D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

writing

Shaking

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Tomorrow I greet a bunch of strangers and hopefully regale them with the story of my 37-year journey writing the Lisen of Solsta series. This is hard for me (like it isn’t hard for everybody?). It’s hard because I have an anxiety disorder. It’s hard because I’m a zaftig woman, a very zaftig woman, and people tend to judge me as not terribly bright on first impressions. It’s hard because I’m an introvert who is uncomfortable in groups of unknown people. It’s hard because… Oh, damn, it’s just hard.

I’ve prepped my presentation. I’m planning on speaking off the cuff, but I’ve written out notes to keep me on topic (and not wondering off on some tangent or other and using up valuable time—an hour is a lot but not unlimited). I’m taking a few props. I chose not to use PowerPoint this time as I’m not familiar with it and couldn’t think of more than one slide I’d actually want to put up for this particular “lecture.” So I’ll be passing around the various self-published versions of the story—one of which I actually printed and bound myself with the help of my father—for them to ooh and ah over. (I’m not actually expecting oohs and ahs, but a little appreciation of my commitment would be nice.)

I’m taking a sign-up sheet in case they want to be notified of the publication of book 3 (hopefully near the end of December). I have a hand-out of my web sites and sites that might be helpful if any of them want to self-publish. I have four pens, a sign that says “Please make checks payable to…,” and a butt load of book marks. Oh, and books. Yes, I’m taking plenty of books. Just in case, you know. And a single printed-out manuscript copy of a scene from Fractured.

Do you know how hard it is to pick a sample to read in front of a group? When an agent or publisher requests sample chapters, they mean chapter 1 through whatever number of chapters they ask for. Easy-peasy. But for a reading, I feel that a true taste of the spirit of the book is required. This meant finding a scene where Lisen was at her outspoken best, but one where I wasn’t giving the bank away by reading it. I tried several scenes from both published books and finally settled on the end of Chapter 6 from book 1. Lisen is telling off the sooth who got her into all this trouble in the first place, and it contains a lot of questions that I do eventually answer (but not until the end of book 3).

So that’s where I’ll be tomorrow (Saturday, November 22)—at a library in Ontario, California, shaking inside but smiling and breathing deeply to keep the nerves from sending me running from the room. I plan to bring my MP3 player so I can listen to Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” before I begin—you know, just to shake out the cobwebs. I’d like to find someplace private, say, the bathroom, where I can dance like white girls dance. And then I’ll step out and shake the room up. Well, at least I hope so. Wish me luck.

A Swann for the Dawn and the Sundown

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I cried as I first watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End in the theater. Why, you ask? Let me tell you. Forget Jack Sparrow (a stellar performance from Johnny Depp). Forget Will Turner (Orlando Bloom in all his matinee-idol glory). Because the story, contrary to popular belief, is about neither of them. No, the tale recounted in the first three movies of this franchise begins and ends with Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly in dazzling form).

Remember the lilting voice of a child singing the pirate song at the beginning of The Curse of the Black Pearl? That’s Elizabeth Swann singing her heart out as she and her father sail to the Caribbean. Mother gone, father all that’s left, and she dreams of being a pirate.

The plot twists and turns around a myriad of obstacles and self-serving characters, but watch the movies and you’ll see it. We wander off with an often seemingly lost Jack Sparrow. We follow the perils of Will Turner as he attempts to save both Elizabeth and his own father from doom and destruction. But it is Elizabeth who rises above it all, who, as she matures, gains confidence and the ability to save her own self, thank you. And when we get to At World’s End, she has blossomed into the character most instrumental in determining the course of the conclusion of the story.

I mean, think about it. The battle on the Pearl with Will and Elizabeth almost single-handedly taking on the attackers from the Flying Dutchman, while Captain Barbossa marries the two of them? A girl sword fighting? While sparring verbally with the love of her life? And then marrying him while they’re still fighting the villainous hordes? For this fan of strong roles for women in story-telling and female heroes who aren’t afraid to get dirty, it was heaven. But that wasn’t where I cried. That moment came a little earlier in the movie.

The Brethren Court of the pirates had spoken and named Elizabeth the new King of the Pirates. (I value the screenwriters’ choice of keeping it the “King” even though the new King was not male, but I digress.) As King, Elizabeth leads the pirate lords and their ships into the ultimate battle with Davy Jones and the East India Company. As they face their foe and realize they are massively outgunned and out-shipped, spirits drop.

