Theodora Goss

I promised that I would talk a little about writing The Thorn and the Blossom.

I remember when Stephen first asked me if I would like to work on the project. I was standing outside the Lexington library when my cell phone rang. I sat on one of the walls, talking to him about it. I think we talked for about half an hour. The idea was to write two stories, about 7500 words each, that would fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Both stories had to work as stories, but together they had to form a larger story, a more complete picture. There are two kinds of stories that can work like that: a mystery, and a love story. I chose to write a love story.

It took a while to iron out the logistics. Stephen and I had talked about the project in the fall, and I did not start writing until the winter. By that time I was also trying to revise the chapters of my dissertation. So my schedule went something like this: revise a chapter, write one story, revise another chapter, write the other story. I think each story took me about a month to write.

The first story was relatively easy, although I had to anticipate the second story while I was writing it. But when I got to the second story, well – it had to be fit around the first story. I had to make sure the pieces fit. So I put the first story in the stand by my computer, and I literally wrote the second story while reading the first story, matching them paragraph by paragraph. Of course, you will get different information in each story. Each is, after all, an individual account, from the point of view of a different person, who knows different things and even perceives the sames things differently. And you won’t get the entire story unless you read both versions.

Writing it was a feat of literary engineering.

But you know, even though the story was a technical challenge, I don’t think it reads like one. It reads like a story: easily, naturally. The characters sound like themselves. At least, they do to me. To me, they come alive, and I hope they will for readers as well. And I got something else into the story: my way of looking at the world. I have a sort of intuition, which I’ve had since I was a child, that the world is filled with pattern and order and beauty, although we often can’t see it. But that’s our fault, not the world’s fault. Our human ignorance hides it from us, our mechanical modern lives often obscure it. Most of us can no longer see the incredible beauty of the world. Which means we can’t understand rightly. Disease and death happen of course, but they’re part of it: they do not negate the underlying meaning.

If we look closely, as an artist or a scientist looks, we can begin to see it. For example, these are monarch butterflies:

Did you know that every fall, they fly 2000 miles south to Mexico, using the sun as a guide? But because the sun changes position throughout the day, they must have something, some sort of mechanism that adjusts for the movement of the sun. And it turns out they do, as scientists have discovered. They have a sort of internal clock – located in their antennae. Isn’t that magnificent? If you look closely enough at a butterfly, an ordinary butterfly fluttering from flower to flower in your garden on a summer day, you’ll see that it’s more wonderful than you could possibly have imagined.

That’s my philosophy, my way of looking at the world, and I think it got into the book. I think it gets into my best work. Indeed, I don’t think I write well unless there’s something of my philosophy in the story, the poem. It’s part of what makes for good writing.

It won’t interfere with the story, I promise.

After I had finished both stories, Stephen and I began the editing process. The second story was close to done, but the first story needed a few rounds of editing. I added, altered. I made motivations clearer. The character became both more sympathetic and more troubled. When I was finished, we had two stories of about 10,000 words each. One is slightly shorter than the other, but I think that discrepancy works, it fits thematically.

So that’s it, that’s how I wrote it. I’ve been showing it off today, and I will have a copy at the World Fantasy Convention, so if you want to see it, come find me. I’m looking forward to seeing what people think about it . . .

Guess what I got in the mail on Friday!  Two copies of the book itself. Here is what it looks like (propped on my mission-style futon chair, against the William Morris pillow).

At least, that’s the slipcase. If you turn it around, this is what the back looks like. The sticker can be removed. Under it, I’ve been told, is an image of a Green Man, but I don’t want to remove the sticker. The book looks so pristine that I barely want to touch it.

Here’s what it looks like when you pull the actual book out of the slipcase.

The first side you will see is Evelyn’s story, but of course you can read either story first. At the beginning and end of each story are beautiful illustrations by Scott McKowan, who also illustrated the slipcase and the two covers.

