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Out of chaos, a new gender paradigm?

I am currently half way through writing a new novel in the Boy & Girl Saga entitled Girl, Boy or Whatever. The following article inspired by Chaos Theory takes a different look at gender and healing as part of the reflection behind the new book.

From waking to sleep

Let’s begin with sleeping and waking. It is relatively easy to wake a sleeping person. Moving the other way is less easy. How do you fall asleep? If you are wide awake, sleep seems almost unattainable. If you are tired or drowsy, sleep is much easier to reach. In fact it calls to you and the closer you get the more irresistible it becomes. Till finally you have to fight not to drift off. It is almost as if sleep were like a magnet. So you have two very different but related states, both anchored in tangible bodily reactions, which draw you all the more strongly the closer you get. If you get too close, you are pulled in and held captive by that state until something happens to jolt you out of it. Looking at the phenomenon in more abstract terms, you are continually in a delicate state of equilibrium (whether awake or asleep) that could swing to the other state but doesn’t immediately do so because the current state exerts an attraction holding you in place. However that attraction rapidly diminishes the further you move away.

Multiple forms of gender?

Now here’s the major question. Given the licence that fiction allows, what if gender as laid out in the blueprint of each cell and expressed in the form of our bodies and the perceptions we have of ourselves were a similar phenomenon? What if the current binary gender set-up were only one of many possible forms? What if, given the right conditions, we could switch from one gender form to another, without the aid of drugs or the surgeon’s scalpel? Admittedly it would seem that the attraction of the rigid binary form we are familiar with is particularly strong, giving the impression it is the (only) natural state of affairs.  However, in an increasing number of cases the human body has adopted more flexible forms. This variation is all the more pronounced if we consider only people’s perceptions of their gender rather than their physical attributes.

Mind over matter

Why does our current dominant form of binary gender seem ineluctable? It is tempting to reply, because it is inscribed in the blueprint of our cells and consequently in the physical form we take. But if we examine the question more closely, this argument hinges on the primacy we grant to matter over mind. What if mind could shape matter? What if our perception of gender, seen as a far more fluid way of being, could have an influence on the blueprint itself and bring about changes in our bodies to align them to the way we perceive ourselves?

Switching forms of gender

In my series of novels Boy & Girl, the whole system of healing developed by the young protagonists is founded on the premise that mind can influence matter, that a healer can intervene to encourage the body to return to a healthy equilibrium by favouring the natural harmony and balance reflected in the cell’s blueprint rather than intervening from the outside, as modern medicine does, with drugs, rays and a scalpel. In other words, healing is achieved by strengthening the attraction of a natural healthy state as expressed in that underlying blueprint. Having ventured so far, the inevitable next step is to ask if mind can shift the body from one blueprint to another, from one relatively stable state of gender to a different one? Although such a move also relies on the primacy of mind over mater, doing so is not at all identical to the young people’s healing method. It requires changing the blueprint rather than strengthening it. Being able to do so would solve Peter’s dilemma of how to hold on to the apparent androgyny of prepubescence without suffering the long-term undesirable effects of blocking puberty or needing a surgical intervention. It could potentially do much more. It could enable his body to align with that wished-for, in-between state by being both boy and girl.

Gender as a social phenomenon

By concentrating on the cell’s blueprint and implicitly the primacy of matter over mind, we fail to take into consideration a major factor. Gender is very much a social phenomenon. The binary gender system we are familiar with is firmly anchored not just in a biological reality, but also in a web of social interactions and shared perceptions. If Peter were to manage to shift to a different gender configuration by changing the form of his body, growing breasts for example while retaining his penis, he would find himself at odds with the dominant social perception of gender as a rigid binary division. He would likely be the target of violent rejection if not outright attempts at eliminating him as an aberration. Attempts to modify the underlying blueprint for gender and its impact on the body would have to go hand-in-hand with efforts to transform the social perception of gender. The novels are set in 1960 when ideas of sex and gender were even more rigid than today. Nowadays, considerable advances have been made in a number of countries towards a more fluid vision of gender.

