paralyze or ride you to your feet, spinning, muttering as though you're caught in an infinite conversation with the universe, with the hours, and in buckshot-like scatters of language, clips and phrases of coherency, you are abruptly speaking in the tongues of angels even if it is on the devils you are elaborating. You've lost your moorings and, aware of it, grope for both a hold as well as a hand up higher, always higher and so find a pen or cigarette, a keyboard or a drink (the very fortunate find all of these) and because the minutes are mumbling dire warnings of running out and the taste of fear in the back of your throat says sweetly this all may go pew-pew or kaboom or up, up in ashes and embers if you don't get it out, get it down, right now, before your heart thuds another beat, you write.


Ideas are fond of ambushes. Everything is apropos, even nothing.