Even though the book is arranged as an accordion, it’s very easy to read. I pulled it apart here to show you how it works, but when you hold it in your hands, the pages turn as though it were an ordinary book.

And here is the other side, Brendan’s story.  The editor, Stephen Segal, and I have a disagreement about which story you should read first, Brendan’s or Evelyn’s. I think you should read Evelyn’s first. Stephen thinks you should read Brendan’s. But of course, you will have to decide for yourself.

I love this illustration.  But I’m not going to tell you what it’s an illustration of.  That would give the story away.

And here it is in Quirk’s spring catalog: a two-page spread!  I can’t wait for it to come out.  I just hope people love the story, as much as I loved writing it.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how I wrote it, because before it was a beautiful book, it was a feat of story engineering. Definitely the most challenging writing project I’ve ever undertaken, and I hope I’ve done a good job. But this book presented unique challenges. I’ll tell you more about how I dealt with them, soon.

On Friday, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation. So, it’s done. I still need to print out copies for the library, which will be an elaborate process. And I still need to fill out a few forms. But all the hard work is over.

Now what?

After the defense, after everyone had shaken my hand and said “Congratulations, Dr. Goss,” I walked along the grassy strip behind the College of Arts and Sciences. It has a view of the river. There was a sort of mist in the air, falling – not rain exactly. But it was wet. I walked over the wet grass, looking at the river, feeling a curious blankness. For the last decade of my life, I have either been working on the dissertation or worried about not working on the dissertation (when I took time off, I mean).

And now, it’s over. I feel as though the rest of my life is in front of me, and I have no idea what it’s going to be like. I suppose it’s up to me to create, at least partly.

On Saturday, I went to Concord and bought myself two things. The first is a green transferware pitcher with pink flowers. Here is it on my desk, with clustered roses in it:

And I bought myself a book called How to Know the Wild Flowers, by Mrs. William Starr Dana, published in 1899.

I thought they were good presents to myself, for successfully defending.

I do have some projects I need to work on. I’ve promised a short story to an editor. I have a poetry collection to compile. But I still feel curiously blank. I wonder if I will feel like that for a while. I’d like to have a sense of joy and purpose again. I’m not entirely sure where they’ll come from. Perhaps they’ll return by themselves?

It does feel good, at least, to post here again. I couldn’t post for a while before the defense – I just didn’t have the concentration. Perhaps that will return too.

I think what’s happened is that I’ve gone through a liminal process. I’ve crossed a boundary and become something different from what I used to be. And now I’m not sure yet who I am. This is different from having finished the J.D. or M.A. Neither of those degrees were like this one. Perhaps part of the reason is that I’m now done with school. I will never be a student again. Even as I was graduating from law school, I knew I would be going back, pursuing a degree in English literature. Now, I can’t imagine a reason I would go back for another degree. I’m done. And it’s time to get to work, but I’m not sure who I am yet. And so, I’m not sure what work I need to do. (Writing, of course.  But writing what?  You see, it’s not so simple.)

It may take me a while to find out.

“Where have you been?” you ask. Because I don’t think I’ve updated this blog so intermittently since I first created it, in November. But I’ve never before been so close to my dissertation defense, either. So that’s where I’ve been, preparing and just trying to keep up with daily life, which is particularly full of teaching right now. In a little while, I have to work on creating an assignment and planning for tomorrow. But I’m taking a few minutes to write something here, really anything, so I don’t forget how. I feel almost as though I’m in danger of that.

Today was like all the days I’ve been having recently, in that almost nothing happened: I drove into the city to drop off some books with my first reader, and then I met with some students. And then I drove back. But on the drive back, I noticed that it was Farmer’s Market day in Lexington. So I stopped by the market and walked around. There was produce, eggs, meat (lamb and fish), honey, breads and pastries of various sorts. I bought myself a plastic cup of apple cider and a multigrain bun with raisins. I also bought two whole-wheat pastries with raspberry jam filling for later, to share with Ophelia. And – I couldn’t resist this – I bought a bunch of oyster mushrooms, all growing together, the loveliest gray, the most interesting shapes. What to do with them? I think I’ll just sautée them with onions and put them on toast, so I can really taste them. There was something so calm, so right, about walking around among the booths, seeing the various things people had for sale. Some from real farms, some just from small businesses.