Pandora’s box?

Whatever the outcome of Peter’s fictional endeavours, a major ethical and practical preoccupation remains. His strivings are centred on the transformation of gender by intervening on the body’s blueprint. But there is nothing to stop those discoveries being used to modify other bodily features, opening the way to eugenics. That spectre alone and society’s likely abhorrence might well put an end to experiments like those of Peter and like-minded people, if ever they became known. Of course, aware that these different ‘sets’ of instructions dictating the form of life in a human body are the result of a delicate equilibrium, it is possible that many of the nightmares that fans of eugenics might dream up would not be stable and their corresponding life-forms unviable. Such a reliance on a higher force, embedded as it were in a ‘code’ of life that rules out aberrations, although appealing, is probably over-naive.

The Boy & Girl Saga

  1. Boy & Girl – Dressing like a girl and being in a girl’s head are not the same challenge, as Peter finds out.
  2. In Search of Lost Girls – Abruptly severed from his soulmate, Peter goes in search of Kate and finds much more.
  3. Girl. Boy, or Whatever – In their quest to develop a new paradigm for healing and a radical approach to gender, Peter and Kate face violent opposition.
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Still life – what an odd expression

Still Life

Still life, what an odd expression. Life is constant movement. We cannot escape it, even if we sometimes long for peace and quiet when the agitation becomes too much. Stillness, the absence of movement, comes only when life is no more, when our heart ceases to beat.

Symbolically this dried-up bouquet, its desiccated flowers falling to the floor as the water that maintains a semblance of life evaporates, really is a ‘still life’, an incarnation of death in life. Even the colours are washed out and fading fast. What more appropriate place than (the hotel) Eden, the paradise outside life with its once untapped potential waiting to be released now in the last throes of decay, to house such a paradoxical work of art.

Despite knowing there can be no life without death, we cling to life in our fear of death. The final moment when we pass from one to the other is a line our current consciousness cannot cross. For all our imaginings, both reassuring and terrifying, the other side must remain unknown till we traverse that frontier. Maybe that if why this still life, for all its beauty, is so terrifying.

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Out and about: an author’s tale

“…you can’t sit around and wait for someone to discover you…” Olafur Arnalds, composer.

As an independent novelist, one of the major dilemmas – rather like the young Arnalds seeking to get his compositions played having not followed the traditional channels for a would-be composer – was that her novels only made sense if they were (widely) read. An ‘unfortunate’ corollary of which was that she couldn’t just bask in the pleasure of writing, but had to step out and get people to read them.

There were so many novels out there, some brilliant, others less so, begging to be read. She didn’t want to join the hoards clamouring to sell their wares. Not that she thought her novels were unworthy, on the contrary, but mercilessly plugging them would not only belittle her, she reckoned, it would devalue the books she had worked so hard to write and publish.

She had tried several times to court an agent and go down the traditional publishing route, but she’d had no success. So few authors were chosen and the curt replies, if ever she got them, were demoralising. She didn’t want to be discouraged from writing. It was her biggest joy in life. She told herself she’d be better off without an agent. She didn’t want to have to shoe-horn her work into pre-defined formats or toe the line to anticipated market trends. What’s more, she was impatient. Going through an agent and a publisher would mean delaying the release of her books for several years.

She maintained an eager online presence, as all aspiring authors were encouraged to do, and she was proud of what she’d achieved, but it rarely sold any of her books. In reality, she came to realise that platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter were stacked against her. They were only interested in locking users in while garnering as much saleable information about them as possible. Understandably, when every other post was a disguised promotional message, people’s engagement was rarely more than superficial as they shied away from all attempts to sell.