And then…Elizabeth takes a deep breath, jumps up on the railing and rallies the troops in a speech reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach, dear friends….” This young woman—whom some might call a “slip of a girl”—stands up there proud and defiant and smacks these big, strong men around verbally and drags them into fighting mode. I cried.

railing

I literally cried in that theater. Whether consciously or not, the story-by and written-by guys had created the first TRUE female hero to rise to the surface in mainstream popular culture. I know there are many strong women holding their own in movies and books these days, but here’s the thing. Elizabeth Swann seized the mantle of leadership like a man while still maintaining her womanhood, and she did it under the near-impossible odds of a major motion picture with Johnny Depp at the helm of the performance vessel and Orlando Bloom as her love interest. At that moment in time, all eyes were on her, including Johnny’s and Orlando’s, and everyone in the audience knew it. She had commandeered a movie of testosterone-driven derring-do and made it her own.

All hail Elizabeth Swann, the King of the Pirates!

I’ve Lost my Voice!

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A writer’s voice is a combination of style, phrasing, and flow. It is potentially the most useful tool in the writer’s little pencil box. Some writers possess a voice so easily identifiable that all an astute reader needs are a few sentences to name the source. And voice does not manifest in fiction alone; with the possible exception of newspaper reporting, it can exist anywhere that words are brought together to tell a story.

Now, enough of defining voice. This is a personal story. This is not a training session on how to find your voice. (The way to find your voice is to keep writing until you find it. That’s it. Moving on.)

Several months ago, my brain began doing a rather odd thing—probably brought on by one or more of a few stressors which I won’t go into here. My brain began applying a sing-song inflection to everything I thought, everything I heard, everything I read, and everything I wrote. All words strung together in any perceivable manner turned into this kind of chant in my head.

At the time, I was working on the first draft of the third and final book of my series, Lisen of Solsta.  In first draft, my brain’s affliction was active but did not harm the text.

(And, so you’ll know, I ran this past my psychiatrist recently, and he deemed it a passing problem, likely stress related. But he’s not a writer; what does he know?)

A week ago, I moved on to second draft, and I found myself fighting the work but not knowing why. Last night, a painful epiphany hit me like a hammer. If I can’t perceive my writing as anything more than a sing-songy mish-mash of words, how am I going to find the flow? I mean, there’s singing and there’s sing-songing. The former allows words to soar; the latter, a pain in the ass. If I can’t tell if a sentence or a paragraph flows, what the hell am I doing writing at all? Needless, to say, a great many things got thrown around my office last night. Sigh.

So if anyone has dealt with something like this or knows someone who has, let me know. For now the plan is for me to let the writing go for a little while and let my poor, aching brain rest and hope to God (hear me, God?) that the little chanting person in my head moves on to some other soul and lets me have my mojo back. I am a writer, damn it! And Lisen’s story needs an ending.

Thank You for the Music (A Father’s Day Orchestration)

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I’m sitting here tonight doing what I do nearly every night—listening to symphonic music on my Walkman while I write. And as I was writing and listening, I grew aware of my highly trained ear and its evolution. At the moment, it’s the soundtrack to the Sci-Fi* channel’s Children of Dune, the first cut, “Summon the Worms.” The piece begins softly with mournful strings and then begins to build until the strings and brass play point and counterpoint back and forth on the same theme. And then it bursts wide open with the tympani leading the rest of the orchestra into the billowing centerpiece. I play it over and over again because it, quite simply, makes my body tingle.

When I was in elementary school, my father would sometimes take me to his weekly orchestra rehearsals. He belonged to the local community orchestra which put on maybe three or four concerts a year. I would sit at the back of the rehearsal hall at the local high school with him and rejoice in the music that surrounded me. He played percussion. If it wasn’t brass, strings or woodwinds, he was your guy (except for piano and harp, of course).

orchestra
The Pomona Valley Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal  circa 1958

My very favorite instrument he played was the tympani—the big copper kettledrums. I loved, and still love, that deep-throated pounding sound, almost like the beating of a heart. You have to tune those, you know. There are usually two or more in the orchestra, and they’re tuned to different notes. Each time before my dad would perform, he’d spend many minutes with his ear within millimeters of the drumhead tapping it lightly with the padded tympani mallet, and as he did so, he would turn one tuning screw a skosh clockwise or counterclockwise to get the desired pitch. (The drums typically have a range of a perfect fifth, according to Wikipedia.) And then he’d repeat the process with the other one. He loved those drums, but they didn’t belong to him. The school district owned them.

DaddysPOV
The orchestra from my father’s point of view

Dad would also let me sit with him during performances. That’s when all the hard work week after week came together in a perfect whole. I would sit on a chair just like his chair—an angelic-looking little blond girl—and watch and listen as the orchestra gave life to black dots on paper. I learned to play the piano starting in first grade, moved on to accordion and then violin along the way, but I believe that the greatest music education I ever got was sitting in that orchestra absorbing the contribution of every instrument alone and then together. I can tear “Summon the Worms” apart and appreciate its soaring due to the time I spent sitting at the back of that orchestra.

