I thought of writing a blog called “Let It Bleed” because I am preoccupied with blood lately, in all of its metaphors, but mostly in the way my life seems to “bleed out.” 

I try hard not to perpetuate the negative stereotype of the writer or (gag) “creative type” who is unable to structure her life. I had hoped I would be the type of “creative type” who could drop the kids off at school, run to the coffee shop or library, skip through the butterfly-thick pasture of my giddy imagination for six hours (preferably resulting in three thousand new words each day) and then pull up to my son’s school at 2:20 pm (precisely) and be The Mom. Bey Blade battle, anyone? Tae Kwon Do transportation module? 

I usually make it until about half past six. 

And then I want to get back to the pasture. Then I get a little peevish that people expect food and other incidentals. I have people in my head: passionate, demanding people. Characters. I tell them to wait. I try to tend to real life. And then everyone goes to bed and I usually read someone else’s words. Words. Words. WORDS. I love them. But I need to contain myself. My love. I don’t want to tamp it down, I just want to manage it. I know this is possible. 

I’ve been through the blush of first love before and (even though I may have wanted to) I never charged into Starbucks yelling about how in love I was. So why do I sometimes feel that way about writing? I spoke to an old friend this morning about finding one’s passion. It’s kind of terrifying for everyone involved. My family is occasionally worried by the intensity of my enthusiasm. As am I. 

I have started asking other writers how they manage it. Vivian Arend is terrifically enlightened about all of this and kindly shared some of her wisdom. Productivity is great, but scheduling is imperative. I cannot be writing book six, doing final copy edits on book one, first round edits on book two, fact-checking book three, blogging, futzing with books four and five, and thinking eagerly about the Really Big One (book seven!). Bird by bird. One thing at a time. I know these things. (But the ideas!!! The words!!!)

I actually stood in the shower this morning and missed book six. I started it in December, but had to set it aside to focus on the care-and-feeding of Book One (my first REAL book! Jesus, Megan, FOCUS!) Anyway, it’s all part of the learning curve. Before I had an agent and a book deal I just wrote like Gene Gene The Dancing Machine danced on The Gong Show (with abandon):

I still will write like that…but at a specific time. Scheduling has its upside. Now that I have promised myself that I will write my heart out for the month of March I am in a state of delightful anticipation. I can get all this editing and blog-amassing and really important worker-bee stuff (synopses! author video!) out of the way and then…MARCH! In March, I will write like a…a…a writer.

I thought I would do a running commentary of what went through my mind while I read this article. Of course, it is mortifying on one level: my ignorance is vast and now right here for your amusement. On another level, it is liberating and a relief. There is always more to learn, more to know. It is only when I think I’ve heard it all or have that creeping feeling that words are empty wrappers and none of us will ever connect or understand one another in the slightest that I am truly depressed.

As I am wont to do, I have put my comments directly into the text and highlighted them. I am MM. The Interviewer is FP. And Will Self is WS. Enjoy!

———————

Title: Will Self
MM: even his name is aggressive…Will! Self! Self Will! Monosyllabic. Final.

Title: interview:
MM: Wow! This student from Bristol got to meet Will Self*

Title: ‘The Olympics Suck’
MM: I don’t know if I think the Olympics suck or not, but I bet Will Self will make it sound fantastically obvious.

Author: Faye Planer (FP)
MM: Lucky student from Bristol who got to meet Will Self *

January 30th, 2012
MM: Why did I not see this until like six days after! (As if the student newspaper of Bristol would be at the top of my to-do pile).



MM: Holy fuck. Just look at him. Even his dog is looking at me like he knows I don’t really know what ontogeny means. Is that shirt meant to look like that or it it the result of a bleach accident? That’s what my black t-shirt looked like when I splattered bleach on it. Why did I throw that out? It looks pretty cool. Hmmm, Will Self has a big hand. And I like the way he is holding that dog…I wonder if it’s a pure-bred Jack Russell…it’s kind of cute…I wonder if Will Self is cute with his dog…British people tend to be cute with their animals…should Abigail (the heroine of my third novel) have a dog? It might soften her a little bit…she’s coming across as a bit of a hard-ass.

Faye Planer probes
MM: Odd choice of words…sounds like an alien medical inspection

…the nation’s angriest wit
MM: Now that Christopher Hitchens is dead and probably Hitchens would seem milquetoast by comparison anyway and maybe Hitchens wasn’t even British anymore…did Hitchens ever become an American citizen, I wonder.

…on his views of the upcoming Olympics, and on what on earth ‘psychogeography’ is all about.
MM: Oh, a new word! Psychogeography. Probably something to do with how fucked up people are by where they live or something. Thinks briefly of Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.

FP: I hear that you are unenthusiastic about the prospect of the Olympics this summer. In your eyes, what is the greatest folly of this whole affair?

WS: Rather unenthusiastic is putting it waaaaay mildly…

MM: Are Faye and Will sitting in a cafe in Bristol when he says “waaaaaay” like that? It sounds sort of Valley Girl-ish.

