A Virtual Update

So you know that whole virtual learning course I was taking?   With 3 veterinarian events that require house arrest for a certain Doodle, surprising things are happening there.

First off, I’ve spent a lot of time writing in my head.  Many writers do this anyway, but early in the process, I usually need to write things down, have a tangible hard copy to work on.  Being deprived of that seems to bypass my cognitive brain. 

As a result and against my will, my antagonist staged a coup ousting my protagonist and became my main character, bringing a complexity, if not a depth, I hadn’t anticipated to a (third) catalyst character.  

The other consequence of Doodle duty is that my reading assignment is getting done in 2-3 minute intervals.  Thus, passages that I would’ve sped through –­ I’m so smart, I already know all of this – now have my extended attention. 

For instance, I’d just finished reading about outdoor vs indoor scenes when it came time to abandon all hope & cross the threshold into We Do Not Race Maniacally Thru The House Until The Stitches Come Out, i.e. a fortuitous attempt to reduce MY physical world by containing the pup.

My WIP associated with the course, Night Vigil, deals with how our childhood shapes our limitations in adulthood, as seen in the death watch of an abusive man by his wife and son.  Reading about outdoor/indoor gave me the idea of reaching past the stage into possibilities for both son & mother that wait for them after the man’s death.  There are already musical off-stage voices, but I now look for how to extend both the mother and son by being heard off stage , looking out windows, opening doors, as they try to escape where life has restricted them at the moment.

Then props.  I’d written in the father’s violin as shortcut to a lot of his history.  Obviously a prop to look at, especially one connected with a character who keeps his family in its particular status.  What more work could it do besides telling us the father is a musician?  And so the violin becomes an animate thing to the son and his sibs when they were children, and is still a way of knowing if their father were home by its presence or absence. 

Also, like many abusers, this father is charming.  In other words, Voice is a significant aspect.  The violin’s song.  The father’s song.  The choice of melody played,  in this case, one that’s initially playful but has minor tones in it, suggesting something darker even though pizzicatto.  Lastly, holding the violin, aligns any character with the father.

These are more than, Far Out, Man, devices.  Signifying the violin and being aware of the expansion or compression of space both give another tool when developing the plot.  I get stuck, I ask myself where all the characters are, where should they be, and of course, where’s the blasted violin?

As alluded to above, there were two characters whom I always wonder – are they needed?  They were in a first scene at the son’s house, one as the mother’s foil and the other as the son’s ally.  But were they needed for the rest of the play and if not, why introduce them at all? 

But a Doodle Nurse moment collided with a reading section on how silent observers could change what would be a sombre moment into a comedic one.  I’ve had this lifelong fascination with witnessing for people during anonymous but significant life events.  It made sense that the witnessing of any intense moments in a play could change the quality of those moments, and in other directions besides comedic. 

I then wrote an argument between mother and son that digresses through a momentary crumble in the mother’s cognition, but ends in a loving moment.  Quite a complicated emotional nosedive, but having it witnessed, allowed me to stop the action and give the audience time to assimilate what happened.  I did this by having the son and his ally exit, leaving the mother and her foil alone in an awkward silence, followed by an exchange between the two women that furthers understanding of the mother.

So this play that started as static  –  a mother and son changing their relationship by sitting a death watch  – gets energised via trying to keep a frenetic but recuperating puppy from being energised in my own life. 

Beyond all that I’ve learned about writing plays, I think I’ll slow down my technical reading in future, let things simmer more.  My only complaint is no 3D people to discuss this with!  

Virtually Delayed

So there’s me, popping up my head after my writing winter of discontent.  It wasn’t writer’s block.  It was writer doesn’t give a fuck, heels dragged through my last draft of the novel about characters and themes I loved, absolutely loved.  And I didn’t give a fuck.  Emotively, I did.  Cognitively, I didn’t.

Once the novel was done and sent away to be slaughtered, deadlines for two plays waited my attention.  One play, an old friend who needed cosmetic surgery.  The other, only an idea.  Deadlines don’t understand winters of discontent.  I needed a kick in the ass, so decided to take a writing course.  Bit of structure, the fizz that comes from being around other writers, copacetic.

We have universities to the left of us, universities to the right, here I am, spoiled for choice of where to go.  On the home front, various things are being juggled (none of which understand winters of discontent, either, needless to say), so I opted for an online course.

This is a pretty funny idea because  2015 was going to be the Year of the Real.  Besides that, I’m not terribly visual.  In fact, I probably have a visual processing delay.  (When it’s going to arrive, is anyone’s guess.)  Which means that my photographer son and resident hooligan spent a lot of his childhood amusing himself by playing visual tricks on me.  Why I thought learning visually without the very necessary 3D contact with my classmates would work . . . well I wasn’t thinking, was I?  But I am nothing if not a slow learner, non-attendant of the obvious.  Off the money goes and I wait to be inspired to greatness.