She sighed. The whole prospect was so gloomy. Whichever way she turned, the path was blocked. Suddenly she gasped, slapping the flat of her hand against her forehead with a resounding clack. She’d taken her experience of publishing at face value. What if she were telling herself a story? ‘Just’ a story. The thought had her feeling giddy. If it were a story, that would mean she could rewrite it…

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Chimera: out now!

Chimera, a novel by Alan McCluskey. 412 pages, published May 2019.

Imagine you awake to find yourself sharing the body of a twelve-year-old boy. It’s bad enough that you are a girl, but, what’s more, he is autistic, cut off from the world, unable to coordinate many of the simplest movements, let alone express himself. Not that he is inarticulate. He’s a real poet, a wordsmith in his head. He showers you with colourful abuse in an attempt to drive you out. Luckily, you do not suffer the same handicaps. Instead, you are plagued by vivid dreams of the fall of Atlantis and a painful sense of failure, as if it was your fault you couldn’t save that world.

As you ward off the boy’s attacks, you are forced to survive in a world ruled by giant pharmaceutical companies where all natural food has been banished, replaced by government-approved pills. The sinister food police scour the land in search of those growing food and summarily execute them. And they are after you. Not that you have planted crops, but there’s a rumour that you might be a long-awaited saviour come to set the world right…

Find out more about Chimera, get sample chapters or buy a copy here.

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What if? The telling of stories

Life is made up of stories. The ones we are told. The ones we tell ourselves. The ones that tell themselves. But above all, the ones we live. They are the building blocks with which we make sense of ourselves and the world. They govern our waking day. They people our dreams. They range from highly personal to overarchingly collective. As light as wisps of mist, they creep up on us, curling around our thoughts, surprising us, alarming us, delighting us. Or as stubborn as a brick wall, they stop us in our tracks, astounded, infuriated or at a loss about what to do next. Try to imagine a world without stories. That in itself would be a story. And what a story! Or would it? How on earth do you tell a story of a world without stories?

Modern media are feeding us stories, trying subtly, or less so, to affect the way we see the world, the way we act and above all, what we buy or what we vote. The star newscasters. The television hosts. The help-yourself streaming sites. The friendly web platforms where our friends congregate. The familiar podcasts. The drooling advertisers. The fervant opinion makers. The political pundits. The technical advocates. The all-knowing experts. A glorious cacophony echoed in the chatter of our neighbours. our colleagues and even the passing strangers. As the credits scroll up at the end of the series and we hesitate about what to watch next, doubt creeps in. A rogue story in the making. What if? What if this plethora of stories told for our benefit by others were a barrage to the emergence of our own stories. Like a constant noise that drowns out our troublesome thoughts but also stops us piecing together our own tale.

And when we do get to develop our own stories, what is to stop us sliding off the rails? Cut off from the so-called real world. Told only for ourselves, stories can be pretty paltry if not downright dangerous. Stories scaffolded in isolation are a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Pushing your story out there for all to hear is risky too. Intolerance and judgement abound. And what if your story really isn’t well told? We might all be, by nature, storytellers, but stories, like language, have structures, codes, internal organisation. Most of the time we are unaware we are telling stories. We take it for granted. It’s self-evident. Like thinking. Who would need to learn to think? In reality, few people are good at telling stories. Just listen to two kids on the bus describing a conversation they had.

So where does that leave us? Aware that stories are omnipresent and make sense of the world. Knowing that the many, many stories we are told seek to influence us. Realising that the battery of stories constantly flung at us tends to cut us off from our own stories. Our stories only become meaningful when we risk telling them to others. To tell stories well requires critical thought and practice but also the ability to listen for the essential in the stories of others.

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Girls can and will save the world

Girls can and will save the world. Such was the conviction that inspired Chimera, a tale unfolding against the real-life backdrop of anxiety about the disastrous impact of increasingly unhealthy industrial food and the rampant abuse of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, antidepressants and painkillers. The scene set, giving form to Chimera took unexpectedly long. I embarked on the book in February 2014 only to decide, a third of the way through, to retrace my steps and begin again. A tough decision when you have already written over forty-thousand words. In my approach to novel writing, being convinced of the story is key. It is the force that motivates me to continue telling it. 