WS: I think the Olympics suck dogshit through a straw.

MM: YAY! There’s the Will I love. Dogshit through a straw. Must remember to use that (to myself only, of course) when thinking of that book I forced myself to read while I was on the cruise with my mom over Christmas…because that book sucked dogshit through a straw. I hate myself a little for not being able to say what I think on my own blog about a book I read that I thought sucked dogshit through a straw…(re-reads last week’s post about not being properly prepared to ignore what other people think of me)…some people loved that dogshit book and who am I to rain on their diarrhea-swilling parade?

WS: People believe they encourage da yoof…

MM: Momentary fond memory of the first time I saw Ali G in the late 90′s when he interviewed Professor Sue Lees, and I clung to my husband’s arm and laughed so hard I cried as Ali asked Prof. Lees if she thought all girls should try feminism at least once (Video here: http://youtu.be/pyRfJDcNdb0)

WS: to take up running, jumping and fainting in coils…

MM: Makes note to look fainting in coils

WS: – but this is nonsense. They’re a boondoggle…

MM: Why do I always misuse boondoggle? It sounds like it should be a fun junket…a boon, with a dog along for company. Like a trip you win to go to Hawaii for a week. Avoid future use of word boondoggle.

WS: …for politicians and financiers, a further corruption of an already corrupt self-appointed international coterie of Olympian cunts…

MM: DAMN IT!!! Why does Will Self get to say cunts out loud and I don’t? I love to call people cunts.

WS: …an excuse for ‘elite’ athletes to fuck each other, …

MM: I wonder if he means that literally…do Olympic athletes shag like minks?

WS: snarf steroids…

MM: Is snarf still slang or is it in the OED now?

WS: and pick up sponsorship deals, and a senseless hitching of infrastructural investment…

MM: I like this use of the word hitching.

WS: if there’s any reality to this anyway – to a useless loss-trailing expenditure on starchitectural bollix…

MM: Have to look up starchitectural…and I thought bollix was bollocks.

WS: The stadia themselves are a folly.

MM: I don’t think he means this like the Temple of Apollo at Stourhead.

WS: The new Westfield is a temple to moribund consumerism – in ten years time they’ll all be cracked and spalled;

MM: Have to look up spalled.

WS: a Hitlerian mass of post-pomo nonsense.

MM: Must try to use post-pomo in a sentence…why wouldn’t that just be po-po-mo?

FP: If the Olympics did not exist, would it be necessary to invent them?

MM: I think Faye is trying to be cheeky here…I don’t think she is in a coffee shop with Will Self. I think she is on the phone in Bristol. And Will Self is somewhere dank and abandoned in a fug of smoke and ideas.

WS: They didn’t exist for thousands of years. The modern Olympics is a fatuous exercise…

MM: Try to use ‘fatuous’ today.

WS: in internationalism through limbering up and then running down to entropy…

MM: Great use of the athletic metaphor (or would that be synecdoche?) only to arrive at chaos.

WS: The modern Olympics have always been a political football – nothing more and nothing less – endlessly traduced…

MM: Have never used the word traduced. At least I know what it means.

WS: and manipulated by the regimes…

MM: Are all governments regimes? Probably yes.

WS: that ‘host’ them.

MM: How did he indicate that the word host was to be put into quotation marks? Was that to suggest that they are like a host-body with a contagion? Or just the idea of a regime hosting a cocktail party? Whichever is more damning, I suspect.

WS: This one is no different, presenting a fine opportunity for the British security state apparatus and its private security firm hangers-on…

MM: Love that.

WS: to deploy…

MM: I love martial language.

WS: the mass-suppression and urban paranoiac technologies…

MM: Love.

WS: in the service of export earning.

MM: Repeats to self softly: Export. Earning.

WS: Some peace,  some freedom.

MM: A little bit of Rita’s all I need.

FP: Assuming we will always have the Olympics, could you suggest a better way of doing them?

WS: Why assume that?

MM: Yeah, Faye, why? I imagine myself scraping my metal chair legs across the unfinished concrete floor and moving closer to Will Self in the dim basement where he and I are taking Faye’s call.

WS: If you want to run and jump, go do it in a field for free.

MM: Fuck yeah.

WS: If you want to run and jump with a Kenyan or a Croatian, go out and find one – there are plenty around my way – and go and run and jump together in a field.

MM: I don’ think there are many Kenyans or Croatians around my way…why do I live in Florida?

WS: Costs nothing.

MM: True enough.

WS: You may even make a few bob by charging people to watch you.

MM: Wait. But isn’t that what the Olympic hosts are trying to do? But since it’s the individual and not the security state apparatus, we’re good with it. Got it.

FP: You walked around the Olympic site a few years ago. What were your observations? Have you been back since?

WS: I didn’t see much of it – there wasn’t much of it to see. I joined Sinclair…

MM: Hope they tell me who Sinclair is later in the article.