It didn’t occur to me that I was in trouble when feedback for my first submission honed in on my use of accents in the dialogue.  (What accents?  thinks me.)  Some feel it courageous I’ve attempted accents.  Some, that I shouldn’t be taking on airs, using accents without a DRAMATIC REASON.  Oh, and did I know that certain (low brow) Dubliners might use the word ‘feck’ but certainly never ‘wee’.  That’s Northern Irish.

Oh.  The ‘accent’ is my husband’s speech pattern.  Oh.  Okay.  Light bulb moment.  They don’t know I’m not British.  Telling them once, doesn’t make much difference.  Telling them three times does.  And this isn’t a reflection on them.  It’s a reflection on virtual learning.  In a 3D classroom, they’d hear my voice week after week.  Online, I’m letters on a screen.  They aren’t here to get to know me.  They’re here to learn scriptwriting.

I did, however, understand immediately the difficulty from most of the course examples being culturally embedded.  (I may be slow, but I've been an ex-pat for a while now.)  We read this script, watch that film, my classmates are in stitches or deeply moved and I’m all WTF?????  Without the cultural context, my learning skimmed across the top, no  conversations where the Brits explained things to me about their home grown drama, heard my reflections as an outsider.  

My visual son says he doesn’t think creative coursework can be taught virtually.  Indeed, it would take a lot of online chatting for this group of dispersed learners to become a real writing group.  To be honest, there hasn’t been a week yet when everyone gets in the written assignment for the rest of us to give feedback on.  If life intrudes too emphatically for them to get their work done, they most likely don’t have time to chat either. 

It’s not been a total loss.  We’re covering ground that I’ve not covered before and my two plays show the results of this.  But it’s feckin hard work.  (Yes, I’m low brow.  No, I’m not from Dublin.)  If I’m lucky, I may get a small paragraph of feedback from one or two of my classmates, an equal offering from my tutor.  There’s no discussion.  There’s no listening to discussions of the other plays.  There’s me.  Squiggles on a screen.  And waiting.  Waiting for their assignments.  Waiting for feedback.  Some of which never come, followed by more waiting.

So never again, unless I’m too frail to venture forth and annoy the Brits.  Hats off to those of you who can learn virtually, but for this anachronistic speaker of crass dialects, 3D is where I stay.

Gauche Writer in England

Dear Playwright,

Photo by SiniHarraka
Urban Photobraphy

Living in England isn’t great for my mental health.  The dismal weather suits me fine.  It’s the social etiquette that does my head in.

Thank you for submitting your work and congratulations on making the long list.

This isn't because I'm American, but because I'm gauche.

Please forgive the vague nature of this e-mail but, as you know, the [redacted] is an anonymous prize and we are still unable to know your name.

And when I have my writer's cap on, I'm something several steps past gauche.

We wanted to know whether you'd like to discuss your work over a cup of tea?

So when I received this Dear Playwright email, my response was,

If we can change my order from tea to coffee & throw in a cake, I'll give you my real name.

The English typically react to my humour by becoming more formal and removing all sharp objects from the room.  They never say what made them uncomfortable, but make it clear it has something to do with me.  It’s not the fault of the English ­– their culture’s been around a long time and it works for them.  It’s not my fault, either.  It’s simply a bad mix of an eccentric personality in a reserved society.

But for a communicator (that would be me) to consistently be met with silence, displeased silence, anxious silence, that makes a statement about who I am.  An unacceptable who. 

I. 

Am. 

Unacceptable.

I'm sorta like
a pink marzipan pig.

I, the former trauma therapist, cause innocent bystanders distress by simply being.  This gives me moments of self loathing.  Sometimes extended moments of self loathing.  It also gives me other moments.  Like when I show up with pink pig cakes from Betty’s that the Butler bought so I’ll have confidence at this meeting.  Moments when I actually think I’m pretty worthwhile.

I’ve lived in six countries and visited a few others.  While my gauchiosity has elicited various reactions, it’s never been met with stony silence except by the English.  As if what I am here is so overwhelmingly threatening, they daren’t make eye contact with me, the social Medusa. 

When I’m not occupied with self loathing over this, it seems really funny.  Being gauche and fat and badly dressed – even the fact my heart isn’t always in the right place because let me assure you, there are a handful of people I’d gladly take out if I wouldn’t get caught – being all those things isn’t scary.  It’s about on the level with having freckles.  And I’m a trained mental health professional, so guess what?  I know I’m badly socialised.  It’s not worth breaking eye contact over.

But this is me versus a whole culture.  You don’t live in multiple countries without figuring out that the culture always wins.  All things considered, England is not a place I want to grow old in.  I think the English will be relieved to hear that.

