Before I even dip my feather quill in ink, I decide the language
will be candid. I don't feel any woman should self-edit her speech just because some have different
sensibilities and sensitivities, albeit language that is acceptable in some places may not be acceptable in others.
I believe raw expression exactly describes feelings and no other word will do but
the word.
To set in the color, I first slosh the common words out so I will be left with
the "black sand" phraseology, carefully picking out the shiny gold words, looking for rich diction. To learn how to
do this, I call upon my gold pan to lead the way.
It is said that one-fourth of the world's gold has never been found. It lingers
in the same places the old-timers panned; in river bottoms, skim bars, and high on hard-to-get-at mountain slopes. Tunnels
spill yellow dirt and further on downstream, there is "color."
I fill my pan with stream water and agitate it back and forth, sloshing and picking
out large rocks, then small rocks until I get to the pea-sized gravel, then I hold the pan under the water with a forward
tossing motion, sloshing out the common gravel and sand out of the pan until I am left only with the heavier component of
black sand and "color," which may very well be gold. I use a magnifying glass and tweezers to pick out the shiny gold
flecks, then I put them in my vial of creek water to take home with me to have tested to see how golden my efforts have been.
This gold-panning process is analogous to having the excerpts of my manuscripts
tested to see how they assay out. If the gold flecks sink, my properties are gold, therefore publishable; if they float,
they are fool's gold, so try again I will. Writing is so much like gold-panning. I have to be persistent and can't
expect to get rich overnight. To find a nugget is rare and exceptional; to find dust is not unusual.
Gold is nineteen times heavier than any other metal and it glitters whether in
sun or shade. That's how I want my words to be; nineteen times heavier than common words, and I want them polished to
where they will glitter in every kind of circumstance paying particular attention to the days of lesbianism.
I am very clever about mining my "gold." I claim my words from research,
old sites, and active imagination. I have the energy to dig for the goodies, finding them buried in remnant-cellar pits,
between pages, in my sub-conscious, and in bathwaters. I leave these places in as good or better condition than I found
them.
The predators are culprits who will steal a woman's soul and I protect and conceal
my "nuggets," aware that there shouldn't be a great deal of the material going out than is coming in, like the highgraders
in the 1800s did when stealing gold, hiding it in false-bottom lunch pails, hollow handles in hammers, boot heels, between
my toes, and in my rectum. The only difference is that I am protecting, not stealing.
Gold panning, whether it be panning for actual gold, mining for emotional richness,
mining of instinct, or digging for creative endeavor teaches women how to separate gold-bearing dirt and identify authenticity
from counterfeit. A woman can only accomplish this by washing the rocks, washing them in stages until she finds "color."
You don't say gold, you say "color," "Have you found any color?" Gold travels in a straight line and
where the river bends, that's where the "color" is. A woman must set her expectations high and practice shouting "Eureka!"
I am a collector of metaphors.
Lesbian
novels available for screen adaptation
by
Sage Sweetwater...THE S WORD
is cruising LESBIAN HOLLYWOOD!