WS: for part of his circumambulation…

MM: Does Will Self really say circumambulation in a random sentence? Does he also say postprandial and diaphoresis?

WS: of Hackney for his book.

MM: Okay. So Sinclair must be writing a book about the Olympics. Or Hackney.

WS: I can’t remember a lot about the walk at all, except that Iain…

MM: And Sinclair’s first name is Iain.

WS: held forth a lot – but that’s OK, he’s good at holding forth.

MM: I also like people who are good at holding forth.

WS: He and I agree on most things Olympic and consensus is a big barrier to keen observation…

MM: Oh my, if that isn’t the truth. So much easier to just all share the same opinion than it is to really look at something afresh.

WS: – ask Lordy-Lordy Coe and Tessa Jowls.

MM: For some reason those names made me think of Gertrude Jekyll. They must be poncy Olympic organizers. I might name a future fictional butler Jowls.

WS: I haven’t been back – it’s not my manor, thank God.

MM: ‘It’s not my manor’? Is that like ‘I don’t have a dog in this fight’ or more ‘not in my back yard’?

FP: Could you explain the principles of pyschogeography and do you think it’s something that can only be applied to urban spaces?

WS: Ooh, big question.

MM: Is Will Self making fun of Faye?

WS: I take my lead on matters psycho-geo…

MM: Is this hipstellectual talk? “Yo, Psycho-geo! Po-po-po-mo psycho-geo, yo!”

WS: from the Situationist fons et origo.

MM: Definitely going to need to get the dictionary out on this one. No clue about the Situationist, but I like the sound of it. Can sort of deduce that fons et origo are something to do with font and origin…beginnings…and not with Happy Days and/or Iris. Am so relieved my 12-year-old has taken a shine to latin. She will have such a better grasp of language than I ever will. I wonder where she will go to high school?

WS: It’s part of the tearing down of the Society of the Spectacle…

MM: Ooooh, I like the sound of the tearing down of the Society of the Spectacle. The Super Bowl confused me.

WS: mandated by late capitalism; unstructured dérives…

MM: Back to the dictionary.

WS: or drifts across the urban landscape cut across the predetermined routes of commercial necessity which were best defined by a graffito I once saw on a supermarket wall outside Yate in Somerset: ‘Work, Consume, Die’.

MM: Now, that is something I can totally get my mind around. (Tries not to think to hard about how true that is. Momentarily hates all humanity.)

WS: What I think of as ‘the man-machine matrix’ wants you trammelled on EasyJet…
MM: Oh my god! Remember that time we took EasyJet to Nice and what a fucking nightmare it was? I had totally forgotten about that.

WS: watching a six-inch screen implanted in the back of another human’s head,…

MM: Borg. Borg. Borg.

WS: wants you stuck in a car coughing out lead particulates, wants you staring at a VDU,…

MM: Dictionary. Probably British for monitor.

WS: doesn’t want you on foot, transgressing.

MM: Oh, how I want to be on foot, transgressing. Get me back to New York or London. I want to wander in strange patterns along streets where I have neither purpose nor destination. Thinks momentarily of Ford Madox Ford.

FP: I went to a talk you gave about J.G. Ballard. What do you think he would have to say about the Olympic transformation of the east end of London?

MM: Have never read J.G. Ballard. I did see Crash and Empire of the Sun. (Makes note to read J.G. Ballard).

WS: He’d probably have loved it! He loved modernity, he loved big things – he was ambivalent of course, but it gave him a sort of visceral thrill that he connected to his wonderstruck childhood in Shanghai…

MM: Thinks of Shibumi.

WS: which at that time – the 1930s – was one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.

MM: Was Will Self personally acquainted with J.G. Ballard? Hmmm. I want to be given visceral thrills, too.
FP: ‘Really, one may say that the whole Olympic process was a pasteurisation of the city… the microbes disappeared and from a hygienic point of view maybe that was positive, but really what happened is that the variety was destroyed in the process…’

MM: I was in Barcelona in 1999 and I thought it was varied.

FP: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán said this about the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Do you believe that London is being pasteurised too?

WS: No, I’m quite confident that London is too big and too anarchic to be seriously pasteurised by the games.

MM: Whew. I always want London to feel on the edge of falling away.

WS: It’s so big, so filthy, so nasty that it could probably eat twenty Olympiads for breakfast and spit out the Ferroconcrete bones.

MM: Dictionary. Ferroconcrete. Probably Brit for rebar.

FP: Iain Sinclair believes that cities aspire to be like an airport departure lounge. How do you envisage cities of the future?

MM: I think I will be reading some of this Sinclair person. It’s not just cities. I think most of America is an airport departure lounge already.

WS: Declining in the West, certainly. With no industry and an ageing population – except for Gastarbeiter –

MM: Dictionary. Visiting workers. Interesting. Reminds me of husband’s Swiss boss who always put the emphasis on awkward syllables. He pronounced foreigners like fuh-RAY-nerz.