The Perfectionist and the Misanthrope

Dodgy book sellers

The Butler loves community activities => pantos in the village hall, safari suppers, pop-up restaurants, carollers, table quizzes, fetes.  Me, I’m a bit of a misanthrope.  Our compromise is that if I participate, I can insult our host when he discusses his wife’s frigidity over dinner. 

Three guesses, what the Butler’s reaction was when the notice came about the open gardens. 

In preparation, our initial focus was on neat and tidy, but about five days before the dread weekend, the penny dropped that perhaps more were expected.  We’ve never really gotten the hang of June, you see.  In spring, there’s all those wonderful bulbs.  In late summer and autumn, we’re a bee and butterfly paradise, but June?  Everything holds its breath and waits. 

I laughingly told the Butler I couldn’t believe that people were paying money to see the expanse of dirt in our flower beds.  Later, I looked up from weeding the gigantic mauve thing and found myself alone.  I went inside, suggested the Butler get off his ass to help if he wanted the resident misanthrope to behave herself when company came.

After that, the Butler would jump to his feet whenever I came into a room and like a kid who hadn’t done his chores, announce he was headed to the garden.  He seldom made it outside before 2pm and seldom stayed.  The same man who loved all these goddam village events and being civil in his Irish accent to UKIP neighbours and putting his body between mine and the guy at Burns Night who said trans people were selfish.

Something weird, this way comes.

Something weird was afoot. 

The Butler hadn’t always gardened.  Presumably his superhero regime of work-by-day, single-parent-by-night had something to do with it.  I remember our first gardening projects – a dubious Butler watching from the sidelines, concerned the neighbours might look over the fence and see me showing my arse.  Figuratively, of course, although on occasion . . . well, that’s a different story altogether. 

Then a brazen hussy of a red dahlia sang its siren song to him and he believed he could make beauty happen.

To be honest, I’d led the poor Butler astray by approaching gardening the way I do manuscript drafts.  I tinker.  I toy.  I try to find the best place for ruffled basil by setting up plastic bottle mini-greenhouses in every flowerbed, only to learn there’s no best place and we really have to consider getting a life-size greenhouse one of these days.  Pansies live between the onions, and corn?  Well it grows in the meadow because it’s a grass.  The rose bed is carpeted with creeping thyme while glads preen themselves among the pumpkin vines and a nasturtium sprouts from the neck of a statue that lost her head.  Nature’s feedback means an oak grows in a pot where a passing squirrel planted it, and the feverfew knocks itself out hiding the oil tank.

Pansies & onions, o my!

People laugh, but I never think their derision is about me.  Ever.  Firstly, it’s a reflection of how rigid their minds are but also, it’s a boundary issue because the Butler and I should have a garden we enjoy, not one that meets the needs of Mr UKIP down the road. 

But with the open weekend days away, I now suspected the Butler’d taken it personally all along.  Worse, that my own laughing sent him off the ledge.  When did this stop being fun for him?  Had it ever been fun for him?

When we talked about it, the Butler reminded me of when he was off work a few years ago because of his back.  He literally convalesced while curled up in a ball, taking copious amounts of painkillers, imprisoned with his own thoughts.  During those hours of not being able to DO, he realised that he took about 80% of his self worth from what he did, and only about 20% from who he was. 

That 80/20 mentality got him through his superhero years of resuscitating patients during the day, cooking meals and ironing uniforms at night, squeezing in patient transports overseas while the kids were at school.  The open garden weekend brought this all back to him, the conviction that to be a good human being, our little space needed to be a horticultural wonderland.

Gigantic mauve thing.

Skipping forward to the weekend itself, when he and I trespassed in our neighbours’ gardens, the Butler was full of curiosity and wonder.  See how they do that!  Oh, I love that species of astrantia.  I’ll distract them, Lora, and you steal the seeds.  He didn’t have a word of criticism for anyone.

So why for himself?  Why do any of us set our own standards so mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa high that we will never be enough, so that whenever the Butler’s asked to bring a covered dish, he brings two and when we go to the barbecue, I ask him later how often I embarrassed him and when either of us stand up to protest that someone has treated us Less-Than, we’re ashamed that we made such a fuss.

I could blame familial/societal indoctrination.  As a trauma therapist, I saw this over and over, that the legal system and the family and society as a whole placated the person acting out, expected the target of insanity to always keep her cool, be reasonable, never respond in a sane way to the bastard.  It boggled the mind.

But I believe we’re more than that, more than the recipients of indoctrination.  If we see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothing, we certainly can be audible activists about the whole sordid affair but more importantly, we can take care of ourselves in the situation.  We can nurture our lives and seek out what we need, what we want, what we dream about. 

It isn’t easy.  And it isn’t a failing on your part if sometimes you hide in the house and think with dread about visitors tromping through your back garden.  It’s your back garden and it’s precious to you.  So while they’re kicking pots over and tugging branches off the buddleia, remember the lusty red dahlia you brought to life, the beauty you inspired in the space around you.