DaddyLauraMe
My father, my younger sister and
myself in a publicity photo for the orchestra.

So, to my father who’s been gone for nearly six years now, I say thank you. Thank you, Daddy, for the music, all the music. My life would falter were it not for my love of music. And while rock-and-roll is great and I love it dearly, it’s the magic of an orchestra that never fails to take me places I’ve never been before.

*That’s what the SyFy network was called when the miniseries first aired.

Mormon Women Opening Pandora’s Box

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I was going to hold off on posting this, but then I read this article online about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) disciplines people utilizing committees made up exclusively of men, with the spotlight on the disciplining of women. This so disgusted me that I decided I had to speak my piece or explode.

I used to be a Mormon. I’ve written about this before and the fact that Mormon women are denied the priesthood which all Mormon men expect to achieve by the age of twelve.

Recently, I shared my story with a group of wonderful women, women who seek priesthood for all in the LDS church. They have welcomed me into their inner sanctum where stories are shared privately, and I will not betray that trust. But here’s what pains me about this more than anything else.

These women have an atypical attitude about many things compared to other Mormons. They believe LGBT individuals should have ALL the rights that heterosexuals have, something that the church chooses not to acknowledge. (They allow LGBTs into the fold, but only if they don’t practice their “deviant” behavior.) They find fault with conservative politics (most Mormons being ultraconservative).  They question the authorities in the church, and that is a definite no-no.

The LDS church brings its children up in a somewhat cultish fashion. “We have the only truth on the planet,” they claim, “and don’t you dare do or say anything to the contrary.” The church authorities claim direct guidance from God. And these women pray for the revelation that will open the doors to the priesthood for them.

There has been some pushback from above. In some cases, local authorities (and yes, they are called “authorities” by everyone in the church) have tried to discourage participation but have done nothing punitive. In others, punitive actions have been taken—such as taking away church assignments and denying temple recommends—in an attempt to quell what is perceived by some as Satan’s handiwork.

It’s not that these women are innocents, eyes wide in shock at the repercussions. But they are surprised when a place they had deemed safe from childhood morphs into a place not quite as safe anymore just because they’ve questioned the status quo. Have they never heard of Sonia Johnson? (Sonia Johnson was an upstanding Mormon woman who supported the ERA back in the 1980s. She spoke before a Senate committee which included Senator Orin Hatch of Utah. She had the audacity to answer truthfully about equal rights for women to this LDS man, and she ended up excommunicated for standing up for all women’s rights.)

I worry about these new friends I’ve made. They are wonderful, wise women, sincere in their desire to understand why God hasn’t stepped in to encourage the men at the top to at least consider opening the priesthood up to women. I worry because they continue in their faithfulness, and I fear it is possible that before all this is over, they will find the church that had once embraced them has abandoned them to find faith on their own.

I don’t want to see them turned into orphans. They deserve much better than that. I wish—oh, how I wish—I could fly in on their behalf, an adult Katniss Everdeen, arrow aflame in my bow, strike at the statue of the angel Moroni at the top of the temple and take the slings and arrows flung back in outraged defense. My skin is tough; I haven’t been a Mormon in over 40 years. These men who claim guidance from heaven can’t touch me the way they can touch my brave friends.

But for that very same reason—my lack of participation in the church for so long—this isn’t my fight; this is their fight. However, nothing will stop me from cheering them on from the sidelines, wiping their tears, cleaning their wounds and holding them in my arms when the burden grows heavy and threatens to overwhelm them.  May the God they rely on bless them all.

A Poetic Pause

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I rarely write poetry, but once in a while, a poem bursts forth.  This is such a moment.

The Dancer

In the scarlet light of an abandoned dance hall at sundown
The woman dances alone, twirling as though led by a partner.
She dances alone to a tune only her ears can hear.
She dances alone but there’s no way to tell
If she’s happy or sad, or simply nostalgic.
For a moment in time only her mind remembers,
And the room echoes foot falls softened by slippers,
The kind that one wears from bedroom to bathroom and back again.
But here in this room she moves step by step
Dancing alone to music unheard by anyone other than her.

Ah, the stories her lightness of foot must enfold,
Wrapped up like presents strewn under a tree,
Awaiting an opening, but she keeps them hidden
So she can dance alone, dance alone,
Dance alone like a once-spry ballerina.
The music plays away in her mind.
The music guides her every step on the dance floor.
A wall with no gate fully surrounds her
To keep out the prying ones, the questions
She’s never been able to answer.

She’ll dance alone till the questions stop coming
And the dancing evolves into the only, the lonely, her sole occupation.