Mortal Angel

It's Finals Week.

You know, I could conceivably end this post there, but I wanted to share a portion of my latest short story with you.  It still needs work, but that's one of the best things about studying creative writing: Nothing is ever finished; your professors understand that, so you turn things in anyway.  It's a great system.

The story is an inset adaptation (a story based off another story or piece of art, not fanfiction) of Billy Collins'  poem Questions About Angels and this painting by Joanna Sierko-Filipowska.  I've titled it Mortal Angel.  I hope you enjoy this scene.

When Gabrielle’s hair tickled her awake the next morning, she realized she had accidentally left the window open all night.  Some wind had made its way through the window and a couple papers were haphazardly flying about the room.  She got out of bed, closed the window, and was all the way into the shower – still numb to the world around her – before she noticed that the pain in her back was much relieved.

       At the same time, she noticed that the water falling on her was not obeying gravity in its usual fashion.  It felt almost as if something was between parts of her back and … While Gabrielle was forming this thought, she brought her hand up to her back to investigate.  Her fingers touched something solid, and it was covered with wet feathers.

Gabrielle scrambled out of the shower in a panic. She slipped on the tiled floor and grabbed the counter to save herself from falling, then straightened up to face herself in the mirror.  The reflection showed a wet young woman with suds in her hair standing stark naked with small, pigeon-gray, feathered wings sprouting from between her shoulder blades.

Each wing was about a hand span in length and three inches from top to bottom at the widest, and though they were undoubtedly growing from her body, she had no feeling in them.  If she had been able to feel them as one feels one’s fingers, she would have noticed them a lot earlier.  As it was, they were like growths on her back and to this point had only caused her pain and irritation.

       Now, however, they also caused near-hysteria.  Gabrielle had sunk to the rug on the bathroom floor, too weak to stand.  Her hands were trembling terribly and her breath was shallow and quick.  She wondered if she would pass out.  She wondered if the wings were really there.  Stretching a hand behind her, she felt the small feathers slip between her fingers as she ran them down the length of each wing.

To list all the things she wondered would be absurd for the sheer number of them.  She sat on the bathroom floor with the suds in her hair and goose bumps all over her body,  her eyes shifting quickly from item to item in the bathroom, searching for stability as she tried to get her breathing under control.  Her head was buzzing, her heart was fluttering, and she soon found herself vomiting into the toilet.

       Bracing herself against the counter, she washed out her mouth and did her best to start breathing slowly, performing a breathing exercise that had worked once before.  She closed her eyes and focused on counting and breathing, counting and breathing, counting and breathing, anything but the wings (heart palpitation), counting and breathing.

When she had herself under control again, Gabrielle stepped back into the shower, which had continued to run, and rinsed out her hair, carefully continuing to count and breathe.  Getting out of the shower, she toweled herself off, avoiding the wings (how was she supposed to dry them off?), and then got dressed in a loose T-shirt and some jeans.  Putting on a bra presented a bit of a problem, but after struggling for a moment, she was able to hook the back strap beneath the wings.  She decided that if she was to go to school that day, she would have to wear a large hoodie.  Luckily, the wings were still small enough to be hidden.

       Class was a relief, and by throwing herself into the lectures and labs, Gabrielle was able to forget the fungi on her back.  Brandon gave her a questioning look once, which reminded her of the wings and launched her into a hurried breathing exercise, but other than that, no one seemed to notice that anything was strange about her that day.

       Brandon tried to strike up a conversation with her after their last class, asking her for advice for his friend, a photography major who needed to figure out what to do for a final project.  She shrugged him off and hurried for home.

       Time away from staring at her wings had allowed her to think and come to grips with her situation, and now she wanted to do a little research.  Gabrielle locked herself inside her bedroom and took off the hoodie and shirt so she could see the wings in her full length mirror.

       They had grown since that morning, and were now twice as big as they had been before.  It was a miracle, really, that no one had noticed them.  The wings lay, docile, against her back.  She tentatively attempted to move them, to fan them out, but it was useless.  So she gently bent her arm and moved one wing with her hand.  It was as if the wings were paralyzed – Gabrielle had no feeling in the wings themselves, but her back could feel that they had been moved as she handled first one, then the other.  They felt warm.