The weekend brought us lots of visitors.  I listened raptly when anyone felt compelled to say that an oak would outgrow a flowerpot.  No one who asked where I came from, then sang Country Roads got shoved ass first in the pond.  I feigned surprise that the statue had lost her head and couldn’t explain how a nasturtium took root there.  The poor creeping thyme will undoubtedly need therapy, considering the number of people who groped it to see if it were scented.

It’s thyme, people.  An herb.  Ergo . . .

Your own brazen hussy.

But there were people who were kind about annuals hastily planted in the bare spots, folk who appreciated that we’d welcomed them into our back garden – in effect, offered them hospitality.  Others shared their knowledge of pruning or species of holly or pond care.  People interested in the Latin name for the gigantic mauve thing (something only the Butler could answer) traded the Latin name for that yellow stuff we’d always called Vigorous. 

And a few people said as they left us, that we’d created a space of calm and welcome.  That’s what you want in life.  Not perfection, but a place that’s home.

A Strange Combination

Perfect Writer's Spouse

In many ways, the Butler is the perfect spouse for a writer.  Besides the fact that he does all the cooking, he’s also an incurable info junkie.

So imagine this.

You write realistically, value getting your facts straight.  Your next scene involves stalking someone through the streets of Paris (you live in North Yorkshire), then kidnapping and drugging the target, followed by psychologically informed torture interrogation.

Hours of research? 

Nope.  I go on writing, my needs submitted to the Butler.  Not only does he get to feed his habit, he later gets to tie me up so we can see exactly how much mobility the kidnap victim has.

The downside to the Butler as a writer’s spouse is that his professional world has a different social etiquette than mine.  Basically, he thinks writers should be treated better.

What’s bad about that?  Well, in order to survive emotionally as a writer, it’s not helpful to be told you’re a marginalised aspect of the overall process, because you can’t really opt out.  A writer will write regardless.  In fact, in my highly ill informed view, writers (and other artists) have a different way of perceiving and processing information in their environment than let’s say, someone with a  scientific approach to their world. 

A writer can say, ‘I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,’ stop putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, but the brain’s still going to be working in the way a writer’s brain works.  End result => less emotional equilibrium than when you were a mistreated, undervalued artist.

The writing life

Those of us who continue to write and get rejected, ignored at best, publicly ridiculed at worst, who have learned to thrive on the slightest bit of encouragement . . . imagine what that says about us.  If I had a client who presented in that manner, we’d be doing some very serious self esteem work.

Here’s the thing that amazes me.  A writer must be acutely aware of her environment, the emotional interplays and sensitivities of people, yet be tough as fried horsemeat about whatever return she gets for her work. 

I think that’s the strangest combination in the world.  I’m not sure I understand it, even as I live it.  Do you have thoughts?

The Big Deal

Fat, dumb & happy.

Right before the BIG DEAL happens, there I sit fat, dumb and happy, trying to decide if it’s harder to know or not know.  Fiction writers do this all the time.  Wonder WHAT.  WHICH.  HOW.  WHY.  The wondering of the moment is, as a novelist, which would be worse:

Worseness Option 1:  To know what you’re writing now isn’t as good as what you wrote the last time and there’s no way to drag up something better from yourself.  The point where you know it’s over, the snap of creativity gone, is that worse than =>

Worseness Option 2:  What you’re writing now is leaps and bounds better than what you wrote the last time, so you don't know why no one wants it.  The bug flying against the window experience.

So anyway, I’m thinking about this when notice of the BIG DEAL comes and swipes all Worseness Options off the table.  My leaps-and-bounds-better pleased someone in an office far, far away.  The fact that nine other writers have pleased the same office doesn’t matter.  

Calypso

Last century (literally) when another BIG DEAL happened to me, the people at work threw an impromptu tea party, complete with cake.  This century, my office mates are a cat and social media.  If you have a cat, you know there are only cat BIG DEALS.  Social media, it is, so.

By the end of the day, all congrats are done and dusted, pushed out of the way by what Ted’s cooked for dinner and the latest jab at men, women, the conservatives, the liberals, and a video of a juggling hedgehog.  Virtual life lacks appropriate rituals to celebrate and cleanse the emotional palate.  Not being the sort of person to whine about the good old days, I go to bed.

The next morning, two of the other nine people loved by that office far, far away have followed me on Twitter.  How cool is that?  So I look up all nine people, find five of them and friends of two others, send my congrats, Google for anything that any of them have ever written since pre-school.  While I’m stalking them, they post congrats back to me and this is all very civilised for a battle to the death via BIG DEAL.

And then that’s over because this is virtual camaraderie.  I, who used to spend my day giving witness to people’s most intimate secrets, I’m on my own now. 