WS: the cities will decline into monumental care homes rather than departure lounges.

MM: Oh. Please, no.

WS: No one will want to go anywhere because their private health insurance provider – which is what the Government will become –

MM: No. No. No.

WS: will make them stay here. The colours will be muted pastel, the building will be soft and foamy, the food will be puréed.

MM: Florida. Florida. Florida.

FP: You are the ringmaster: what sport would you make Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP enter in the Olympics?

MM: I think I have heard of this Hunt fellow. Sounds like Fay and Will Self are about to have a bit of fun at his expense.

WS: Something equestrian – he could be the show pony.

MM: Um. Dirty mind thinks of pony play.

FP: What would be your sport of choice?

WS: Riding him – hard.

MM: Hey! I ended my last blog with the word hard. Still thinking about pony play, with Will Self using a little crop on the Right Honorable Rump of Jeremy Hunt MP. I wonder if they were at Oxford together. Maybe Will and Jeremy have a secret past. Wanders off.

The original interview (sans MM) is here:

http://www.epigram.org.uk/2012/01/will-self-interview-the-olympics-suck/

I am usually calmed by the reassurance that no one is really thinking about anyone but themselves very often or for very long. Or at least, they only think about other people insofar as they relate to themselves. In my personal life, I have gotten pretty good at not caring. I care about the people who matter. My family. My friends. My work colleagues.

I care what my family thinks of me (which is not a lot at the moment, by the way, since the hub decided to “surprise” me by coming home in the middle of the day and I told him I would prefer if he went in another room since I am in the middle of a writing sprint). But it matters to me: that my children think I am loving; that my friends think I am loyal; that my work colleagues—InkWell and Sourcebooks—think I am efficient, productive, and dependable. Moreover, I don’t just want them to think that for the sake of thinking it. I want them to think it because it is true.

I want to be a loving mother and wife and I am not always. I am angry and demanding and I yell. I threaten. But I am loving! I really am! When I am on the edge of my own insecurity, what other people think comes in really handy. Especially if they like me. If I am feeling like a shitty mother, I can talk to other mothers I admire and they can tell me how they feel like shitty mothers sometimes, too. And I can tell them, “You are such a good mother!” and they can tell me, “You are such a good mother!” That is the good kind of caring what other people think. I believe them. I respect their opinions AND they make me feel better about myself. Win-win.

I want to be a loyal friend. But sometimes my friends piss me off. They say thoughtless things or they betray confidences. They hurt me. And then I remember that I have said thoughtless things (well, it was an ugly pair of shoes, I’m sorry) and betray confidences (I only told that one person). And I have hurt them. Enter the ninja of long-term friendship: The Apology. I was so ridiculously inept at The Apology growing up that there is a long-standing family joke that I wasn’t even able to say the word “wrong.” So everyone in my family, to this day, says, “I was rrrrrrr.” Because who really wants to stand up and say, “I was wrong!”? It’s miserable (or so I thought). In fact, it is just the opposite of miserable. It is liberating. Because when I can say, “I was wrong,” all the heat and sadness and betrayal flies out of the room and there I am with my friend again. (Tune in next time for those dreadful times when neither of you thinks you are wrong.)

Finally, the work colleagues. Okay. This is major. We’re talking money here. These are people who will pay me. Hard. Earned. Cash. I don’t think of it as kissing ass to do what they suggest; I think of it as good business. They don’t really want to hear about when I am feeling like a shitty mom, or a hurt friend, they want results. And that is as it should be. If they say the synopsis is too short, then it is. If they say this cover art will sell the most books, then I believe them. Otherwise, why did I sign the contract for them to publish my books? If I am not going to listen to the opinions of people who stand to make the money right along with me, then to whom will I listen?

So far, those are the three major Venn diagram circles that are overlapping around little triangular me: Family. Friends. Work.

But you know where this is going, don’t you? My little world is about to have a very large, very opinionated fourth circle. The World. Readers. Strangers!

When my first book comes out in September, one hundred thousand of my words are going to be judged, enjoyed, despised (I honestly don’t think there is much in it that qualifies as despicable, but I may be rrrrr). <- See! I am already defensive! It is pathetic! It is terrifying. I don’t want it to matter. I wrote the book. My part is over. I truly believe that. If a reader loves it or hates it, that doesn't actually change the book. (Unless that reader is, say, Oprah, and then I might consider a rewrite).

The point is (there are several, but I always feel compelled to boil it down to one in these blogs) I need to decide whether that fourth circle is going to be part of my Venn diagram at all. Some writers never read reviews. (Or that's what they say). Writers have all sorts of opinions about how to manage opinions. What do you think? Do I just pick a time of the week, say Wednesday at four, and like Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News, (am dating myself again), start the ten-minute timer and simply bawl my eyes out, cry uncontrollably for how many people hate my book, and then *ding* my ten minutes are up? Wipe eyes. Move on.

