The writing process for the story I'm writing has begun, and I'm writing it as part of my Advanced Composition class. My goal is to use the art of rhetorical language to tell a story about how discrimination feels to a women, especially coming from people she cares about. This post is a cross-post from my class Wiki, explaining and outlining the plot in a synopsis format. 

Inspiration (because we all get it from somewhere): A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, a short story by Gabriel García Márquez. And this image (courtesy of Pixabay, which I'd like to use for a cover, when I get to that point):

Title: The Mask of Misunderstood Women

Synopsis: A clan of mountain people have among them certain users of magic. Pa'en (pronounced like the word "pain" if it were two syllables) is a user of "feeling-memory" magic. From his induction into manhood, he's recognized as a full-fledged user of his particular magic and receives the magician's suffix on his name, becoming Pa'en-jinn. Pa'en-jinn is a mask-maker. He makes the masks for the Feeling Faces ceremony. Every year a certain mask is made to represent a position of male leadership/function/occupation within the clan. Pa'en-jin creates the mask out of clay and then pours into it the empathy (feelings) and memories he collects from the man or men whose function or occupation is being observed. More than one person's feelings can go into making a Feeling Face. There's masks called "Mask of Farmers," "Mask of Clan Chiefs (into it the each clan chief's life is poured in after Pa'en collects it from a dying chief), etc. Pa'en is only one of a long line of mask makers. Pa'en also takes masks to outlying villagers when people have need of them. A farmer might want to feel or access the Farmer's Mask if he's forgotten something that a farmer whose memories have gone into the mask might have known. It's complicated, I know. I'm trying to world-build as I go. I'm open to ideas about masks, world-building, etc. I've only just begun outlining and thinking about this story.

The women of the clan have long been ignored by the society, even though they hold important functions within the clan and some of them are also magic users with important occupations in the clan (Pa'en's grandmother is a healer). The women have been petitioning the clan chiefs and mask makers for a many decades since the opening of the story to finally have masks made for them. Pa'en, whose father died when he was a boy, has been under the influence of the three women in his household (mother, sister, grandmother--the Elder Mother or Elderess) and they have given him much to think about, and much grief, too. He looks forward to leaving the village on errands so as not to "feel their disappointment like a heaving sheet of sorrowful rain."

Will he decide to go against the clan chief and make the mask for the clan's women?

What will happen when he starts collecting the feelings and memories of the clan's women, for too long use to use, abuse, and neglect?

That's what I hope to explore in this story. I feel like this is the one story I absolutely need to put out in the world before I shrug off this mortal coil.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

More cross-posting from my Advanced Composition class this week. I've gotten permission to tell the story of The Mask of Misunderstood Women from my professor. The next couple of posts here will be cross-posts from my journey into uncovering that story. Here is the first post where I mention it, from the class Wiki page. The assignment was to interview another writer or interview ourselves. 

   In the spirit of introversion, I have opted for the first choice in the interview process.

     I am going to talk about my grandmother of Welsh ancestry, a very old British nursery rhyme she taught me, and how I managed to turn it all into a two-character, all-dialogue flash fiction story that ended up published in the Florida Writers Association anthology "Let's Talk," a collection of stories that were made up entirely of dialogue.

     I remember my grandma fondly. She is the first person that I recall who introduced me to the joy of reading. When I developed a knack for telling my own stories, she bought me my first typewriter, not a cheap plastic playtoy typewriter, but a genuine classic (used and a little beat up, but loved nonetheless) Smith Corona. She used to sit me on her knee when I was a whole lot younger than I am now. She would sit me there on her lap and tell me stories and sing me nursery rhymes. One of my favorite nursery rhymes that she would sing to me was "Sing a Song of Sixpence."

     Later, when I was grown up and had started writing, years after my dear grandma had passed on, I would often think back to that particular nursery rhyme and the Writer's Itch would begin in my brain.

     The Writer's Itch... You know what it is, because you also are writers. It's that feeling when the Muse is tickling you with an Idea and you must...(MUST!) write about it!. Sooner or later the Muse will hand you the words for it, and you will sling them down on paper, one inky character after the other, until the word END makes its appearance. I have a saying: I write because I have an itch in my mind that only a pen can scratch. 

     Well, nothing really happened about the Itch for awhile. It was still there, always tickling. Sometimes it would pop its head out of a gray cell, ostrich-like, and whisper: "Soon. Please tell my story soon!" I didn't know it at the time, but that was probably one of my characters talking to me, either Cookie or King.

     Nothing happened about the Itch for years. Then, I joined the Florida Writers Association.

     Kairos. Providential kairos, if you want to delve into the stuff from our RA reading.

     After being a member for awhile, the President of the Association (at that time John Rehg) presented us with the information on the forthcoming third anthology of the Florida Writers Association. It was to be comprised of member stories that were told in all-dialogue style.

     KAIROS.

     Cookie and King were no longer whispering; they were shouting loud and clear: THIS IS IT! IT IS TIME!

     I went home that same evening and begin to write the conversation between a human king's chef and the king of the blackbirds. It's a hard enough challenge to write dialogue stories, but I gave myself one further challenge: I wrote it all in a British accent, and the chef (Cookie) had what can be called a cockney accent.

     When it was written, I got on the blessed Web and asked for beta readings from two of my author peers from England. I wanted to be sure the voices in this conversation were authentic. Sam and Icy gave me invaluable feedback (and Icy told me it was her favorite of all my stories thus far) and I edited it and sent the story in to the publishers.

     I waited with nervous anxiety to see if my grandmothers story, Cookie and King's story, would be seen in print by people all over the state. I finally got the acceptance email several weeks later. I was overjoyed that "The King and His Twenty-Three Subjects" would be published in the book. It was an agonizing thing to write... two characters, spilling out dialogue that parallels an old British nursery rhyme, spilling out speech in a dialect local for them, but not for me...was no small feat. Thank the gods I watched all those BBC shows when I was a kid. It paid off.

     I always have a struggle when I get engaged with a new piece of writing. I'm currently feeling a few other tickles, hearing a few other whispers;  some of them becoming clearer and clearer. I must engage Pa'en-jin's story soon, because it is my first foray into a blend of magical realism and feminism. I have a vengeance from the grave story that must be penned soon, too, due to a deadline. Meanwhile, I am currently feeling the Itch to tell the stories of a little boy and his sentient motorbike, and a merman who just wants some land-girl love.

     That Itch...

     That remarkable, wonderful Itch.