Tell me it ain't so!

That evening, there’s a Tweet from one of the others =>  Is anyone writing? 

It made absolute sense.  Here we all were, ten recipients of the BIG DEAL, our 15 seconds of virtual celebration over – who else knew better what we were feeling than the people we were in competition with?  And none of us able to focus or write – I, myself had spent the day in a hammock with the Edinburgh Book Festival brochure.  After jokes about becoming an instant therapy group, the virtual friendship ended.  The inevitable, I suppose, because only one of us wins. 

Four hundred people submitted for this BIG DEAL.  Four hundred voices with four hundred stories so powerful, they couldn’t give them up, draft after draft after draft.  Four hundred voices who dared sing out loud; three hundred ninety-nine will go quietly into the night.

I only know ten of those four hundred.  Here are the other nine.  Read them.  Follow them on Twitter.  Check out their blogs and websites.  Keep them writing.  Let them know we hear them singing.

The Dundee International Book Prize shortlist: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-27794582

Under the Tamarand Tree                             

Rosaliene Bacchus, California                       

http://www.rosalienebacchus.com/writer/TheJourney.html

Daughters of the House of Love

Veronica Birch, West Country

She’s evaded my stalking efforts.

The Open Arms of the Sea

Jasper Dorgan, Wiltshire

@TriskeleBooks

http://www.jasperdorgan.com/

Sea Never Dry

Ben East, Virginia

@hBenEast

benonbooks.wordpress.com

Some Things the English

Rachel Fenton, Auckland

@RaeJFenton

snowlikethought.blogspot.com

A Village Drowned

Sheena Lamber, Dublin

@shewithonee

Sheenalambertauthor.com

Out Like a Lion

Robin Martin, New York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGEt7t-YuIo

Ida

Amy Mason, Bristol

@AmyCMason

amymason.co.uk

http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/events/activities/write-club-march/

The Dreaming

Suzy Norman, London

@susynorman

http://suzynormanfiction.wordpress.com

The Butler’s Gift

‘Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.’  The Butler said that early in our marriage before he’d fully grasped what living with a writer meant.  

The morning walk

 And that’s what I’m thinking about while Big Nose sniffs grass beside the path in hope my attention will lag long enough for him to sneak into the verboten copse.  Verboten because local gentry feed pheasants there so they can later blow them to smithereens.  Local poachers feed deer there for the same purpose but tend to leave carcasses behind for Big Nose’s pleasure.  The latter is more a deterrent to me than the former.

My attention is diverted to the other side of our path where a track runs through knee-high crops.  In the middle of that track, what looks like a large bird.  Not the right colour for a pheasant – about the same shade of L’Oreal that I use.  We’re a bit far afield for my neighbour’s chickens, but the oval shape and colour, a chicken is what my brain tells me it is.

Said chicken turns its head and transforms into a fox, oval because it's sitting down.  A cool metaphor, but my optical prescription’s a bit hefty, so I give the image a moment to settle and yes, it’s definitely a fox scanning the field, unaware we stand thirty yards away.

Big Nose's moral dilemma

Big Nose catches the scent and tracker extraordinaire that he is, dashes into the off-limits copse.  A cue for any responsible dog owner to bring her Big Nose into line.  Right.

Sometimes I fear for your immortal soul.  

Granted, I was plotting someone’s murder when he said it, but even so, not what you expect from a lay person. I laughed.  Not in derision, but in the pure joy of how wonderful that remark was.  Kinda sweet that after the long years of knowing me, he still believed I had a soul. 

More remarkable that he believed in any god, let alone an all-loving one, because his work routinely had him with a weapon between his legs and the hope between his ears that his aircraft wasn’t shot out of the sky a la pheasant before he could help put Humpty Dumpty pieces of young people back together again.  Or watch Afghan children die. 

So the two of us together, the Butler and me, I knew my compromises, all the pheasant and fox hunts I didn’t moon, all the plants in neighbours’ gardens untouched by midnight relocation, all the people who’d caused him pain still taking in air when I knew of places on the moors . . . what was the Butler’s experience, sharing space and a life with someone like me?  And if a wife’s plotting turned into murder, how would the Butler respond?  How would anyone?

Fortunately for the loathsome in my life, I explore these type questions via my writing rather than scientific method. 

Conor (played by Gary Goodyear, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

 I created Conor O’Donovan, Irish Catholic ex-pat in a country where not his skin colour but his accent makes him a target.  Where being called his nationality equates roughly with being called stupid.  He’s the second of nine children, his mother’s favourite until his youngest brother dies.  Then he becomes the sin eater for the family.  And he continues to be the sin eater for the rest of his life because hard as he tries, he can’t be heterosexual, he can’t meet his children’s expectations, he still believes in immortal souls and an all-loving God who says if only he were a better son, a better doctor, a better officer, a better father, a better partner, everyone else around him would actually stop all this sinning.

