Farewell to Mordena

This afternoon I got word that my writing-group friend Mordena Babich had died. This wasn’t a surprise since I knew she’d entered hospice treatment after her second bout with cancer, but it rips a big hole in the world. Mordena left a young daughter and husband, many friends, and more fine manuscripts than she would accept praise for.

Here’s the start of her essay “Writing Aikido”:

This past January marks twenty years that I have been practicing Aikido. I’ve been a writer of children’s and young adult fiction for about twenty-five. At first glance there wouldn’t seem to be obvious parallels between fiction writing and Aikido, one pursuit almost entirely mental and the other almost entirely physical. Still, both involve a constant pursuit of excellence, daily practice, and a never-ending effort to improve, learn, and adjust. I’m finding lately that the two disciplines have more common ground than I ever imagined.

I first began to see the connections about five years ago, when I attended a writing workshop with the late Sid Fleischman, the grand old man of children’s literature. Among other bits of practical advice, Sid said that it takes two ideas to make a story, just as it takes two sticks to make a fire. One idea won’t catch fire; it’s just a stick without that second idea to rub against it.

Around this same time, Itoh Sensei often said in class that it takes two forces to take uke’s [the attacker’s] balance – movement in two directions. For example, up and forward. Without the forward, up is just a stretch. Without the up, forward is just pushing. 

At one meeting, long before I read this, I quoted Sid Fleischman’s point to Mordena, and she said, “I know! I’ve been looking for the second stick!” It’s always fun to have a writing-group colleague with the same vocabulary and literary likes.

Mordena pooh-poohed others’ praise or optimism about her own writing, but it definitely deserves more eyes. Check out “Beautiful Beast” at Hunger Mountain or “Blind Date,” part of a series she called Evil Coffee Shop.

Revisiting Fairy-Tale Beauties

I've been reading Mordena Babich's story "Beautiful Beast" at the Hunger Mountain literary magazine website, set up by the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

In this rewrite of "Beauty and the Beast," the Beauty and the Beast are one--this version switches the genders in the traditional tale. Thus, the protagonist is a young man forced to live in the castle of a female monster who asks him to marry her each night. Mordena, another of my writing-group colleagues, is well read in fairy tales both old and new, and her reversal produces new themes from an old tale.

Another quality of "Beautiful Beast" that struck me was the description of rich physical detail:

Roland followed his battered luggage as it floated up the stairs, through gorgeous, gilded hallways and into a vast bedroom with thick crimson carpet on the floor and velvet drapes. The bedposts were polished gold, as were the frames that surrounded some of the most magnificent artwork Roland had ever seen—land- and seascapes painted by a master. Roland sat down on the edge of the gold-embroidered bedspread and looked around.

Of course we'd expect to find such sumptuous furnishings in an enchanted castle. I was a tad surprised to see them here just because Mordena's early drafts are very spare when it comes to such visual detail and descriptions; she adds them later. Yet another useful reminder that everyone has his or her own writing process, and there are many routes from an idea to a published story.

"Beautiful Beast" makes an interesting match with Tahlia Merrill's "The Prince with Good Manners," a rewrite of "Sleeping Beauty" invited by the Diamonds and Toads blog. Both stories follow young men into enchanted castles where they meet enchanted young women. Both depend on our knowledge of the traditional tales while upending the old outcome, for more contemporary comfort.

(Photo of possibly enchanted garden courtesy of TeecNosPos via Flickr.)