Thursday, June 17, 2010

Georgia O'Keefe and Writing Smut

I emailed a friend this prelude to a kiss scene, asking if the comparison of her skin to a seashell was too "Georgia O'Keefe".

Georgia O'Keefe, besides being one of my favorite artists, was famous for her large scale oil paintings of flowers, such as these Calla lillies. Her art is incredibly sensual, and one reviewer  saw her attention to flowers as representative of the female portions of the natural world. If you know what I mean. (Which, for the record, caused her to say, "I almost wept. I thought I would never face the world again." But still, the comment stuck and sexuality one of the things that people read into her work.)

In my view, our bodies are beautiful and amazing, but sacred. I wouldn't post pictures of nudes on my blog, but these lillies- aren't they gorgeous?

So I decided I'm comfortable writing in the style of Georgia O'Keefe. I can talk about the lillies, about hands and skin and cheekbones and lips. And that's enough for me. I trust the reader to make the connections, that the emotion will come through.

Here's my Georgia O'Keefe writing. (My protag is an empath whose skin changes color as she experiences her own and others' emotions. She's pleading with Agent Hatton to explain the secrets of mortal life life to her. Her skin turned black as if she were being burned in a fire in a previous scene.)

Agent Hatton looked at me with pity in his eyes, pity and something else I couldn’t name.

“Your body already knows what to do.” His words were soft and intimate. I tried not to think of how they would have tasted to me before. He stepped closer until our toes bumped into each other, but I didn’t move away.

Mother help me, I wanted to lean in.

“I think that fire is your body shouting at you.” He took my face in his hands and touched his forehead to mine. He smelled of woodsmoke and grass gone to seed. “You don’t even know what you’ve done to me.”

I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. His thumbs rubbed in broad strokes on my cheeks and his touch calmed me. I still couldn’t feel what was behind his twisted expression, but the motion itself was powerful in a way I hadn’t expected. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You’re the psychic or whatever, but I know when a woman wants to be kissed.” He looked peculiar, but it wasn’t bad, just powerful. “Whenever I think about kissing you, your skin turns this beautiful purple, like the inside of an abalone shell.”

I peeked at my hands; a rich eggplant color was creeping into my fingers.

He released me and trailed his knuckles down my face. “Kissing you was the last thing on my mind, so I know it was your idea, but I should still tell you no.”

I suddenly wished for my empathy to return; I was blind. “What’s a kiss?”

His eyes slid off of mine, down to my mouth and then back up. “Part of the dance.”
I love reading a good love scene that isn't crude. Stephenie Meyer comes to mind- I think she's pretty much the master of not-in-the-room sensuality.

Any thoughts?

And as a bonus, here's one of my favorite O'Keefe paintings, with strangers thrown in for scale. I'm not sure what the clouds represent. Cellulite?



7 comments:

  1. I'm the same way when I write scenes. I don't really like the crude ones--for some reason being graphic just takes away from the scene. One like what you posted--which was awesome by the way--conveys sensuality more to me and I like reading (and writing) that so much better.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That was sensual but not crude. I liked the description of toes nudging into each other.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I liked the toes-bumping detail, too. Nice job, Kelly.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks guys! I got very nervous after posting that scene- it feels very different without the context of the rest of the book and I wasn't sure if it would just sound silly:) Like every romance novel cliche is thrown in there.

    I love the toes too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very nicely done and I loved the way you smoothed the transition. Good work! I came to squee on your blog! SQUEE! ;-D

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey Teresa- Thanks for the public SQUEE! Your attention to detail is amazing. (I went with tasted, though.)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to read more.

    I love Stephenie Meyer's sensual writing. Another author I like is Francine Rivers. She's a Christian fiction writer who puts love scenes in her books that are sold in conservative Christian book stores because she does the sensual but not vulgar so well.

    ReplyDelete