Bert (played by John McMahon, Cats in a Pipe, 2013)
Photo by SiniHarakka Urban Photography

Enter stage right, Bert Statler, Conor’s shadow.  Bert’s also gay, but from a US military family, in the Navy himself during the death throes of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, so still living stealth.  His long-term partner has recently transitioned male to female, and though they’re still together, Bert feels abandoned.  But to Bert, that’s life, isn’t it?  You’re created by a fuck, spend your whole life getting fucked, and your funeral costs fuck someone else out of their inheritance.  The world doesn’t suck because of Bert, but because the world sucks.  Sometimes to dilute the suck quotient for someone else, you have to sin.

Conor is who we’re all told we should be.  Bert is the part of us we never admit out loud, sometimes not privately to ourselves.  Their friendship in some measure, represents the polarities between the Butler and myself, but also a polarity intrinsic to me as well – my struggle to be socially acceptable (stay out of jail), contribute to society (be able to afford the things I want), continue to grow as an individual (find new ways of staying out of jail and getting what I want).

The irony is that, before I married the Butler, I wrote about other people, my keyboard the conduit for stories gifted to me as a trauma therapist.  Once my life was shared, my writing became about me.  Disguised as a tall, lanky gay southern male who cuts people open for a living, I finally tell the truth.  And I’m able to do that because one day a long time ago, the Butler feared for my immortal soul.

The Butler & Big Nose, on the fox track headed toward the Verboten Copse

Identity, Transition, Fox Poo

If we’re being precise, I’ve been a trans-parent (someone with a transgender child) for over thirty years, but I didn’t know that until about twelve years ago.  The only amazing thing about my part in all this is that although I accept the concept, I still don’t understand.  I often create trans characters in my writing, but I can only write what I’ve witnessed, not what I’ve felt, experienced.

Big Nose Dog and I were taking the dull walk that day, a shorter trek squeezed in between rain showers.  The venture seemed ours alone – not even the buzzards had appeared.  While Big Nose sniffed every blade of grass in Yorkshire, I walked and waited and walked until my mind wandered to identity.

When I was in undergrad learning my developmental psychology, we were taught that identity was the task for the teen years.  If we think about ourselves as teens or about teens we know, it’s all pretty embarrassing.  You might be forgiven in feeling that adolescence should happen where there are no witnesses. 

But is that really about identity?  I don’t think so.  (And Erik Erikson rolls over in his grave.)  Teens know who they are (as much as anyone can know anything in only a dozen or so years).  They aren’t exploring identity, but how that person they know themselves to be will interface with society.  Which is why there’s so much rebellion about it. 

Anyone who’s lived through raising a toddler has witnessed their surprisingly strong personality emerge from what used to be a cute, burbling enfant.  And to be honest, when my son told me he was my son, not my daughter, I felt really stupid because it was so obvious that my child had never been a little girl.

And yet what many teens learn is how to subvert their identity in order to be accepted by the society that will sustain them for the rest of their lives.  We dole out pink passes to girls and blue to boys, put more money in military than education, reward beauty and athleticism over brains or innovation.

We all make compromises in order to get on, so why transition?  Why not just suck it up?  Transitioning isn’t an easy thing.  Not physically, psychologically, medically, socially, financially.  It can be dangerous.  It can be fatal.

So Big Nose has found something delightful to roll in, making little growly sounds of joy.  I let him, because he’s a dog, not because I appreciate smelling like fox poo.  That grey, solitary landscape around us is apt for 2014 as the Year of Rejection for my writing with the only reward, a dog who smells like shit.  For a brief moment, I think perhaps I should go back to my day job.

And then somehow all this connects me to my son, fiercely brave in his right to be.  Identity is the only thing we’re given to get through life.  A divine gift, perhaps.  Something brutally inevitable, the power of ME . . . well, a person just has to do it, don’t they?

My January Book Non-Reviews

When you read, does an annoying voice in your head give commentary?  One part of my brain simply reads and enjoys (or doesn’t enjoy).  Another part breaks down why the book works or doesn’t work for me, and how applicable this is to my writing. 

Here’s the background music for my January’s reading.  Not reviews, but things I learned while reading the following books.

Beautiful Child by Emma Tennant

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

The Detective’s Daughter by Lesley Thomson  

The Dying Hours by Mark Billingham

Two books have patiently waited on my shelf because they were connected to classic literature – Beautiful Child by Emma Tennant and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.  The postponement in both cases was unnecessary and regretable as both these books (as does Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard) have great prose.  In fact, the first chapter of The Hours (which describes Virginia Woolf’s death) is so excellent, I put the book down and didn’t go back to it for months. 