I enlisted the clear-sighted advice of Emjay Holmes about the initial chapters and I am very grateful for her input. A few chapters were read and discussed in critiquing sessions in the Geneva Writers Group. Thanks go to those members who attended and particularly to Susan Tiberghien for chairing the sessions. I finally finished the first version a year and a half later, in September 2015. 

Editing the draft was halted by health problems. Heartfelt thanks for their care and attention go to the staff at the Inselspital and Pourtales Hospital as well as Dr Nathalie Calame, our family doctor. Ill-health, however short-lived, brings with it a feeling of vulnerability. It heightened the urgency to make my stories available to readers.

Back on my feet, I set aside the draft of Chimera and prepared In Search of Lost Girls for publication. The writing of five other novels (World o’Tales, Forget Me Not, Stories People Tell, People of the Forest and Local Voices) filled the interim before I finally picked up Chimera again, in March 2019, delighted at what I (re)discovered. Preparation for its publication is now complete and the novel should be available in the coming month.

For more information about Chimera including sample chapters click here.

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Beyond Literary Genres

Books

What is a literary ‘genre’?

What is a literary ‘genre’? Simply put, a convenient label that groups together a number of literary works that have common characteristics. Initially descriptive, those labels progressively become explicative and then prescriptive. They carve out literary creation into recognisable chunks and dictate how those can be perceived, marketed and distributed. Literary agents proclaim they are looking for this or that genre. Publishers specialise in certain ‘genres’ and channels of distribution index books according to a rigid set of genres with certain categories enjoying widespread popularity. Many readers gravitate to specific genres and are disappointed by novels that don’t fit the mould. This compulsion to shoe-horn novels into a set of pre-determined boxes glosses over the fact that novels don’t let themselves be so easily categorised. Despite commercial pressure and academic influence, the creative process of writing tends to lead to ambiguity when it comes to genre, if not outright promiscuity.

Identifying the genres of my novels

Identifying the literary genre of any of my novels has always been a pain in the neck. As was the pressure to ‘fit in’. I relish crossing boundaries and toying with ambiguity. Why should that surprise anyone when one of the central themes in my work is gender fluidity? My novels necessarily reflect several genres. Take Stories People Tell, for example. It has affinities to chick lit because it is about powerful young women and their relationships, although it has little of the sardonic humour that often permeates such fiction. It has magical elements and parallel worlds that come straight from fantasy, or rather supernatural fiction, as those elements are not central to the story. The novel has gay romance, relating, as it does, the lesbian relationships of the main characters and the difficulties of the LGBTQ community in society. At the same time, the novel is political in that it deals with democracy and empowerment especially in healthcare in the UK.

In service of telling a story

Revolt is always tempting if not salutary in circumstances involving institutions and set ways of thinking. One avenue, especially for the autodidact, might be to argue in favour of an ‘outsider’ literary category corresponding to ‘art brut’. Where such artistic work is produced by someone not versed in art history or au fait with current tendencies, someone who harnesses the creative force of being free of literary tenets. While thinking ‘outside the box’ is a key ingredient to novel writing, undoubtedly what has gone before is also an essential part of the mix and cannot be ignored. The anger of revolt might blind us to the arbitrary nature of such labels. I suspect the main lesson to take from the exploration of literary genres is not so much the need to align with or fight against the boundaries of a fixed genre, but rather to be able to recognise those elements that make up a recognisable genre so as to better employ them in all manner of combinations in the service of telling a story.

