Look at this Woman's Face

What on earth is she thinking??

Girl from Ibiza by José Ortiz Echagüe.

I was struggling to get started on “my Ibiza novel” when I saw this image. Instantly I needed to know what is this girl thinking??

I mean, look at that expression! And then I noticed the details.

How her thumbs are touching ever so slightly. Her head is tilted forward and she’s looking at the photographer from under her brows. The clothing she’s wearing is sumptuous, and so… extra.

Where is she headed? Is she excited or—as I suspect—trepidatious¹? How old is she? What does her home look like? Her room? Does this girl ever tell lies? What does she want once she becomes a woman? What is her relationship with the photographer?

Before seeing this image, I only knew a few things about my new project. I knew that my story would involve a young mother, unmoored and afraid, who in the course of one summer, emboldened by her environment, makes some terrible choices in her search for happiness. I knew my story would reflect and engage with the tragic tale of Madame Bovary. I knew the setting would be Ibiza, and that it would be hot… hot and sultry and unfamiliar.

I knew that I was interested in the liminal moment when change is coming. Like the sulphurous sky when a hurricane is on the horizon.

I knew the time period of this story would be teetering at the cusp of a huge cultural shift—right before the hippy era, when the world was still stuck in a 50’s mentality and yet, just ahead, lay chaos and change (good and bad): drugs, the Vietnam war, women’s liberation.

But what I didn’t know was what exactly would happen in my story, and who my characters were. This single image of a young girl helped me figure that out.

What if…?

I had all this curiosity about this teenager from Ibiza of long ago. I was going to be writing about a young woman in 1965, and another young woman from a hundred years earlier. What if this photograph hangs in the living room of the finca my troubled heroine is staying in? What if that stare really gets to her, making her think of tragic Emma Bovary, making her wonder about the role of women—their freedoms and their inhibitions?

What if? That really got the story rolling.

BUT...

As much as she inspired me through my first draft and multiple revisions, in the end I cut the girl and her photograph out of the book altogether. Gone! She’d done the important work of firing up my imagination, and she no longer served my story :(

Find your inspiration

Instead of following people I know on Instagram, I follow accounts that offer me glimpses of beauty, or activities I like to imagine I might do in some alternate reality in which I have time and infinite artistic talent.

For example, through rachel.elspeth.gross’s account I discovered all sorts of photographers and designers who blow my mind: Regina Relang, Erté, Dovima and Germana Marucelli (a handful of glorious images below). Each of these images makes me want to ask a million questions and then I start making up answers.

That’s how I got an important idea for my NEXT novel…

I saw arresting images of some photographs taken by a Russian painter named Léon Bakst and I looked him up. Turns out he was a costume designer and the sketches he drew of his designs show strong, daring, liberated women.

BANG—I know what the heroine of my next novel does to escape her life and reinvent herself. I know how she makes money at the tail end of the roaring 20’s and survives the Depression. It’s not costume design, but adjacent: risqué, dangerous, exciting, and totally unexpected. (You’ll have to wait a few years to learn more about this new novel, sorry.)

On Writing

I’ll write a longer post on this in the next few months, but on my mind right now is how important it is to build community as a writer. But community-building means different things to different people.

Younger writing professionals seem to be more concerned with visibility and brand-building (a kind of ‘anonymous’ community) than taking the time to be friendly—dare I say, respectful—to the real life people they engage with.

This week I got an email that really pissed me off. I’m pretty sure the intention wasn’t to be dismissive and insulting, but it came across that way.

In the writing world, we’re nothing without an ally or two.

How did I respond? I spent a LONG time carefully crafting a polite and extremely succinct come back. Oh boy, I SO wanted this person to know not only that they’d offended me but that it could easily have been avoided.

And then I didn’t send the email.

So that’s my advice for this month: get it out of your system but do not, I repeat, DO NOT try to school someone on how to behave.

I believe karma will eventually show this person that even the smallest hint of generosity and thoughtfulness goes a long way toward building allies. And in the writing world, you never know when you’re going to need an ally or two.

1. Ok, I know this is a word I should probably not use here, but I like it.