25 Tuesday Jan 2011
Posted in Blue Lines
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The manuscript Blue Lines is the fictional coming of age narrative of a young California woman Key Yemaya Walker, and her 2 year growing journey through school, love, and life period piece, written by Kenneth Suffern, Jr., taking place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between the years of 1997 – 1998. Loosely based on true events, and experiences during that time, told through the eyes and voice of the main female protagonist, a freshman first attending the school.
25 Tuesday Jan 2011
Posted in High School Crush
25 Tuesday Jan 2011
Posted in Blue Lines
“…was I bored when I tried to slow you down…”
Those were the first thoughts to my mind as I opened this program to write a new post…I can’t say that I’m angry, bothered or mad…still happy, but at a loss because a new short story that I had begun to write sitting on the plane, and testing out this iPad, was lost after a few days when I tried to sync it so that I could keep the file. Three plus days of random thoughts thrown into a practice short story piece that had me testing out new techniques that I could put in action in the next edit of Blue Lines, to help my readers better picture Keypsiia Yemaya Walker in their minds. In the current edit, I have limited descriptions that would adequately describe moments, but do you know what she looks like before those moments. Some phrases used to initially describe her:
“face with it’s bluish glow (from the Prologue),” wide eyed pre-med student,” “from…California,” “Keypsiia’s face re`ddened,” I just realized that these are some of the best descriptions of Keypsiia and that is through 57 pages. Characters Blue Hurt, Azul, Gerald, Renee, and Brielle have more opening description than my main character. I’m actually shocked by that in writing this post. Reflect back on those limited descriptors, what do you know about Keypsiia? What is her height? (5”8’). Age (18). Weight? (110). Eye Color? (Brown). Hair Color? (Brown with highlights, shoulder length). Skin tone? Almond Brown, I’m laughing to myself because I just made that up.
As I began this blog entry and started to review the descriptions I had written about Keypsiia, I would not be wrong in expressing my disappointment in the fact that the first descriptions of Key begin too late in the manuscript. Also, those descriptions address strange and only certain parts of her anatomy, her hair “auburn puff,” “unraveled curls,” but I notice that I never really mentioned her skin tone. In reading, one learns that her best friend Azul is “Soft brown complexion,” or that Gerald has a “medium complexion.” So one may ask, what does Keypsiia look like? Yeah, that’s a good question…I think that she evolved over the period of time that I wrote the bulk of the manuscript, I could always see her in my minds eye, but looking over 409 pages of work, I need to make the reader see who she is. She is described in a poem on the 290th page of the manuscript as a “lighter colored Black [woman].”
What does Keypsiia look like? She’s beautiful, or beautiful to Blue Hurt, maw she’s just beautiful. Keypsiia was a young cherubic 18 year old student at the University of Carolina Chapel Hill. She was fair-skinned or had an “Almond Brown,” complexion that I came up with today. What the he’ll is “Almond Brown,” you tell me, I guess she’s as brown as an almond…aka light skinned, but it sounds sexier. I came up with it today.
Keypsiia, usually wears her hair back, like a normal college student. She’ll have her days where she’d go all out, especially around the time that she met Blue…although she was…well you have to read the book for that information. Let’s say she stand about 5″8,’ yes, in retrospect I think that was generous. She’s the Black woman, all men would look at. But she has enough self respect that they can’t get with her. She somehow ended up with a slender face (I’m not going to explain what that means). As I think about it, I can’t…well, I’ll be honest…I did have one distraction who did kinda infiltrate Blue Lines for one scene. The muse who was the template for Keypsiia and my infiltrator (lol) loved the sun.
She was a slender 18, with hips that would make any man turn his head (also not in the manuscript), but although young she was wise in some areas, youthful in others. Again, she was 18. She smoked Black & Milds (that is in the manuscript). The first person that volunteered to edit for me HATED Keypsiia, so that led me soften her up, not that she was rough. So do you, the reader know what she looks like now? Probably not, and as I go forward with all of this let me simply say she’s a beautiful black woman with some Filipino descent, with fair “Almond Brown” extremely soft skin life butter, about 5″8′ with hips. She has curly brown hair, with natural auburn/light brown accents. She’s not prone to be tactile, unless she should want to touch someone. She smokes, but it does not take away from her beauty (weird).
The manuscript Blue Lines is the fictional coming of age narrative of a young California woman Key Yemaya Walker, and her 2 year growing journey through school, love, and life period piece, written by Kenneth Suffern, Jr., taking place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between the years of 1997 – 1998. Loosely based on true events, and experiences during that time, told through the eyes and voice of the main female protagonist, a freshman first attending the school.