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The Knight’s Sword

The Knight's Sword

Writing exercise: A second voice

For the second voice I seek to echo, I have chosen a more challenging author, Erin Morgenstern and her debut novel, The Night Circus. There are a number of different approaches in Morgenstern’s work, so I have chosen one, the section entitled, Wishes and Desires (Pgs 160-161), in which Marco confronts Isobel about Celia’s new Wishing Tree. Written in the present tense and the third person, the point of view is omniscient, telling us about both Marco’s and Isobel’s thoughts and reactions. There is a narrator, but little divulges who he or she is, lest it be the confident, knowledgeable voice and the way the information is made known to the reader, but withheld from one or more of the characters.

Isobel’s responses to Marco are both trusting and naive. True. She loves him. But she expresses openly what she thinks, making her vulnerable compared to Marco whose thoughts are disclosed to the reader, but which he deliberately conceals from her. Yet all the same, by revealing his inner thoughts, albeit only half understood by him, he is presented to the reader as vulnerable, not towards Isobel but rather his opponent, Celia.

The Knight’s Sword (359 words)

When the door ghosts open sighing like an vagrant wind, it is Julia who sweeps into the tiny cubicle filling the space with her presence. Martin raises his eyes from the charm he’s concocting and almost swoons at the sight of the young girl.

“I wasn’t expecting a visit,” he stutters, his heart pounding.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” she asks, making no allowance for his evident agitation. She extracts a poster from her satchel and holds it out for him to see. Despite the dimness of the lantern, he discerns a sword impaled blade-down in a rock, the diamond-studded hilt quivering as if an unseen hand had just released it. Unlike the fake blades that often hang limp from the waists of knights on the stage, this one looks real and deadly. It is almost as if he can smell the fresh blood emanating from it.

“The Knight’s Sword,” he whispers, awed. “The dress-rehearsal was a wondrous affair.”

“Now you tell me,” she snaps. “Why didn’t you inform me?”

“It hasn’t opened yet,” he explains, unable to prevent himself from flinching, “and I’ve been so busy with my own performance. What’s more, I wasn’t sure you hadn’t had a hand in it. The illusion is so convincing. It tells a story all on its own. Just like your work does.”

“It’s his,” Julia whispers, half to herself, as she stands absorbed in the poster.

“Are you certain?” Martin asks.

She does not reply immediately. Instead, her eyes devour the sword as if it were a potent draught she could drink.

“I can sense the magic,” she muses. “I feel the power rippling from it. It penetrates to my very core.” She shakes her head. “I imagine a person not versed in deep magic could not perceive that power.”

Dismissing the insult just levelled at him, an idea strikes him, making him feel bolder. “Do you think he can sense your work like you do his?”

His question catches her off guard. She’d never thought of it from that angle. That the other might be aware of her through her work appeals to her. She smiles. (…)

More Notes

At some point, this task ceases to be an exercise and becomes a challenge. Telling the story takes over and ideas come that are no longer in the style to be imitated, additions and improvements that present themselves unbidden. The turning point, I suspect, was when Martin stutters in response to the sheer power of Julia’s presence. As a result, the reinvented story moves away from the near-disastrous, but tender love affaire as portrayed by Morgenstern to a more manipulative, darker tale.

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Stay with me, my love

Maud dusted off her husband’s photo and replaced him on the mantelpiece…

In the quest for a better understanding of one’s voice as a writer, Neil Gaiman suggests writing in the style of someone else. So I did. I found the exercise challenging and would willingly have skipped it. While I can recognise the voice of different authors, I have little experience of imitating them, at least not consciously. 

I chose Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind, picking a page at random (67). What makes this short passage so typical of her style? The touch is light but intimate. She reveals Liza’s thoughts and feelings for Annie by her acts, by her words. The title functions as a leitmotif, especially in this extract, stressing Liza’s continued preoccupation with Annie. Liza can’t concentrate. She can’t read. And when she tries to listen to music, her thoughts circle back to Annie. She tries to fill her time, knowing full well what she is doing is not necessary. The narrative centres on Liza, her acts, her feelings, her thoughts and very little attention is paid to her surroundings. The words chosen are simple enough. The sentences are often short but vary in rhythm. There’s gentle music to the words.

