Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit...
How is it that, yesterday, I was running in Central Park in shorts and a t-shirt (long-sleeved, but even so) with the sun and the perfectly seasonable warmth and what's left of the ugly Gates, and today it is snowing and cold and the wind is blowing so hard I had to grab onto a parking meter on my way home to keep from being blown into the street, like those inferior nannies in Mary Poppins?
Usually the weather is mockingly lovely during midterms, but this year I was on top of things. Or rather, I went through a hyper-caffeinated phase and got all my work done in the wee hours of some weekday mornings, and now I'm going to turn in what I have because I'm just to tired to turn in anything else. Whatever. I'm a senior, right? I should be working on getting a job, except the publishing houses don't seem eager to hire someone who doesn't even have a BA (yet!) I have my Teach for America interview when I get back from spring break, but that seems so iffy. And I might be in the Mississippi Delta in September, which is completely incomprehensible to me. As is not being in school in general.
In other news, everyone go out and read Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock, which is number 14 on the NYT bestseller list. The summary makes it sound really pedestrian, but it has a great narrative voice and this really awesome twist at the end. Plus, she's represented by my agency. Who I work for, not who represents my work (I wish!)
Today in my Fiction class, we had to eroticize a body part we had never seen eroticized before. I have read enough slash for this to be difficult. But, without further ado:
The Elbow
When he broke his arm, it became our habit that I would guide him by the elbow, one hand on the cast, our answer to linking arms on the crowded streets but so much more innocent. The cast was hard and rough, like sandpaper, and as the weeks went on it became increasingly dirty, went from white to off-white to a dingy gray. It was a bitter contrast to his pale naked body on the bed, in the shower (where he had to wear a plastic bag over it to keep it dry), not to mention that it made things awkward, so rigid, so cold when everything else (everything that should be) was soft and warm.
It got to be that I hated that cast. I’d always hated that he’d been hurt, but at first the cast had held a kind of juvenile allure, especially when people at work or in the apartment would want to sign it (he wouldn’t let them). But after awhile, putting my hand there instead of on his arm, having to find a bag before we could take a shower, avoiding rolling over it on the bed, made it a huge, lumbering annoyance. And-this may seem strange-I became desperate to see what lay beneath it. I’d seen all of him, so often, so exposed, and it wasn’t that that wasn’t interesting. But I started to have dreams about that elbow, about stroking it and licking it and nuzzling it. I’d never felt this way about an elbow-they were always comically menacing things, promising more pain than they were worth, serving a purpose, I suppose, but, rather like the frame of a car or the binding of a book, not really valuable in their own right. Now his elbow was my fantasy, and I felt the cast was keeping it from me. I looked at other elbows, I looked at *his* other elbow, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing ever gets to me like what I can’t have.
I have become obsessed with the first person lately, mostly because of Marilynne Robinson. I find it easier to write than third person, and more palatable to read than second person, but I do think it is hard to do well. I almost never like it in fanfic--the voices just never sound quite right to me. My boss says that she feels first person seems less literary, but she does chick-lit, which is mainly first person. Do other people have opinions on writing/reading this kind of narration? Are your preferences in fanfic different from those in regular fiction or even narrative or creative nonfiction?
Usually the weather is mockingly lovely during midterms, but this year I was on top of things. Or rather, I went through a hyper-caffeinated phase and got all my work done in the wee hours of some weekday mornings, and now I'm going to turn in what I have because I'm just to tired to turn in anything else. Whatever. I'm a senior, right? I should be working on getting a job, except the publishing houses don't seem eager to hire someone who doesn't even have a BA (yet!) I have my Teach for America interview when I get back from spring break, but that seems so iffy. And I might be in the Mississippi Delta in September, which is completely incomprehensible to me. As is not being in school in general.
In other news, everyone go out and read Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock, which is number 14 on the NYT bestseller list. The summary makes it sound really pedestrian, but it has a great narrative voice and this really awesome twist at the end. Plus, she's represented by my agency. Who I work for, not who represents my work (I wish!)
Today in my Fiction class, we had to eroticize a body part we had never seen eroticized before. I have read enough slash for this to be difficult. But, without further ado:
The Elbow
When he broke his arm, it became our habit that I would guide him by the elbow, one hand on the cast, our answer to linking arms on the crowded streets but so much more innocent. The cast was hard and rough, like sandpaper, and as the weeks went on it became increasingly dirty, went from white to off-white to a dingy gray. It was a bitter contrast to his pale naked body on the bed, in the shower (where he had to wear a plastic bag over it to keep it dry), not to mention that it made things awkward, so rigid, so cold when everything else (everything that should be) was soft and warm.
It got to be that I hated that cast. I’d always hated that he’d been hurt, but at first the cast had held a kind of juvenile allure, especially when people at work or in the apartment would want to sign it (he wouldn’t let them). But after awhile, putting my hand there instead of on his arm, having to find a bag before we could take a shower, avoiding rolling over it on the bed, made it a huge, lumbering annoyance. And-this may seem strange-I became desperate to see what lay beneath it. I’d seen all of him, so often, so exposed, and it wasn’t that that wasn’t interesting. But I started to have dreams about that elbow, about stroking it and licking it and nuzzling it. I’d never felt this way about an elbow-they were always comically menacing things, promising more pain than they were worth, serving a purpose, I suppose, but, rather like the frame of a car or the binding of a book, not really valuable in their own right. Now his elbow was my fantasy, and I felt the cast was keeping it from me. I looked at other elbows, I looked at *his* other elbow, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing ever gets to me like what I can’t have.
I have become obsessed with the first person lately, mostly because of Marilynne Robinson. I find it easier to write than third person, and more palatable to read than second person, but I do think it is hard to do well. I almost never like it in fanfic--the voices just never sound quite right to me. My boss says that she feels first person seems less literary, but she does chick-lit, which is mainly first person. Do other people have opinions on writing/reading this kind of narration? Are your preferences in fanfic different from those in regular fiction or even narrative or creative nonfiction?