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?

No Comparison

You are incomparable.  No one else is inside your skin with your history, talents and perceptions, yet most of us compare ourselves to others.  Considering the risk of unhappiness caused by making comparisons, can we live a life free of it?  I don’t think so, but perhaps we can learn a little health and safety about it.

From the word go, we’re taught about ourselves, our world and how to acquire skills through the medium of comparison.  Our society values some of us more than others.  Our teachers put a grade on our attempts to learn.  Our social interactions let us know how far below everyone’s expectations we’ve gone.  See how nicely your brother . . . Why can’t you be more like . . . She was able to, so why can’t you . . . As if denigrating what someone is, will magically make them what they are not. 

I attended a penny whistle class where the tutor would stop us playing and criticise the miscreant, usually me.  I lasted about 15 minutes and then with a smile to show no hard feelings, packed my things.  The tutor went venomously nuts while I packed, the message being that the reason things weren’t working was because of me. 

I said to her, I came here to have fun, and this isn’t fun.  She must have thought she was a fun type of gal, because she screamed abuse as I left the building. 

Shame doesn’t make us improve.  It cannot, because its basic construct is to destruct.  To keep comparison safe, let’s dissect what comparison is.  We compare ourselves to inferiors, equals and superiors.  What happens when we do this?

Comparing ourselves to our equals affirms our belonging in our peer group.  Usually this comparison is reassuring, unless we actually want to elevate ourselves out of this group into a higher status group.  The latter can be a wake-up call for motivation, or a lesson in self hatred.

If we compare ourselves to someone we deem inferior, we feel good about ourselves.  We may even be inspired to acts of altruism to help those people.  Or we can denigrate them to solidify our superiority. 

If we compare ourselves to someone we deem superior, we’re inspired if we evaluate their achievements as attainable, discouraged if we evaluate them as unattainable.  We may even give up.

But what is it we’re comparing?  As an example of evaluation, a thirty year old unpublished writer may want to slit her wrists after comparing herself to Cecelia Ahern who, at 21, wrote her first novel, PS I Love You, which got her an obscene advance and stayed a best seller for 19 weeks. 

There are more variables at work here, however, than being published.  Cecelia Ahern’s father was Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland at the time and her brother-in-law was a Westlife member.  Like Pippa Middleton, anything she wrote would sell.  Although a commercial success, her first book got tepid reviews and was criticised for being immature. 

Some people might consider Cecelia Ahern a success.  Some people might think she was done a disservice by being published so young.  It depends on what is being compared.  The person best suited to evaluate her life is Cecelia herself.  The same is true for each of us. 

Scientific evaluation is done under controlled conditions to reduce the number of variables.  Your life isn’t.  When you think another writer is better than you are, remember this isn’t the first draft.  This is the well combed version of that writer.

Next, you don’t know what advantages the writer had over you as a child in education, in financial and social status, in emotional support.  Life isn’t a level playing field and some writers get a head start.  After that tenuous beginning, sometimes it’s one thing in your current situation that slows you down – keeping a roof over your head, a daytime job, the isolation of working from home, a less than supportive family.

Even if all things are equal, some people are better at writing than other people, but that doesn’t mean you give up.  I come from a musical family.  For all the horrors siblings impose upon one another, none of mine told me not to sing or play during our musical evenings simply because I wasn’t as good as they are.  That particular family ethos is what put me inside that penny whistle class in the first place.  And it’s what gave me the sense to say, This isn’t fun, and leave.

The most difficult voice to walk away from, though, is the one inside your head.  So when that voice stops the writing for a comparison torture, don’t ignore it.  (What?)  No, you have to convince it to stop or it will sabotage your writing.  Take those few moments to calm yourself, connect with what drives you to write (certainly not the pay).  Then ask yourself if you believe in that drive more than you believe in that comparison.  Not intellectually, but on a gut level.  Does that drive to write overpower your doubt?  Could you walk away from your writing today and not look back?

If the answer is, no, then you’re in the clear.  Latch onto that drive like a life preserver and write with a focus on what you’re writing even if you can only write bullshit.  Let that writing be a dialogue with the voice and soon, it will be persuaded that you should write.  Rinse and repeat as needed.

If the answer is yes, that you could walk away from that pile of words on your desk and get a job at McDonald’s, become a scuba diver or take up the penny whistle, then your writing life has become starved.  You need to connect with other writers, preferably in person.  Lots of communities have mentoring programs or creative writing classes or writers groups.  There are scores of poetry slams and readings in pubs, small playwright groups who put on short plays.  

It’s important to experience other writers as people who are not that much different than yourself.  It takes that internal comparison voice down a notch or two, but only if those other writers are focused on creating, not on comparing.  Be selective with wherever you take your starved self.

If you can’t find writers in the flesh, connect in a Facebook group, a Twitter community, read a how-to book, a great work of fiction or see a dynamite play or movie, listen to really good lyrics. 