I don't know. I tend to fare much better at complete abstinence than I do at moderation. Two in the morning on a Monday might strike me as a really good time to re-read that Goodreads post about why it was the worst book ever written. Just so I know how that person really feels. For the book in question, as I said, it's done and dusted. Nothing I can do about it now. But what about future books? What if that reader is right? What if I need a more compelling plot? What if I need better dialogue? What if there really *is* too much sex? (Don't be ridiculous.) And then the real danger presents itself. Authorial Insecurity. (I just made that up and then capitalized it as if it were really A Thing, but you get the picture.) What if I lose my mojo? What if all those people's opinions start swirling around in my head and I am no longer sure? That's why I want to put my head in the sand, because if enough people like my books the way they are, I don't want to risk losing my fire.

Because this whole making-shit-up and writing-it-down is not for the faint of heart. You have to believe. Hard.

Small.

At my first RWA convention, one of my favorite workshops was the Elevator Pitch by Carrie Lofty. 90,000 words down to 30? Thirty words. The entire story—all those lush details and compelling plot points and sexual tension—boiled down to thirty words. By learning how to do that, I learned how to answer the dreaded question that crops up at most cocktail parties and family gatherings: “So, what’s your book about?” You must be able to answer that in one breath…which turns out to be about thirty words. I’ve got it down to eight now (Clever American Woman Unwittingly Falls for British Duke). If I am talking to someone who appreciates colorful language I replace “clever” with “smart-ass.” I used “sassy” a couple of times, but it’s too Peppermint Patty and doesn’t really convey the maturity and self-possession of my heroine. I used “unwittingly” because he fails to mention he’s heir to a dukedom when he meets her in a secondhand bookstore in Wicker Park. (See! Just like that I want to go off on a thousand tangents, and really all anyone wants to know is, “What’s your book about?”) If someone wants to know more, well, then you have them in your clutches and you can go on from there. (Why, Yes! It’s a contemporary! With glamourous locations…castles! black tie balls! Why, Yes! He is dashing and smoldering and a bit of all right, and she is gangly and sexy in a knock-kneed way!) You get the picture. Keep it simple.

Medium.

This is the 100-250 word synopsis, also known as the Query or Pitch Letter synopsis. A lot of agents and publishers ask for a one-page pitch…roughly 250 words. Okay, here you can get into some of your favorite parts. The really good bits. You can also get your voice in there. Make it sing. (No pressure.) Again, great workshops on this at RWA. There was one agent workshop where the moderator read actual query letters aloud and if you looked at the four agents on the panel you could see precisely when they lost interest (or when their interest was piqued). As writers, we get (necessarily) caught up in our own stories, frequently ploughing on in our descriptions without really looking up at our listeners to see if they are even paying attention. If you are pitching, you need to pay attention. While I was querying agents, I read all of my query letters aloud to my (at-the-time) ten-year-old daughter. I figured if I could hold her attention, I could hold anyone’s.

[Bittersweet Memory Aside: When I got my first request for a full manuscript, my dad asked what I had sent to garner their interest. I read my query letter to him and when I was done, he said, "Someone really read that whole thing?" It was one page, people.]

Large.

I was lucky and went straight from query letter to a request for a full manuscript, so I never got into the long-form synopsis. I thought I was in the clear. Then, in December, I got a request from Sourcebooks for a 2,000-word synopsis. What?! What is that? Apparently lots of people need to know what the book is about without actually reading it. Marketing People. Art People. Booksellers. People who are going to be instrumental in the sales and distribution of my book. So. Fuck. Two thousand words is a lot. Did I include a bit of dialogue? (No.) Physical descriptions? (Yes! Cover Art, remember?) Cliffhangers? (No! They need to know the whole story, remember?) Thankfully, Pam Rosenthal’s husband, Michael, wrote a fantastic essay here:

http://pamrosenthal.com/essays/michael-rosenthal.htm

Everything he says is exactly right. (It’s more important that you read that essay than this one.) So, it took a while, but again, totally worth it. I mean, let’s face it, I had to do it whether it was educational or not, but it was nice to know it was enlightening to boot. I have a renewed big-picture grasp of my story that I was beginning to lose touch with after rounds of editing and re-writes. I sent a draft to my agent and she said it looked great except what about this and what about that. I had completely overlooked two major plot points and had about two hundred words of dead wood. I made those changes and sent it to the Managing Editor this week. She said it was just the thing. (Actually, she said, “Excellent,” but it would sound self-aggrandizing for me to say that here.) Now, if someone asks for more than 2,000 words? At this point, I will probably tell them to just read the damn book.

“It would be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of a man who didn’t want to be loved. When he was a child, everyone in the house loved him. He grew up not knowing it could be any other way and got used to their tenderness, when he was a child.

