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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

The embodied you and me

9/6/2014

18 Comments

 
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Thanks to everyone who contributed to the lively discussion sparked by my recent blog post on the “stolen head” novel. While this focused mainly on voice and point of view, we also had some fun on Twitter with the gruesome label. This prospective disembodied head reminded me of a radio play I caught many years ago about a brain that was enabled to carry on living after the body that had hosted it had died. A wonderful piece of slipstream fiction, it raised all kinds of questions about our relationships with our bodies, especially for those of us who value a life of the mind. How much and what kind of attention do we pay to our bodies? Do they go unnoticed until, as Clare O’Dea explores, their defences are breached through illness or injury? Do we begin to appreciate their mechanics only when it comes to describing the physicality of a character possessed of a different shaped body to our own? Do we treat them as a project to be altered, improved and perfected, rather like we’d remodel our homes?

Bodily neglect starts, for some of us, with fairytales: as Samantha Ellis points out in her literary memoir, How to Be a Heroine:

the Little Mermaid submits to horrific pain purely to conform to an alien and incomprehensible ideal of beauty. You don’t have to be Naomi Wolf to have issues with this. (p21)

and continues into our careers as manifest in this interview of Eve Ensler by Decca Aitkenhead (or was it the other way round) in the Guardian magazine a few months ago:

for as long as I can remember, my body just seemed like a troublesome inconvenience, the least important thing I could think of (DA)

I had a tumour the size of a mango and I didn’t even notice. And you know what, where are we going with all that fancy head stuff? We’re achieving and doing, but where the fuck are we going? … I am now have the happiest I have been in my life. Profoundly. I’m working from a different engine now. (EE)

Fiction gives me an outlet to explore my fascination with our confused and confusing relationships with our bodies, including a couple that focus on the transformations that take place in adolescence: a longer short, Jessica’s Navel, and the flash fiction piece, In Praise of Female Parts (warning – it does what it says on the tin). But this is my first attempt at micro-fiction:

He woke with the sun and staggered to his feet. He felt clumsy, heavy head and throbbing forehead echoing the antics of the night before. The music. The dancing. The drugs.

He tried to join his siblings, but they showed him their backs. He trotted towards his mother, but his aunts barred his way.

Thirst raging in his throat, he cantered to the pool. Bending to drink, he caught his reflection: hooves; fetlocks; knees; chest; muzzle. Yet no longer a horse: projecting from his forehead, a huge horn spiralled to a point. He’d be living as a unicorn now.

If you’ve been following the weekly flash-fiction challenge from Charli Mills, you probably guessed where this one was going. This week’s prompt was to write a 99-word story that includes a fantastical element or creature but my imagination started ticking over as soon as I saw her doctored photo of her horse. I was thinking more allegory than fantasy – if there’s a difference – and the various cultural rituals that mark the transition from childhood to adult, another of my favourite fictional themes. Do let me know whether it works for you.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you might like to subscribe to this blog by email. Just leave your address in the slot in the sidebar. I’m back on Thursday with another book review. Hope to have your company again then.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
18 Comments
Lisa Reiter link
9/6/2014 02:15:25 pm

What a clever piece. A seductive lead through several paragraphs to a lovely 99 words!

Reply
Annecdotist
10/6/2014 03:43:54 am

Thanks, Lisa.

Reply
Charli Mills link
9/6/2014 02:16:53 pm

Like you, I appreciate what fiction allows me to explore. Sometimes, I'm not even sure what it is that my mind is trying to grasp, until fiction offers a revelation of truth.

That's what I see happening here with this topic of disembodiment. Leave it to a unicorn to deliver the experience. Adolescence is the grand transition when girl becomes woman, boy becomes man, and horse becomes unicorn.

(And I won't go into all the phallic undertones of an adolescent male horse waking up with a huge horn or why such a creature is the symbol of maidens.)

This transition, this recognition of bodily changes, never truly begins or ends with adolescence. Infants become babies become toddlers become children become teens become young adults become parents become walking-mid-life-crisises become seniors become ancestors buried.

Yet adolescence seems to embody the transition we want to embrace forever--young, virile, beautiful, strong. We seem to waste it when it's ours--partying--and then spend a lifetime trying to get it back--plastic surgery, sexual pharmaceuticals, buying material objects that equate to a huge horn such as sports cars or trophy wives.

You have fed us much thought-fodder packed with your flash. Fantasy is not always allegorical, but the allegory here enriches the fantasy tale.