Then feed your creativity with non-writing creativity.  A trip to the art museum, a craft fair, dance to a busker, sing in the shower, go carolling, sew, carve, knit.  Get some physical exercise.  Walk the Big Nose Dog.  Join a Zumba class.  Do Tai Chi.  Chop wood.  Nurture your mind.  Nurture your body.  And during all of this, tell that voice in your head that no matter how badly you write, no matter how unsupported or out of luck you are, quitting is not an option.

Your contribution is the only thing you have to offer AND you’re the only one who can offer it.  So offer away.  To do anything else is not to live.  You have a responsibility not to just live, but to let your voice sing as no other voice can sing.  Now go write.

How Big is Your Brave?

Notice the guy in blue plaid.

Being a writer can make you feel the most universally unwanted person in the world.  When your friends get shortlisted and you don’t, or the writer of that crap play wins an award you deserved, when you start the morning with another email rejection that spells your name incorrectly, all you feel fit for is lying spread-eagled on the floor and having a good ol’ wail.  

Go ahead.  Give yourself fifteen seconds of despair.  We’re creatures of expression, after all.

 I once read an article that said the mental health of writers isn’t great.  We spend a lot of time by ourselves creating fantasies, without the intermittent positive response or even a pay cheque to keep us going.  We have to ignore the constant rejection, improve our craft without losing our voice, yet still be able to hear the truth about our work.  It takes a particularly fine sorting skill to achieve all that. 

Apparently the difference between us and other artistic media is that in addition to the isolated nature of the work, we don’t have a tangible product unless we’re published.  No song to hum to ourselves.  No still life to hang on the wall.  Just a ream of paper tucked in a cupboard or a file on our desktop.  We have to believe in the intangible while living in a materialistic society.  What do you suppose the end result of that’s going to be?  It doesn’t take a mental health professional to see creature-of-expression plus no-audience equals spread-eagled-wailing. 

Big deal, eh?  Every life has sorrow built into it.  That’s a fact, right?  Well I say, anyone who believes that life only gives what we can handle, that person isn’t really paying attention.  Sometimes life punches back too hard and changes who you are.  Sometimes that change isn’t for the better.  Sometimes it damages you in ways you’ll never recover from.  That’s not something any of us want to have happen.

Happiness isn’t a passive activity.  When you see the laser dot of ego destruction on your chest, get to work.  The first and easiest thing is to ‘reframe’.  In other words, don’t let your mind downslide into negative thought.  Your friend getting shortlisted or winning that award?  Not about you.  The inability for someone to spell your name right when they’re crushing your dreams?  That’s about them.  Don’t interpret the world as out to get you.  At the most, the world outside of our immediate circle is indifferent to us.

When you do get knocked down, promise yourself to get back up again.  Eventually.  In due time.  When the wailing is done.  Keep this promise to yourself.  Do Not Give Up.

Check out your social environment.  Do the people closest to you support your writing or do they invade your writing time, not show up to readings, ‘inadvertently’ shred your latest collection of poems?  Do you meet with other writers?  Do you attend literary events in your community?  Do other writers know you in the flesh or only on Twitter and Facebook?  If your social environment is failing you, rethink it.  You are doing one of the most challenging things in the arts world.  Social science confirms this.  You cannot do it if you don’t have a warm and loving nest.  

Now comes the hard part.  Know in the depths of your marrow that you have the right to be here.  You have the right to express yourself.  You deserve to be heard.  You contribute something to this world that no other person, writer or non-writer, contributes.  You are your contribution and this is the only time you have to offer it.  Right here.  Right now.

Okay, so now watch this Sara Bareilles music video, Brave.  While you’re watching it, pay attention to the guy in the blue plaid shirt.  That’s what you’re striving for.  An unreserved commitment to enjoying your own expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4

Show me your brave.

You Are Enough

At a dinner party, a woman said she’d heard that I was writer.  Before I could answer, her husband laughed and said, ‘She wishes.’  Amazing, the number of scenarios, mostly illegal, that careen through your head in a situation like this. 

The man in question works for the NHS but he loves his garden.  I doubt that anyone says he wishes he were a real gardener.  Yet, if you direct youth theatre, you’re a youth worker.  If you lead a choir for the elderly, you’re a social worker.  If you write only for yourself, you’re deluded.  You think you have talent?  How embarrassing. 

Today when we took the Big Nosed dog for a walk, the post van was parked along the street, radio playing and the postie himself dancing as he went house to house.  Gotta love that Northern Soul, he said, and danced past us.  Fantastic!

Humans thirst for creativity, and we do it at will.  Dance, sing, crack jokes, draw pictures in the snow.  Creation both expresses and connects us.  In my trauma work, tapping the client’s creativity ignites the sense of a healed self in a way that seems nearly magical.  And anyone who’s done community theatre or sung in a choir has felt that connected-ness that comes from doing something wonderfully creative together.

The arts are powerful.  So tap into that power and stage a revolution inside yourself.  Find the creative you and dust her off.  Cook a meal.  Write a blog.  Recite your poem on open mic night.  Dance in the street.  If anybody laugh at you, remember that YOU ARE ENOUGH. 

I believe you can do it, so get cracking.  Let me know how you get on.