But as a boy he tried to lay aside these habits. He wouldn’t have been able to say it, but when he spent the whole day roaming around outside and didn’t even want to have the dogs with him, it was because they too loved him; because in their eyes he could see observation and sympathy, expectation, concern; because in their presence too he couldn’t do anything without giving pleasure or pain. But what he wanted in those days was that profound indifference of heart which sometimes, early in the morning, in the fields, seized him with such purity that he had to start running, in order to have no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in which the morning becomes consciousness itself.” (pp 251-252, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

The Simpsons and Gray Hair as a Feminist Statement (atdoublerdiner.com)
Should a Christian feminist color her hair? (catholicmoraltheology.com)
Feminism – SILVER: A State of Mind (womenonaging.com)

One website said 75% of American women color their hair, while in 1950 only 7% did. I could probably write seventeen different blogs about what those statistics mean to me (ageism, sexism, racism, feminism, ism-ism…all as they relate to hair dye), but I won’t force either of us to suffer through that. Suffice it to say, the men at Clairol probably had a little something to do with encouraging women to believe it was a sign of their freedom and independence to become hooked on a product that requires frequent re-application over many years.

To me, hair dye is the tip of the iceberg.

My grandmother had a story she used to tell to illustrate the slippery slope into moral turpitude, about a frog swimming in a glass bowl (for some reason I always pictured it swimming in this vintage Pyrex Flameware double-boiler):

http://diaryofadishie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4211.jpg

In any case, the ignorant frog swims in happy oblivion as the evil forces around him turn the water temperature up one degree at a time (candy! billiards! alcohol! drugs! SEX!). By the time the frog realizes what has happened, he’s in boiling water. In my grandmother’s version of things, then, if I start dyeing my hair, the next thing you know I will have Maori tattoos running up the entire right side of my face, a bull-ring through my nose, vaginoplasty, and augmented double-D breasts.

She was right in a way. If everything is acceptable, then what? Chaos! (I am not ruling out the boob job, for example.)

These thoughts on shifting moral compasses remind me of this interview that Mike Wallace had with Bennett Cerf 11/30/57:

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/cerf_bennett.html

(NB: I highly recommend the entire Harry Ransom Center collection of Wallace interviews…especially if you have many hours to spare and like to watch people smoke.) Anyway, the fascinating thing about the video is how certain behaviors are culturally taken for granted: some things are masculine and fabulous (smoking, for one) and other things are vile trash (sexually explicit books). My grandmother was a big opponent of moral relativism. Hence the frog metaphor. It is a very clear-cut way to live. Right. Wrong. End of discussion.

But this silly hair-dye-decision now has a lifetime of my conflicting morals pressing in on me from every direction:

-DON’T MESS WITH MOTHER NATURE: I want to be “natural,” whatever the fuck that means. I want to be hairy and crazy like Janis Joplin. But then I think, “I drive a Prius, isn’t that enough?” (I had been led to believe that driving a Prius would cover a multitude of sins.) Why is my natural state no longer “good enough” for me? Who am I trying to please?

-CHEMICALS ARE EVIL: I don’t want nasty chemicals seeping into my scalp…right there by my brain…that just can’t be good for me. I live on planet earth, who am I kidding? I probably inhale more carcinogens when I clean the bathroom.

-VANITY VANITY ALL IS VANITY: I don’t want to care what other people think, but let’s not be ridiculous, I don’t want to look like an old bag either.

I spend very little time contemplating my appearance (despite what you might think), so when I am jarred into doing so, I am not very good at it. Everything about getting my hair dyed feels fraught with meaning. I just want to get the gray hair off the top of my head, damn it. It makes me feel old. And I guess now that I put it that way, this IS where I am going with this. Whether I am 25 or 85 I don’t ever have to FEEL old. I don’t care what it looks like to other people, but when I look in the mirror? Seeing those springs of lifeless, colorless hair (they’re not even the same texture! they are harbingers of death!) I feel my own mortality pressing down on me and that is not a reminder I need every time I wash my hands or brush my teeth.

But wait! Maybe I do need that reminder. The truth is, I AM getting closer to death every day, so maybe those gray hairs are there to say, “Hurry the fuck up!” Maybe that’s why I should leave them?

Fuck that. I want to beat death back with a stick.

Was just pondering where I was a year ago and realized I was probably sitting at this same table at Starbucks doing pretty much the same thing…writing. But my mind? A million miles away. As I scroll through my emails from a year ago, it reads like any aspiring author’s who is in the midst of The Dreaded Agent Search. At this time last year, I had my first book on submission to agents and I was a wreck.

I had been soaring on the highest highs (Axelrod requested the full!! I am going to be HUGE!!) and the lowest lows (Nelson rejected me 13 hours 4 minutes and 22 seconds after receiving my query. I am the shittiest writer. What am I doing spending precious time away from my children and family to write these ridiculous stories? I suck.) My husband and I were having a minor tiff at the time because I hadn’t heard back from InkWell—my “dream team”—and I was reluctant to follow up. They had requested the full in November and then…crickets. My husband and I have both spent time in “normal” industries like banking and marketing, where the idea of *not* pursuing a deal is preposterous. If someone doesn’t call you back? You call them! You try to win their business. You are avid! You are dogged! I try to explain to my husband that agents are DIFFERENT. They don’t want to be pursued in that way. All of the Twit-Wisdom, upon which I based my entire agent search, said unequivocally DO NOT harass the agent. I was trying to be a good bunny. (Note to aspiring writers: Get your ass onto Twitter! Use #askagent! Talk to other authors!)