It made me think about the life I want to live. It doesn’t involve going to the grocery store once a week and stuffing foods into an enormous refrigerator. It involves growing things, but also going to farmer’s markets and buying things, bringing them back home, cooking. (I’ve missed cooking lately. There’s no time to cook when you’re finishing a doctoral dissertation.) It made me think, with nostalgia, of living in Europe, going to the small markets several times a week to buy bread, cheese, sausages, tomatoes. And of walking around Budapest, along the narrow streets, so many of which seem to have ice cream shops on them. (But Hungarian ice cream is completely different from American ice cream. It’s more like gelato and comes in many more flavors.)

I think I’ll eventually be able to create that life for myself. I just have to figure out how. And at the moment, I’m too tired even to think about it. But it was nice to stop by the farmer’s market today, to walk around on the grass, drinking apple cider, looking at the honey soaps, the lavender creams, the hand-made pottery, the tiny eggplants and giant tomatoes.

Now, I’m going to get back to preparing. But I’m going to try to update this blog more regularly, even if I can’t update it every day (for now). After all, I need to keep writing, simply to remind myself that I can, and I’m not doing much of it at the moment. So I might as well at least write here.

(And here, by the way, is a link to the Lexington Farmer’s Market, in case you’re ever in the area.)

I’ve been away from this blog for a while. But just a few minutes ago, I looked at the site stats and realized that this will be my 301st blog post. And that since I created it, this blog has received over 70,000 hits. I know, there are people who receive that number each day. But I’m so pleased with how this blog has done. After all, I created it in the midst of turmoil, and kept it up during one of the most tumultuous years of my life. Through finishing my dissertation and writing my first book (which will come out in January).

I’m still in the midst of the tumult, preparing for the dissertation defense. But soon that will be over as well.

And then I’ll have a series of deadlines. My Folkroots column will be due, and I have a couple of short stories that I owe people. And it looks as though I’ll be working on a poetry collection, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Honestly, I’m not sure my poetry is good enough to merit a collection, but other people seem to think it is, and I guess I’ll leave that decision up to them. And I need to get back to the novel.

You remember the novel, right? The YA novel from the YA novel challenge. I never finished it, of course. Instead, I finished the dissertation, and that made sense at the time. The dissertation had to be completed. But there’s more to the story than that. I learned something important this summer, while trying to finish the novel. It’s that I can’t write someone else’s novel. I have to write my own. I’m not sure, now, if the idea I had for the novel really works. I’m not sure it’s me, the way I write. I’m not sure it’s the story I want to tell. And I’m not sure what to do about that. Start over? Maybe.

I have a feeling that I won’t be able to work on the novel at all until I get some of the other projects I have out of the way – until I meet some of my deadlines. I certainly won’t be able to work on it, or anything else, until after the defense. I have a feeling, or at least a hope, that once I’m finished with the defense, it will come to me. That the novel I’m supposed to write will start forming in my head. That’s the way it usually happens, at least with stories.

So I have a column, stories, poems for the collection, and a novel to write. Honestly, I’ll be glad to get back to it. I need writing, and I haven’t been doing any of it lately, and that’s not good for me.

Right now, it’s deadlines all the way. But at least the projects I’m working on are ones I care about, ones that I think matter. Which is important because in the midst of turmoil, it gives me a feeling of purpose.

I know I haven’t been posting regularly. It’s because I’m so tired. Teaching and preparing for the dissertation seem to take all my time.

But I did find another “White Witch” poem. Here it is:

The White Witch
by Dora Sigerson Shorter

Heaven help your home to-night,
MacCormac; for I know
A white witch woman is your bride:
You married for your woe.

