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?

This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Georgia O'Keefe - "Sky Above Clouds IV", Chicago, United States

Glutton for Punishment?

Sky writing

I apologize for not getting this out yesterday, but I'm sick and have the same bedtime as my kids until I feel better.

I did some brainstorming on marketing. Skywriting is my favorite. How I would love to look up at the beach and see my first scene written in one mile high letters (that's the size of the letters, not the altitude. Really.) It's almost dramatic enough for this writer's ego. Perhaps if the entire throng of beachgoers were taking notes, slack-jawed and/or teary-eyed…Oh. Hello. I forgot you were here. Ahem. Sorry about that.

I said last time that the average person is exposed to 30,000 advertisements a day (according to marketing guru Steve Whigham). How do you get your book to stand out among all of those? And WHAT has to stand out? Do you need a bright yellow cover? An Oprah's book club sticker? (Yes. Give her your soul. She will sell a lot of books and your soul will get time with Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, so your soul will be self-embracing and in a happy place, surrounded by Oprah's favorite things.)

Let's talk about Oprah's book club. Love it or hate it, a recommendation from Oprah sells. Why?

Steve claims that 95% of decisions are emotional (based on brain-imaging studies- more below on this.) So how does Oprah make us feel? I notice four basic responses.

1. Loyal Oprahites- want to be able to send her emails about the book, detailing how the book changed their lives, their children's lives, their neighbor's life. These people consider Oprah a close personal friend and REALLY want to meet her. They take her recommendation as seriously as if she were their priest/minister/best friend/psychiatrist/medical doctor rolled into one. They have learned how to read because Oprah suggested it.

2. Casual Oprahphiles- tune in every once in a while, maybe thumb through her magazine in the checkout. She says some interesting things and most of it is pretty good. These people have read at least one of her other book picks- possibly because their book club picked it- and they're willing to give her recommendation a chance. They like how they feel after watching Oprah- grateful that their life isn't so messed up, hopeful and ready to put their life in order, serious about fixing the ills in the world, etc.

3. Oprah Indifferents- Think, "Crap. She recommended another book. Everybody is going to read it and be talking about it, so I should, too." A lot of 'book people' may fall into this group. (In a parallel example, the buzz around Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" has made some people read it, just so they could weigh in) This is, as are the rest of my Oprah categories, merely conjecture.

4. Oprah Reactionaries- WILL NOT read a book because she recommended it-but they won't be buying the books, so I only mention them. But they exist, as evidenced here.

Notice that these categories are related to identity (If I read these books, I am a good, caring person. Oprah said so.) Reactionaries have an opposite though equally strong emotion, which I will call non-identity. (I will not become a sheep in Oprah's herd.)

So you can send Oprah emails every day until she asks you on the show, you can drop leaflets from planes (think propaganda drops during WWII), stick flyers on people's windshields, tables at cultural events like fairs,tattoos, blogging, spamming, become best friends with the indie (independent) bookstores within a twelve-hour drive of your home, etc. Lots of people spend a lot of money looking at what motivates people to buy.

Did you know supermarkets use video of customers to measure time spend in a store, time standing in the aisle waffling about what to buy, observing what products people go straight for (and thus should be advertised outside, since by the time they get inside the decision is already made)?

I've wondered why they stick books like "Coffees of the World" and "The Ultimate Tulip Guide" in the entry way at Barnes and Nobles. Marketing people call it "decompression", and the purpose is to ease us into the shopping experience, to let our brains adjust. I think they use those books to give us some easy decisions. To give us confidence that we are in control. It reminds me a bit of a lobster trap. Here's another trap-

"Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying either. A third "decoy" item, which is not quite as good as the other two, can make the choice easier and more pleasurable, according to a new study using fMRI carried out by Akshay Rao, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. Happier customers are more likely to buy. Dr Rao believes the deliberate use of irrelevant alternatives should work in selling all sorts of goods and services, from cable TV to holidays." (From this article in "The Economist")

So, the ideal situation would be to have a table with your book, the bestseller comp book, and a decoy book, like "Famous Quidditch Matches in Hogwarts History" or "The Life and Times of Dr. Carlisle Cullen". You'll have some fans that will pick the decoy, but most people want to relive the emotion of a golden book. They've already read the golden book, the decoy is out, and that leaves your book. Which looks pretty interesting, actually. In his email newsletter, "Daily Kick in the Pants", David Farland says this:

"In fact, most purchases that most active readers make are based upon the fact that the book resonates with other works that they have enjoyed. The readers almost never make a conscious connection, but it is there.