Do you ever do that?  A book is so well written, I can’t risk being disappointed if it doesn’t keep its promise from start to finish.  I needn’t have worried.  Cunningham has a wonderful pacing and turns sentences into stand alone works of art.  He reminded me that a writer must read and continue to read really good writing to nudge us forward in our craft.

Tennant’s voice is a different kind of good.  She writes with a familiar tone, as if I were the narrator’s long time friend with whom scandalous observations could be made in confidence.  Liberating, is how I thought of it.  A courageous voice that says, this is how you jump off buildings and fly.

I do find fault with Tennant’s over use of humour, such as the ever changing nicknames for the characters.  A tutor once warned me about this in my own writing, and I found it difficult to gauge when enough was enough.  Meeting this same flaw in Tennant’s book was an Aha moment for me.  I think I’ll more easily season delicately with my own humour because of this.

Beautiful Child is meant to be scary and for me, was.  In fact, I had to parcel the book out so I could sleep at night (but I'm a wimp).  However, the narrator has an intense experience later in the book and when reading it, I felt distanced from what should have been the most powerful passage so far.  Can you imagine the let down?

The frightening aspects of the scene were written as visual distortions.  I’m not a visual person, even have difficulty mentally visualising, so distorting vision isn’t that frightening to me.  The way the human brain processes information differs among people and for a writer to effectively communicate with a  wider range of readers, we should educate ourselves on those differences.  While I don’t claim to be an expert on the brain, remember the writing tutors who’ve told you to be aware of all five senses.  It’s a great place to start, if you want to pull more readers into your narrative.

Then Louise Doughty.  The book has a great concept, and her writing is seductive, her prose makes continuing to read an imperative like continuing to read, and kept me interested in people I didn’t particularly like (both main characters). 

For the first three quarters of the book, her pacing is organic, but unfortunately falls apart near the end, as though she doesn’t know how to stop writing.  I skimmed passages that seemed to come from nowhere and kept thinking, where’s her editor?  Why didn’t someone help her fix this?  Apple Tree Yard warned me that whatever standard I've set in the beginning of the book, I have to keep it up to the bitter end.

Interestingly, Doughty lost more than her pacing in the latter part of the book.  She puts a big effort into an intelligent concept, then reached out for a gimmicky ending by doing a Gotcha!  For me, that type of thing breaks the contract between reader and writer, because doing an abrupt and unanticipated about-face is only for the purpose of fooling me.  A writer as gifted as Doughty could’ve come up with a clever twist, and I would’ve admired that.

One last complaint about Apple Tree Yard.  The narration is coloured with science, which for the most part is done well, but then enter stage left, the psychologist.  Trying hard here to avoid spoilers, I’ll say that both technically and for continuity purposes, her psychology is unbelievable to anyone in the field and perhaps to readers who don’t have psych degrees and who haven’t been expert witnesses.  Big red flag here to all of us – don’t skimp on your research.  Have everything checked and rechecked by people in the field you’re writing about or risk blowing the illusion for a certain percentage of your readers.

So then I read two not-so-well written books, The Detective’s Daughter by Lesley Thomson and Mark Billingham’s The Dying Hours.  Billingham himself is a lovely guy, but not a writer I’d take notes from.  The crime genre is irresistible to me, like those nights you pull out a bag of crisps and eat the whole thing, only to wonder what craziness took hold of you.  That itch scratched, I won’t go back to Billingham for a long time.

But The Detective’s Daughter is billed as intelligent crime writing.  Although her concept intrigues, both her writing and characterisation fall short.  Again, I wondered about who edited this book, because it reads like an early draft rather than a finished product; there’s also several typos in the printed version. 

Along the same vein, Thomson’s narrative, in some instances, reads like the notes taken from her research, rather than prose.  I’ve done this myself, forget to dress up the research into a story, into fiction.  No matter how interesting we find our own research, reporting it isn’t the purpose of the novel.  You sneak it into the story, like the conniving person that a writer has to be.

The book also reads as if Thomson were beating several drums at once, and not in rhythm.  As a writer who has multiple themes going in my work, I know this is a tricky thing, and not one I always do well.  But no matter how strong our passion for a social injustice, it has to be distilled into art.  Fiction first and foremost is to make us believe a lie.  Whatever social change comes of it is secondary. 

So that’s January’s fiction reading and I learned something from all five of them.  If you’ve read any of these books, let’s discuss them.  

Creativity, Privilege, Ethics

That young woman was not a happy puppy.

At a reading of my play Cats in a Pipe, a young female actor in the audience asked why the characters were all male.  While I explained my creative decisions, her expression said I was another Man With Tits.  As soon as I stopped talking, she challenged me again.  The director jumped in and supported the gender choice.  The actor let it go, but the expression on her face didn’t change. 