After my husband pointed out that a polite inquiry did not equal harassment, I wrote a very small, quiet, sorry-to-bother-you email to InkWell and LO! I got a ping-back auto-reply that the person who had requested my manuscript back in November was no longer with the company. I was momentarily stunned. I picked up the phone with a shaky hand and dialed the 212 number. In my smallest, quietest, sorry-to-bother-you voice I asked to speak to the person now handling the departed person’s responsibilities. He sounded normal enough. “Oh! Yes! I remember your query. I am so sorry about the confusion. Would you mind re-sending it and I will pass it to the correct person?” Would I mind?!

Rapid heartbeat, gasping, and husband’s crowing all ensued.

From there on out it was a story of true love. Allison Hunter email’d back that she was looking forward to reading the manuscript and that I would probably hear back from her within four weeks. An actual response time? I was in heaven.

I got an email back from her in three weeks about how much she had enjoyed the manuscript. BUT. Before making an offer to represent me, she said she wanted to work on the manuscript together, to see if we would be a good fit. It reminded me of living together before marriage. (I am totally for it!) We spent the next two months on revisions, with tons of back-and-forth emails to make sure we could work well together. I was a quivering mess the entire time, but, as with any difficult birth, the details have already become misty and almost quaint. Megan at Ocean Reef freaking out about how to create greater depth of character in the protagonist’s father. Megan in Miami for a hen party freaking out about how to make the hero’s mid-book departure more imperative and less asshole-ish.

And then (finally!) on April 25, 2011, I opened my email to see the following subject line: Happy Monday News.

I burst into tears (duh) and just stared at the words over and over: Welcome to InkWell. (I don’t deny that I occasionally revisit this email when I am feeling low.) It was the Monday after Easter and I have never felt more full of new beginnings. I am not a religious person, but during my childhood, Easter was always my favorite holiday. None of the pressure to have the-best-time-ever-and-love-every-present-with-utter-abandon that Christmas always seemed to bring. On Long Island, Easter was always a meteorological crap shoot: sometimes it was sunny and warm and all the daffodils and forsythia were in full bloom. Other times it was still late winter. One of my favorite years it was poised exactly between both. The flowers were out, but the grass was still cold when we reached into the moist blades to get our eggs. When I read Allison Hunter’s email? I felt like that…all the cold, hard evidence of winter there in my fingertips, and all the promise and color of spring in my future.

I didn’t know it at the time (who does?) but I was learning so much during that whole back-and-forth editing process with Allison. The publishing submission process was a breeze by comparison. First of all, I was no longer alone. I had an advocate. Second of all, I knew I was capable of being meticulously edited. It’s not fun, in fact it’s grueling, but I can do it. And knowing that I could bend and not break was totally liberating. I know my core story. I know my characters. But if an editor wanted it a little more of this or a little more of that? Cool. I could do that. Having that flexibility was borne of those two months of our “living together.”

And if some of you are wondering, What if I had adhered to the no-answer-means-no philosophy? What if my husband hadn’t pushed me to be pushy? Hell, if I know. But, without sounding too Stuart Smalley about the whole thing, all of you aspiring writers out there: If I can do it, so can you. Put yourself out there!

There were several topics this week that were worth thinking about for longer than 140 characters (which will be how I come up with ideas for these weekly musings). Sarah Frantz’s breasts, for one. She threw a picture up and asked, “Twitter, does this shirt pull too much for (academic) job interview?” I became enthralled with the picture and then with why I was enthralled. I kept staring at that picture of Prof. Frantz (who has what is commonly known as a rack), then wondered if I was staring for some sexual reason and then stared some more.

Our society has such a mass-fetishization of breasts it is almost impossible (for me at least) to separate my own aesthetic or sociological interests from cultural, pornographic brainwashing. I have always thought the entire human body was aesthetically pleasing: Michelangelo’s David and his slingshot, Ursula Andress and her Bowie knife are both beautiful to me. But I have never thought breasts in and of themselves were sexy. Most heterosexual men of my acquaintance, on the other hand, say they have been turned on by breasts for as long as they can remember, citing National Geographic, circa 1969, featuring breastfeeding tribeswomen of the Masai, as an early example.

Yeah. For me? No.

Thus ruling out a possible sexual attraction to Frantz’s rack, I realized it was simply the existence of something so unavoidable right there on the front of one’s body that was causing me to spend so much time on the topic. I do not have large breasts: what was really keeping me staring was a fascination with The Other. No longer thinking specifically of Frantz, I began to wonder how different my own life would have been if I had had a body like that. I wouldn’t know how to dress. I wouldn’t even know how to move around in the world.