"As I mentioned the other day, we choose the category of fiction that we do because we are looking for a certain type of controlling emotion in our work. The word "genre" doesn't really explain what we're doing when we choose our fiction. Instead, the sections in the bookstore ought to be titled "Wonder, Romance, Drama, Intrigue, and so on...

"Sometimes the resonance that induces us to buy a book comes from the cover. My own fantasy novels have covers by Darrel Sweet. Sweet of course is famous for doing the covers for Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan, two of our best-sellers of all time. So when readers look at my novels, they are immediately reminded of books by those authors."

I can see what he means. The publishers are very aware of cover art and what it conveys- hence the recovering of Wuthering Heights to look more like Twilight. More on this Tuesday, including how to make a living as a bum. Really. It's a good gig.

What emotion do you read for? Some possibilities- Adventure (like Dan Brown), romance (Stephenie Meyer), humor(Dave Barry), wonder(J.R.R. Tolkien), drama(Jodi Picoult)? Does it change?

What did one book say to the other one?
I just wanted to see if we are on the same page
Glutton for Punishment?

When It’s Too Late for Editing (i.e.- crazy fans are getting wordy tattoos)

Okay, this is when you know that you've made it, that your work will stand the test of time, because you see it tattooed on the bodies of young girls when you go to the mall.

Or it's a sign that you really need to invest in that Taser you've been thinking about. But this blog is not about someone else's permanent love for an imaginary man. (Imaginary class of man, really.)

Not musings about how they are going to explain THAT to their Mothers/grandmothers/significant others. It's about me and my sister, and how proofreading would have saved us a lot of money.

It's about an idea that went too far, too fast.

For instance, if I'd only waited a few days or run it by my crit group—they're great at picking out details like this-- I would have gotten "I am Bella", not "Bella is ME". It's too passive, like Bella is taking over my soul. Which, now that I think about it, kind of makes sense.

And, I wouldn't have gotten Team Jacob on my forehead. 'Cause I'm totally team Edward. How can I take that back though? Will Edward forgive me? I have hope since he so graciously forgave Bella when she kissed Jacob. What's worse, to kiss another guy, or to have another guy's name tattooed on your forehead?

And poor Cindi. Her tat artist…well. It was really late at night. He was about ready to go home, and I guess he was in too much of a hurry. The picture is a little grainy- if you can't read it, it says "Team Eddward"

In our defense, we can cut bangs.

I know it's morally questionable to give children tattoos, but Jojo is so cute…so pale and curly-haired. Edward—er, Nathan and I couldn't resist.

This quote is from Eclipse. (He's been throwing a lot of temper tantrums.) The lines are a little crooked because that needle hurts! He wanted to stop after 'freaking out', but I told him, "No. I told you before we started that you had to do it all the way, or nothin'."

It reads: "I'm okay. I'm just. Freaking out. Give me. A minute."

It will be really cool in middle school, won't it?

I read an article about a sci-fi author (I apologize for losing track of who it was) who HATED the new title the publisher picked. So when he signed copies of that book, he crossed out their title and wrote his own in.

What if something about a passage really bothered you, but you didn't figure out how to fix it until it was already published. And then you're walking down the street, and this girl walks by and she's got it stamped on her back? Can you, legally, take out the permanent marker and fix it? I know the ink isn't really permanent, but just to make yourself feel better? I'm thinking hard about that, and it gives me one more reason to keep on keepin'on.

Line-edit, here I come.

(For those of you who don't know me well enough, I read the Twilight books and thought they were fun. That's about it. Stephenie Meyer's story is rather inspiring:stay-at-home mom takes over world, but that's it. No actual craziness going on here. Just having a good laugh.)
Glutton for Punishment?