Kolob Canyon Review

The university I attend has a literary journal called the Kolob Canyon Review.  A while back, I submitted a poem to the journal and it was accepted.  It was great for someone to accept it, because I'd also tried it at a few other literary journals and was tired of rejection letters at that point.  There's only so much you can take, you know?  Last night, there was a poetry reading for the KCR.  There was a mistake in the program so although I was scheduled to read, I wasn't listed in it.  They figured it out and I read my piece.  It seemed extraordinarily short to me, because I read this poem just after someone else had read a short story.

Some great pieces were read, and I had a good time. :-)  This poem below is the one I submitted and read.

Earl Street

Four youthful explorers

took a summer walk.

Adventure pushed them

beyond the mailboxes

at the corner of their neighborhood.

They

stopped

often

for the littlest, who tended to lag

behind,

fishing for pond scum

in the thirsty wetlands by the road.

Past the end of the pavement

they found a rusty street sign –

Earl Street and Greenfield Drive.

Abandoned by progress,

discovered again by these children,

Earl Street is two parallel trails

in the earth, carved by wheels.

The explorers quested

to the end of Earl Street,

where it is erased

by field grass.

Then they turned back

toward home.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Robin McKinley

I once made the mistake of using the term "sci-fi fantasy" to describe a genre to my older brother.  He's a bigger reader than I am, if you can wrap your head around that.  I distinctly remember him telling me "Elizabeth, there's no such thing as 'sci-fi fantasy,'" and then me feeling sheepish afterward.  I don't remember what I thought this genre was, but I soon learned the difference between science fiction and fantasy.

Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven would have come in handy back when my brother told me that, because McKinley proves him wrong.  Okay, it actually fits in a genre called "science fantasy," but it is indeed a hybrid of science fiction and fantasy.

Dragonhaven is about dragons, yes, but they are approached scientifically.  Its premise is that dragons are an endangered species protected inside three national parks across the world.  That being the case, they aren't magical so much as an unusual animal the public is fascinated by.

I would not have pegged it as being written by the same author who wrote Beauty, which is great.  It means McKinley is versatile, that she isn't stuck in one voice, era, or even genre.  The writing is good in a not-good way -- it is written in first person by someone who is not a writer, so there are mistakes here and there which are common and, I'm convinced, intentional.

My one problem with the book was it dragged.  Understandably, the narrator is obsessed by certain details, but the result is a book which could be better paced.  It was interesting, and enjoyable, but I would not recommend this book to someone who is not addicted to reading.  Okay, maybe if they were addicted to dragon literature, I would.

Sometimes when authors tackle environmental themes, it feels preachy and didactic, but this book wasn't, which was a relief.  I'd like to keep the didacticism in my nonfiction reading, thanks.

So there you go.  Oh, and this may be the first book I've read for this blog so far that had me checking online to see if there was a sequel (there isn't), so I guess that means it was good, right?

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Robin McKinley

For my Young Adult Lit. class, I have to read three extra books and write an essay about them.  For my first book, I chose Fall of a Kingdom by Hilari Bell (I also wrote a couple posts about it, if you'd care to search for them).  For my second, I've chosen to read Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven.  This is the second book I've ever read with this title.  The first one was by Robin Hobb.  But wait, I just looked it up, and that one is Dragon Haven.  So I guess the title is different ... technically.

I chose Robin McKinley because her book Beauty is one of my favorites.  That book taught me to love the story of Beauty and the Beast.  The writing was beautiful and the story made logical sense.  I picked Dragonhaven up thinking it would be similar.  Though not a retelling, I assumed the writing would be the beautiful stuff I'd read in Beauty.

I started reading it and have realized I really haven't had much experience with McKinley.  The writing is totally different.  For one, it's from a boy's perspective, and that boy is not a literary genius (he admits it in the first couple pages, too).  For two, the story is modern.  How many dragon books have you read that take place in the modern world?  Jurassic Park does not count.