You thought her but a simple maid
That roamed the mountain-side;
She put the witch’s glance on you,
And so became your bride.

But I have watched her close and long
And know her all too well;
I never churned before her glance
But evil luck befell.

Last week the cow beneath my hand
Gave out no milk at all;
I turned, and saw the pale-haired girl
Lean laughing by the wall.

“A little sup,” she cried, “for me;
The day is hot and dry.”
“Begone!” I said, “you witch’s child,”
She laughed a loud good-bye.

And when the butter in the churn
Will never rise, I see
Beside the door the white witch girl
Has got her eyes on me.

At dawn to-day I met her out
Upon the mountain-side,
And all her slender finger-tips
Were each a crimson dyed.

Now I had gone to seek a lamb
The darkness sent astray:
Sore for a lamb the dawning winds
And sharp-beaked birds of prey.

But when I saw the white witch maid
With blood upon her gown,
I said, “I’m poorer by a lamb;
The witch has dragged it down.”

And “Why is this, your hands so red
All in the early day?”
I seized her by the shoulder fair,
She pulled herself away.

“It is the raddle on my hands,
The raddle all so red,
For I have marked MacCormac’s sheep
And little lambs,” she said.

“And what is this upon your mouth
And on your cheek so white?”
“Oh, it is but the berries’ stain”;
She trembled in her fright.

“I swear it is no berries’ stain,
Nor raddle all so red”;
I laid my hands about her throat,
She shook me off, and fled.

I had not gone to follow her
A step upon the way,
When came I to my own lost lamb,
That dead and bloody lay.

“Come back,” I cried, “you witch’s child,
Come back and answer me:”
But no maid on the mountain-side
Could ever my eyes see.

I looked into the glowing east,
I looked into the south,
But did not see the slim young witch,
With crimson on her mouth.

Now, though I looked both well and long,
And saw no woman there,
Out from the bushes by my side
There crept a snow-white hare.

With knife in hand, I followed it
By ditch, by bog, by hill;
I said, “Your luck be in your feet,
For I shall do you ill.

I said, “Come, be you fox or hare,
Or be you mountain maid,
I’ll cut the witch’s heart from you,
For mischief you have made.”

She laid her spells upon my path,
The brambles held and tore,
The pebbles slipped beneath my feet,
The briars wounded sore.

And then she vanished from my eyes
Beside MacCormac’s farm,
I ran to catch her in the house
And keep the man from harm.

She stood with him beside the fire,
And when she saw my knife,
She flung herself upon his breast
And prayed he’d save her life.

“The woman is a witch,” I cried,
“So cast her off from you”;
“She’ll be my wife to-day,” he said,
“Be careful what you do!”

“The woman is a witch,” I said;
He laughed both loud and long:
She laid her arms about his neck,
Her laugh was like a song.

“The woman is a witch,” he mocked,
And laughed both long and loud;
She bent her head upon his breast,
Her hair was like a cloud.

I said, “See blood upon her mouth
And on each finger tip!”
He said, “I see a pretty maid,
A rose upon her lip.”

He took her slender hand in his
To kiss the stain away –
Oh, well she cast her spell on him,
What could I do but pray?

“May heaven guard your house to-night!”
I whisper as I go,
“For you have won a witch for bride,
And married for your woe.”

I haven’t had time to answer the comments, but I think whoever said the White Witch is a version of the White Goddess, or the other way around, is right. So here is the White Goddess:

The White Goddess
by Robert Graves

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean –
In scorn of which we sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom we desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.

It was a virtue not to stay,
To go our headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out at the volcano’s head,
Among pack ice, or where the track had faded
Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:
Whose broad high brow was white as any leper’s,
Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips,
With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.