Reply
Annecdotist
10/6/2014 03:52:23 am

Thanks, Charli. Really interesting the contribution of unconscious processes to our writing. My original thought was to write something about the phallic symbolism of the unicorn, linking to how it used to appear in tapestries, but then decided I didn't know enough about it, apart from reading Tracy Chevalier's novel, The Lady at the Unicorn. Completely forgot about it when the idea of bodily transformation came to me but I really didn't see that this was a story about adolescent sexuality, even when it's so obvious – maybe because I thought I'd discarded that theme. So thanks for mentioning it, and not mentioning it!
And yes, we have transitions right through life, but I do think adolescence can be particularly problematic, especially as it can be hard to catch up if you miss out on core experiences. But since stories are about change, these transitions are great for fiction.
Thanks for the challenge, Charli

Reply
Charli Mills link
10/6/2014 02:17:16 pm

Yes, transitions are great for fiction. I always enjoy your thoughts around the process, too.

Annecdotist
11/6/2014 03:35:07 am

Thanks again, Charli

geoff link
9/6/2014 04:39:42 pm

You do like to have a different take on the theme, don't you? This is really very insightful and probably the most thought provoking of this week's entries. Trust you to bring grim reality into fantasy!

Reply
Annecdotist
10/6/2014 03:54:08 am

Thanks, Geoff, that's very generous. Doesn't actually feels so different as it is what I write about a lot. But, as you know, I do like a touch of grim reality.

Reply
Sarah link
9/6/2014 07:23:50 pm

Geez, Anne! Ouch. Yet again, a beautifully done piece of flash fiction.

And the Samantha Ellis quote is awesome. Something I've thought about since I was little. That was one of my favorite stories.

Reply
Annecdotist
10/6/2014 03:57:36 am

Thanks, Sarah. Sorry you got stabbed by my naughty unicorn! Glad you liked the quote – the whole book is really interesting. I don't remember coming across The Little Mermaid as a child but I do have a gruesome short story about a woman losing her legs – not sure that she wanted to be a mermaid, though

Reply
Norah Colvin link
11/6/2014 01:57:49 am

Hi Anne,
Brilliant! I can not add anymore to what your wonderful friends have said.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/6/2014 02:27:34 am

Thanks for being a brilliant seconder!

Reply
Lori Schafer link
11/6/2014 01:06:14 pm

I think Charli makes a fantastic point here about the adolescent transition being the one that gets the most attention when, really, it's only one stage of the transformations our bodies are constantly undergoing. In reference to what you suggested, Anne, about our relationships with our bodies, I think they change over time precisely because of these ongoing transformations. The adolescent period is one in which the body perhaps first seems alien - it behaves in ways that were previously unknown to us. During the healthy periods of our twenties and thirties, it frequently goes unnoticed, except in the sense of our appreciation of how it looks and what it can do. Then as middle age sets in and the random (or not-so-random) pains begin, we start to pay more attention to it again, though not in such a pleasant fashion. Our attitudes towards our bodies, like our bodies themselves, are constantly evolving, and although I've never thought of this before, perhaps that's an important characteristic to consider in fiction.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/6/2014 02:31:44 am

Thanks, Lori, that's a great point about our moving in and out of focusing on our bodies. I suppose I focus particularly on adolescence because it's a time of great psychological change, as have other periods in our lives of course, but I've seen in my psychological work the sometimes catastrophic consequences of it going wrong.

Reply
Trish link
13/6/2014 05:07:57 am

Such high-quality blog posts, Anne. They read more like well-researched essays. This post reminds me of Eve Ensler's In the Body of the World in which she writes about re-connecting with her own body after developing cancer. She felt she'd disconnected from it after having been raped. I've just begun reading it, but can already see I'm going to need a box of kleenex close at hand.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/6/2014 09:12:21 am

Oh, thanks, Trish. I do enjoy collecting bits and pieces of things I read and throwing them in when relevant – and sometimes when they're not!
I imagine the interview from which I've quoted was in reference to that book, and makes a lot of sense to dissociate from one's body when it's been so violated, but so risky in the long term. Do take care of yourself while reading! Chocolate might go well alongside the tissues.

Reply
Clare O'Dea link
22/6/2014 12:59:52 pm

Coming to comment on this post belatedly Anne, I did read it when you posted but too quickly. Thank you for the mention and for exploring this interesting topic. I think Lori makes an excellent point about the evolving relationship with the body. Another aspect to all this is the difference between our perception of our bodies and the reality. People with anorexia are the extreme example but how many of us filter what we see in the mirror for better or worse?

Reply
Annecdotist
23/6/2014 01:08:12 pm

Thanks, Clare, never too late to share your perspective. Good point about anorexia as the extreme form of a difficulty many of us have in seeing our bodies objectively – how could we when we ARE our bodies!

Reply

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