A Look at Lucia

by Diane Saarinen

Throughout the month of October, the International Museum of Women’s “Imaging Ourselves” online exhibition hosted a film festival featuring original films by women directors. As my heritage is Scandinavian, I was especially interested in Maja Borg’s Look at Lucia, a 52-minute film on the Swedish celebration of Santa Lucia, the festival held at dawn every December 13.

Perhaps instrumental in discovering how this tradition has become so strongly woven in the fabric of Swedish culture is the understanding that in the winter months, this northern country receives very little light. The image of a “Queen of Light” visiting each household — bearing a breakfast tray of Lucy cats and glogg (a hot spiced wine beverage), dressed in white and wearing a crown of candles upon her head — becomes a powerful beacon of hope in a country that is essentially plunged in darkness for many hours of the day. Of note, in the Julian calendar, the date December 13 was originally the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year.

Borg’s film focuses on the Swedish city of Norrköping as it readies for the holiday season. Children learning about Lucia sit spellbound as their teacher relates a story about a woman with beautiful eyes who attracted a suitor whom she did not want to marry. Lucia, the teacher says, wanted to give her dowry to the poor, and tore out her own eyes so that she would no longer be desirable. Concluding her story, the teacher offers a sharp reminder that Lucia was sent to a whorehouse, and ultimately killed by having a sword pierced through her throat.

How this tale of a Sicilian saint travels to Scandinavia to become a firmly-rooted tradition is unknown. Borg focuses on the disparity of the gruesome tale of the woman who did not want to marry and how, through time, this becomes distorted in what many believe is merely a beauty pageant where blonde teenage girls vie to be the city’s Lucia. Borg skillfully shifts focus between current adolescent Lucia candidates: an 86-year-old woman whose fondest memory is of when she was crowned the city’s first Lucia; and even a drag queen who manages to become Lucia, as well as testimony to the endurance of this festival in modern Swedish culture.

“It is a real happening for people here,” the organizer of the Lucia festival says. And sixty-seven years later, elderly folks still recognize the city’s first Lucia, Gun Alf. The Lucia candidates find they must participate in a walk-the-runway fashion event and maintain: “They are trying to convince everyone that this really isn’t a beauty competition…of course, it’s a beauty competition.” Still, even jaded grungy teenagers speak of celebrating December 13. In the end, Lucia, in her white-clad purity, appears to win out over seasonal commercialism and sexist stereotypes.

Diane Saarinen’s work has appeared in many publications, including Women’s eNews Daily, Quiet Mountain: New Feminist Essays, and several Finnish-American journals and newspapers.

Technorati Tags: poetry, Writing

National Novel Writing Month: One Author’s Journal

by Karen Harrington

Writing a novel in one month? Can it be done?

I’ve been just about every kind of writer you can imagine. Articles. Brochures. Speeches. Screenplays. Novels. Short Stories. You name it. I’m good at deadlines. I like deadlines.

But I’ve never had a deadline loom this large. I’m talking about the National Novel Writing Month challenge, or NaNoWriMo. This is an annual (November) novel writing project that challenges writers to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. The organizers of NaNoWriMo promote turning off one’s internal editor and writing through and past writer’s block, fear or limitations of any kind. I’m excited by this prospect because most of the time, we all have our internal editor in the “on” position.

But how to do it? What am I going to write about that will carry enough passion to go the distance? What do I have? A loose idea titled No Teddy Bears about four siblings forced into the foster care system who rely on imagination to survive the indignities of their so-called caregiver.

So I came up with a two things that already have me energized.

THING ONE
I went through my editor’s notes from my last novel (to be published next spring) and was reminded that I have a tendency to under describe settings. I don’t paint the whole bedroom because I assume all readers know what a bedroom looks like. I stumble on this because I want to race on to the action of the story. That’s fine and good, but not if a reader wants to know the color of the walls. Is the bedspread down or chenille? And what exactly is on the dresser? Watches? Perfume? Motes of dust? The truth is I envy writers who use an entire page to observe the seemingly mundane with all five senses.

THING TWO
I was a screenwriter before I was a novelist. In that art form, the point of view is omniscient as can be. Scripts are filled with “We see her room has not recently been cleaned.” “She looks about the room. Stops. Stares. Recoils with fear. We now see what she is looking at. It is a….”

Some recent novels have been written this way with a loose, inventive tone that is both omniscient and virtually first person at the same time. Lynn Hoffman’s bang, Bang is a great example of this technique used to wonderful effect. Check this out to read an excerpt.

So I plan to use this opportunity to over describe every single scene. To toss aside the need for considering if each sentence is correct and true and err on the side of sensory description. And I will experiment with using the camera’s eye point of view to narrate the story.

All of this should fill, what, a few thousand words? Maybe by November 25th I will be a Thanksgiving turkey leg wielding crazy person, forced to adopt a new approach. Perhaps like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining who types “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” over and over again in many variations.

Stay tuned. It’s going to be an interesting 30 days.

Karen Harrington is a Texas native who has been writing fiction for more than twenty years. Her writing has received honors from the Hemingway Short Story Festival, the Texas Film Institute Screenplay Contest and the Writers’ Digest National Script Contest. A graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, she has worked as a speechwriter and editor for major corporations and non-profit organizations.

She authored and published There’s a Dog in the Doorway, a children’s book created expressly for the Dr. Laura Schlessinger Foundation’s “My Stuff Bags.” My Stuff bags go to children in need who must leave their home due to abuse, neglect or abandonment.

Her first novel, JANEOLOGY, will be released in Spring 2008 from Kunati Books (www.kunati.com).

She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and two children.