So it's different from what I'd expected.  But you know what?  I'm 25 pages in and so far I have not regretted my decision.  I think she has integrated dragons well (so far, but then, I have yet to see a single dragon) into the modern world.  They're in a national park.  It makes sense.

I guess Robin McKinley is setting out to show me she can do more than fairy tales.  I'll be excited to see her succeed.

National Undergraduate Literature Conference

You see that post title?  It's true, and it's prestigious, and it's cool.  I submitted a short story and it was accepted to be presented at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference (they call it NULC, pronounced like the sound you make when you swallow loudly, except with an "n" in front).  So about a week ago, I went, along with three other people from my college (one of whom is already graduated).

The interesting mix you get at a literature conference: people who can write but don't necessarily like it, people who love to analyze/critique literature/poetry, and people who love to write literature/poetry.  I fit in the third category.  My companions, the people from my university, fit in the second category.  This means I would go sit in a room without them and listen to people read stories while they preferred sitting in a room listening to people analyze ... well, I listened to a few essays, and they seemed to analyze society through the lens of fiction.  It made me feel a little juvenile in comparison, listening to stories instead of the hard-hitting academic stuff, but you know what?  Stories 1) are more enjoyable, 2) make time go by faster, and 3) are more memorable.  I can write an essay.  I even enjoy writing essays.  I prefer writing and listening to stories or poems.  Plus, if I'm going to be a writer, stories and poems are going to help me a lot more than critical essays.

The story I submitted is called God Doesn't Visit Hell.  I wrote it last year and had planned to edit it more after stepping away from it for a while, but the deadline for this conference came up and it was the thing I submitted.  Honestly, I didn't know about the conference until my friend told me to apply.  I guess I just wasn't paying attention.  My last-minute edits added up to me making sure it fit the page requirement of 15 pages or less, which meant I had to cut about 300 words.  No big deal, right?

My story was accepted, and then I realized I would need to be able to read the story in 15 minutes and was allowed to shorten it for that time limit.  I timed myself reading it and figured out I could read about 3,500 words in that amount of time.  The version I'd submitted was 6,221 words long.

So I butchered it.  That's how it felt, anyway.  I took out details that helped the story be more real, details that weren't necessary to the story line but weren't fluff, either.  It was not fun.  The version of the story I read at the conference was 3,559 words.  That's, what, half of the original?

I was scheduled to read during the first session of the conference.  While few people showed up (it was the morning), the ones who were there seemed impressed with the story, which was a huge relief.  I was scared I had destroyed it.  Turns out it was still pretty good.  One lady even raised her hand and asked me if I have kids (I don't), because I did such a good job, she said, of portraying a mother's perspective.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the Open Mic event, which I thought was a blast.  Okay, it was a nerdy, literature-y blast.  Everyone came with poetry or pieces of short (flash) fiction to read.  It was great because of the diversity and, well, I just loved the atmosphere.  I read one poem of mine, Spears of Grass, and then realized that there was more time than people.  A lot of people were presenting more than once, so I borrowed my friend's laptop and read another poem and a stand-alone paragraph of prose (The Yellow Songbird, I posted it a while back).  Some fun stuff I heard while there: a short story about the guy who mows the lawns during/after a zombie apocalypse, a poem about the beginning of the world which combined Biblical and Greek mythology, a shoutout on behalf of nerds in a hipster world, a come-at-me-bro speech about what it's like to be "F-A-T fat," and a whole lot more.  For me, it was the highlight of the conference.  There were a lot of talented people there.  Some are ready to be published, in my point of view, and others are not (I think mine was in this category), but we're all students and we're all still learning.

That is something I love about writing, by the way: Everyone is still learning.  No matter how skilled a person gets to be, they can still improve.  It's incredible.

If anyone out there is wondering about whether or not to attend this conference, I have this to say: It's fun, it's a learning experience, and if you really want to be a writer you should go if at all possible.

Someone please remind me to go next year, but to be better-prepared this time.