My clothing style has always run along the lines of Annie Hall-meets-Giorgio Armani (depending on whether I am broke and thrift shopping or gainfully employed and buying top-of-the-line retail). If I were Albert Einstein, I would have an entire closet full of crisp white Oxford shirts and a variety of comfortable, flattering blue jeans, with the occasional perfectly tailored black dress thrown in. I like how Diane Keaton and Jodie Foster dress. Surprise. Both are flat-chested. I understand how their bodies wear clothes. Long lines that accentuate assets (tall and thin) rather than deficits (negligible tits and ass).

I grew up in a world that told me I should downplay my femininity as much as possible if I wanted intelligent people to listen to what I had to say. Especially intelligent men. Don’t distract them with anything that could be confused with sexual provocation, was right up there with firm-handshake and look-them-in-the-eye. And since I wanted to be taken seriously in life, that advice stuck.

I tried to make my body attractive but, ultimately, irrelevant. But guess what? I have a body! Living in Florida has made me blissfully body conscious. Everyone at the beach is more or less naked. And when they walk from the beach to the hotel across the street, passing the ice cream parlor where I sit with my five-year-old? Yep. They are all pretty much naked. And they are talking and laughing and interacting. Much like my romance-novel reading sprang from a desire to escape the confines of my self-imposed intellectualism, so moving to Florida and wearing the occasional bikini or too-short skirt must have come from the same psychological impulse. To escape the mannish tailoring of my self-imposed sartorial androgyny.

But, hark! In the thirty years or so since I got all that bad advice about de-feminizing my appearance in order to be taken seriously, lots of sexual freedom fighters have come forward and said, “Check me out! I have huge sexy tits AND a brain!” They’ve said it far more eloquently than that, but this is an off-the-cuff blog for Christ’s sake. Give me a break. The point is, they got to be all that…sexy AND serious, while I was still living in the Dark Ages of thinking I had to choose.

At the end of my little Twitter exchange with Frantz, I promised (you can remove those tenterhooks now) to write a blog “about how mass-cultural fetishizing of breasts informs my view of ‘sexy’ vs ‘serious’” and Frantz replied, “Oh, interesting. Am I incapable of looking serious, then? ” And I replied, “:) no, my residual adolescent tells me women-with-boobs get to be serious *and* sexy, but I don’t get to be sexy”

But I do! In my reading and my appearance, I too can be sexy *and* serious. Because sexiness really has nothing to do with breast size. I think it was Victoria Dahl who once pointed out that, regardless of size, most men think the sexiest boobs are the ones they are touching.

When I was younger I thought, well, that sounds scrimpy, not to even begin. How lame. Get in there! Live life! Begin! Begin! Begin! (And begin that thing over there while you’re at it!) But now? Now I get it. Because once you start something, it tends to take on a life of its own. It gets its hooks in you. Friendships blossom. Lovers become demanding. Children…don’t even get me started.

I got lots of inspiration of the every-journey-begins-with-one-step variety while I was growing up. (Growing Up = up to and including now.) But where is the advice on the subtle finish? Whom do I speak to about the charming conclusion? No one. Because no one wants to admit failure. And for some reason, endings and failures have become synonymous in our sad little culture. Finishing without failing seems like something marketable. Something important.

I am not a good finisher. I just want to walk away and not look back. While everyone is still laughing. I don’t like the sound of soulful, meaningful departures.

Seijo’s Two Souls

Chokan had a very beautiful daughter named Seijo. He also had a handsome young cousin named Ochu. Joking, he would often comment that they would make a fine married couple. Actually, he planned to give his daughter in marriage to another man. But young Seijo and Ochu took him seriously; they fell in love and thought themselves engaged. One day Chokan announced Seijo’s betrothal to the other man. In rage and despair, Ochu left by boat. After several days journey, much to his astonishment and joy he discovered that Seijo was on the boat with him!

They went to a nearby city where they lived for several years and had two children. But Seijo could not forget her father; so Ochu decided to go back with her and ask the father’s forgiveness and blessing. When they arrived, he left Seijo on the boat and went to the father’s house. He humbly apologized to the father for taking his daughter away and asked forgiveness for them both.

“What is the meaning of all this madness?” the father exclaimed. Then he related that after Ochu had left, many years ago, his daughter Seijo had fallen ill and had lain comatose in bed since. Ochu assured him that he was mistaken, and, in proof, he brought Seijo from the boat. When she entered, the Seijo lying ill in bed rose to meet her, and the two became one.

Zen Master Goso, referrring to the legend, observed, “Seijo had two souls, one always sick at home and the other in the city, a married woman with two children. Which was the true soul?”

From the book Zen Koans by Venerable Gyomay Kubose copyright © 1973; published by Henry Regnery Company.