The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir
Will celebrate with green the Mother,
And every song-bird shout awhile for her;
But we are gifted, even in November
Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense
Of her nakedly worn magnificence
We forget cruelty and past betrayal,
Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

I love the last stanza. To be perfectly honest, I think that in creating his White Witch, Lewis was mostly influenced by George MacDonald’s Lilith, from his book of that name. Lilith was the first wife of Adam, who was cast out of Eden when she refused to be subject to him. She became a demoness, or at least that’s how the story goes. Lewis’ Jadis is of the line of Lilith, and is part jinn and part giantess, not human at all. The White Witch, in the first Narnia novel, isn’t quite Jadis yet: Lewis has not yet created the character fully. By the time he introduces the Empress of Charn, she has become more beautiful, more sexual, more dangerous. I also wonder to what extent he was influenced by H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha, from the novel She? At one point, Ayasha also plans to conquer England, and she also has magical powers, as well as unending life.

Although this is not at all the book Lewis wrote, it almost seems to me as though Aslan and Jadis are opposites, principles in opposition, almost counterparts. If I were to write about them in some way, I think that’s how I would do it.

I’m very tired, but there are things I need to start doing, just so my writing life does not go completely stagnant. Updating this website, for example. I’ll try to do a little of that in the next few weeks, but mostly I’ll be working, studying. I’ll let you know when it’s all over. And then, I’ll be back.

I have a defense date. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. I’ll just tell you afterward what sort of snake I had, and all that. And I’m very tired tonight, so instead of an actual blog post, you’re going to get two poems. But I do have some observations about them.

As far as I know, they were both written before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Why is that important? Because they’re both called “The White Witch.”

The White Witch
by Olive Custance

Her body is a dancing joy, a delicate delight,
Her hair a silver glamour in a net of golden light.

Her face is like the faces that a dreamer sometimes meets,
A face that Leonardo would have followed through the streets.

Her eyelids are like clouds that spread white wings across blue skies,
Like shadows in still water are the sorrows in her eyes.

How flower-like are the smiling lips so many have desired,
Curled lips that love’s long kisses have left a little tired.

The White Witch
by James Weldon Johnson

O brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
Trust not your prowess nor your strength,
Your only safety lies in flight;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.

The great white witch you have not seen?
Then, younger brothers mine, forsooth,
Like nursery children you have looked
For ancient hag and snaggle-tooth;
But no, not so; the witch appears
In all the glowing charms of youth.

Her lips are like carnations, red,
Her face like new-born lilies, fair,
Her eyes like ocean waters, blue,
She moves with subtle grace and air,
And all about her head there floats
The golden glory of her hair.

But though she always thus appears
In form of youth and mood of mirth,
Unnumbered centuries are hers,
The infant planets saw her birth;
The child of throbbing Life is she,
Twin sister to the greedy earth.

And back behind those smiling lips,
And down within those laughing eyes,
And underneath the soft caress
Of hand and voice and purring sighs,
The shadow of the panther lurks,
The spirit of the vampire lies.

For I have seen the great white witch,
And she has led me to her lair,
And I have kissed her red, red lips
And cruel face so white and fair;
Around me she has twined her arms,
And bound me with her yellow hair.

I felt those red lips burn and sear
My body like a living coal;
Obeyed the power of those eyes
As the needle trembles to the pole;
And did not care although I felt
The strength go ebbing from my soul.

Oh! she has seen your strong young limbs,
And heard your laughter loud and gay,
And in your voices she has caught
The echo of a far-off day,
When man was closer to the earth;
And she has marked you for her prey.

She feels the old Antaean strength
In you, the great dynamic beat
Of primal passions, and she sees
In you the last besieged retreat
Of love relentless, lusty, fierce,
Love pain-ecstatic, cruel-sweet.

O, brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
O, younger brothers mine, beware!
Look not upon her beauty bright;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.

I wonder if these are the only two poems about a White Witch? I have a feeling there may be others. And if so – who is this White Witch poets keep writing about in such similar ways? She is very much like Jadis, isn’t she? It’s almost as though she’s a mythological figure we don’t know about. Belonging to a mythology we may have forgotten or never discovered. I wonder if I should write her story? I think I would like to.