Maud dusted off her husband’s photo and replaced it on the mantelpiece. Reclined in her armchair, she closed her eyes and wished for sleep, but none came. Instead, memories of their times together drifted through her mind. Unable to silence her past, she flicked through TV channels but found nothing of interest. There never was. He’d always been the one for telly. Not her. She picked up the unfinished scarf from her knitting basket, its colours his favourites, and ran her fingers over the wool then laid it back in its place. Her eyes were too weary to knit. What had he said? “I’ll be with you always.” Maybe I should let you go, she thought not for the first time. She shook her head. I know what you said, she continued, but… She sighed, glancing at her husband watching her from the mantlepiece. Struggling to her feet, she crossed to the photo, lifted it to her lips and planted a kiss on the cold glass. She gritted her teeth. I should move on, she thought, but her hand trembled as she brushed the tears from her eyes. How can I possibly let you go?

It is interesting how, in writing this short piece, the story takes on its own life. Writing ‘you’ rather than ‘him’ in Maybe I should let you go... changes the rest of the narrative. She is addressing her dead husband as if he were present. It suggests the idea of him watching her through his photo. I wanted to end by saying, She lifted the photo to her lips and planted a kiss on his face. Goodbye, my love. Then turned the picture face down and left the room. The passage from Nancy Garden’s novel feeds on the unending yearning of one girl for the other, so I stuck to that lack of resolution.

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The inspirational writer

The Inspirational Writer

Alan McCluskey describes himself as an inspirational writer. Rather than following a pre-determined plot, he is the very first reader, discovering the story as he writes. It is the acts of the characters, rather than the author’s intentions, that dictate the direction of the story. The doings of the characters inspire him and drive the story forward. At the same time, he explains that he needs to be reassured that what has been written so far offers a solid basis for what is yet to come. To achieve this, his chapters are increasingly short and he revises them as he goes along. As he puts it, “The trick of inspirational writing is to remain in constant contact with the story while staying confident that the story is convincing and worth telling.”

Undoubtedly the central theme in all Alan McCluskey’s novels is the empowerment of young people, girls in particular. Despite their difficulties, and often as a result of them, his characters go beyond what they thought was possible. That transcendence often takes the form of abilities that might be called magical. However, in his latest novels, Stories People Tell and Local Voices, magic has become much less preponderant, leaving more room for such abilities as leadership, comprehending complex situations, expressing thoughts in writing, organising large-scale events, speaking in public or doing creative work. As the author puts it, “The challenge is to make such abilities as exciting for the reader as wielding magic.” This shift away from pure fantasy has gone hand in hand with anchoring large parts of the story in real-life, identifiable contexts rather than an imaginary world. The setting and the reader’s familiarity with it plays a greater role in the story.

Unlike those novels that are based on a unique theme, his work is characterised by the presence of a number of themes that intertwine. “I like to think my novels reflect something of the complexity of the real world,” he says. The fluidity of gender is an example of another theme that traverses his novels. In the Boy & Girl saga, a young teen struggles with his desire to dress as a girl and in so doing seeks to come to terms with who he is and what he wants to be. The author does not shy away from challenging issues. In the Storyteller’s Quest books, one of the main characters, a young shaman, shapeshifts into a young girl. The ambiguity of his identity obliges him to explore life and sexuality from an unusual and sometimes disturbing perspective.

Beyond the identifiable themes in his writing, it is the story and the telling of stories that is paramount. In his first novels, storytelling vied with formal exploration but as time went by, his focus shifted more and more to telling the story. As part of that increased investment in the story, more attention was paid to the relationships between people as revealed by their words and acts. It was almost as if there was a shift from storytelling centred largely on action to stories in which the action is grounded in relationships.