I don’t find fault with her.  She wants the right to creative expression in a field where each minute that passes makes her less employable.  Dehumanising, to say the least, but I don’t back down from my creative choices for that play.  This is an And-Both situation.  A female actor should develop her craft through all age brackets and a female writer should write male characters.  But the former is not the case, so if I do the latter, do I stop another creative’s work?  If I don’t do the latter, do I stop mine?

Years ago, Paul Simon made an album in South Africa during apartheid.  What’s your initial reaction to that?  Did he exploit black South Africans, steal their music, make money from them?  Or did he give black South Africans an international stage?  Should art sidestep politics?  Can it?  At the time, Simon said that if Stevie Wonder had made the album, everyone would’ve cheered.  Now what’s your reaction? 

Last month in this blog, I wrote that we should metaphorically give the Rosa Parks of today a seat on the bus.  One of my good friends privately called this into question: in terms of using privilege to help, we may deny individuals the right to perform their own personal revolution.  Which isn’t to say privilege should never intervene but that we assess that intervention.  In the real world, a Rosa Park is more in need of support and protection for her revolution, than she is of being offered a seat. 

But in the creative world, are our decisions the same?  Am I responsible for female actors having more opportunities when my creativity develops in another direction?  Should Paul Simon have bankrolled a black musician to do what he wanted to creatively explore himself?  Do we have the right to censure other creatives for their choices? 

I don’t think we have the right to censure the creative choices of others, unless they move into illegal areas.  I do think it helps everyone to discuss these choices. 

I listened to both the actor and to my friend when they disagreed with me.  I thought about their perspectives but I thought about my friend’s perspective longer.  Certainly, because there was more at stake in a friendship than in an audience Q&A, but also because the actor didn’t appear to want to have a discussion. 

Maybe that's because I didn’t let her know that I heard her point of view.  Or maybe I actually didn't hear her point of view.

Her question was, as a female playwright, should I have written an all male cast.  When I didn't answer that question, what could she do, but challenge me again?  In effect, I silenced her. 

If instead of explaining myself, I’d asked her, 'Do you think a female writer should never write a male lead?' she may have entered into discussion with me.  She may have understood my creative decisions and I may have considered ways to develop creatively AND respect her need to create as well.

I missed my chance with her but today I’m saying to you, let’s have this discussion. What do you think about how creative development and social responsibility interact?  Even if we feel we're being silenced, let's not give up.  Let's discuss.

The Golden Rule

Some folk tout a Golden Rule which says that to be successful as a writer, you have to be aggressive in your self-marketing.  Slam an agent/editor/director against the wall and force feed them an elevator pitch.  Jam your Twitter feed with a loss of dignity.  Show thine ass and they will print it.  And if you don’t have the skin for it, go home.

I’m sorry, but I’m from Appalachia and that’s not how it’s done there. 

First and foremost, you are a writer.  Writing is about voice.  If your voice is ME!  ME!  ME! there are a limited number of people who want to hear it.  It’s more likely that the only thing achieved by that is a sense of control in a situation where you have no control.  In other words, since you cannot make someone publish what you write, diving into a self-marketing frenzy means you’re doing something ANYTHING which gives the illusion of control. 

But the way the game is played . . .

Yoo-hoo!  The gatekeepers to your future as a successful writer, the agents and publishers and theatre companies and editors, are they some type of omniscient being with no time for your social skills?  Will your potential readers only read your work after they’ve been bombarded with thirty tweets a day that say BUY ME!  BUY ME!  BUY ME! 

But the experts say . . .  

Okay.  Anonymous experts.  God love them.  A different breed of human than the rest of us.

Let’s look at a little social science.  If we’re in a public building and see a sign that says, Do Not Enter, most of us don’t challenge that request.  But what if the sign said, Doris Doesn’t Want You To Come In Here.  Who is Doris and who made her the god of entry?

Ellen Langer (On Becoming An Artist) and Adam Grant ask participants to take a ten question exam.  Group A was told that the exam tested reasoning ability.  Group B was told that a group of eight social scientists from a particular university selected these ten questions from a larger number of questions that might measure reasoning skill.  (Which is how all scientific measurement is done, by the way.  Someone decides what and how to measure.)

After taking the exam, all participants were told whether the exam said they had good or bad reasoning skills.  All participants who were told they had good reasoning skills, accepted the results.  Participants from Group A who were told they did poorly, accepted the results as well, but participants from Group B who were told they did poorly, felt that the results were probable, not absolute.  As Langer said about the results, Group B had fallibility put back into the equation. 

If you think about what experts have thought of as empirical data over the centuries, then you know that fallibility is always part of any human creation.  Don’t rely on experts when their wisdom makes you squirm.  Remember that any advice on how to market or write or feed the cat, always has Doris behind it.  And between you and me, I think Doris is taking on airs and graces that she simply doesn’t have.