Ask Me No Questions

my step-sister & my cousin in front of my stuff (but we're 14)

Every day was a surprise. On that afternoon, I saw my things laid out in a straight line in the carport. I was 9 and just coming home from school. I adjusted the book bag on my shoulder.

Whatever the reason my step-mother had for pulling toys from my room, I wasn’t going to like it. Fisher Price toys, stuffed animals, paper dolls and all the clothes I’d made for them, puzzles, records, and other odds and ends.

I decided the reaction I’d get for asking why wasn’t worth the risk. Questions got two replies in our house–screaming insults or no reply at all. And she’d go through her plan no matter what I said.

The kitchen door opened and my step-mother came out wiping her hands on a dish towel. I try to gauge her mood. I try to guess the greeting and tone of voice I needed to use to start the rest of the afternoon. But I waited too long.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

I make sure I don’t look at my things. “Hi,” I said.

“You don’t need all this junk,” she said. She pointed at the nearest bucket with the hand holding the dish towel. The bucket held my paper dolls. “You got too much junk in that room. You don’t hardly play with most of it. And you’re too old for paper dolls.”

I worried that she was right, but I loved paper dolls. I kept them in a bucket my dad had brought home from the hospital where he worked in the kitchens. He was always bringing home buckets that had contained cole slaw, apple sauce, or green beans.

“My sister’s coming,” my step-mother said. “I’m giving this stuff to her kids. They could use it.”

I nodded. Silence, I decided, was the best reply. I was right and she let me go back to my room.

Writers and artists are supposed to ask questions, but how do you face the replies? Do you like my work? Would read my story? What’s wrong with my writing? Will you represent me? Will you buy something I created? There’s that expression–ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. By the end of high school I preferred–ask me no questions and I’ll tell you nothing you don’t want to hear.

Are these questions easy for you? What questions are hard for you to ask? And what do you do when you hear what you don’t want to? What happens if you do hear what you hope for?

Recovering from the Weekend

art city austin--my booth

“How many girls have you slept with?” the man shouts.

The woman talking to me look over at him. “What did he say?” the first woman asks.

He shouts the line again and adds, “That’s what it says. Right here.”

I realize that he’s reading one of the pictures. In a stone at the bottom of a picture, there is an argument cut from my novel and one character asks this question of another.

“Who’s he talking to?” the second woman asks.

“Um…” I flip my artist badge over and back. “Well…”

The man’s wife takes him by the arm. “Come on,” she says to him.

“It’s her novel. And I’m reading and that’s what it says.”

People rarely read the art that closely. Or if they do, they keep it to themselves. Earlier another man said, “Your novel and your art? You’re really putting yourself out there.”

I couldn’t help but hear the unasked question, “Why?”

Why do we put ourselves out there? What do we hope to gain?

Yep. This is it.

This is where I’m going to be, people. Yep. This coming weekend. (The embedding feature didn’t work, so a link will have to do.)

Watch.

Yep.

See? We were there!

Copycat

3 months pregnant & in London

“She says your an automaton,” my mother said to me. I was 12 and standing in her bedroom doorway. She sat on the edge of her bed.

“What does that mean?” I asked, wishing I had my mother’s vocabulary.

“She meant you don’t think for yourself. You think what I tell you. That you want what I want you to want.”

I didn’t know what to say. Mom had been taking me to a meditation group. Every Sunday night we went to the home of these two married college professors. I was the only one there under 25, but did my best to act grown up. One woman in the group didn’t like me. She’d told the entire group I was an automaton.

My stomach twisted and stared at the point where my mother’s daisy bed sheets touched the floor. “Why does she say that?”

“You’ve said you want to be a psychologist, a lawyer, and a photographer. Those are all things I said I might go back to school for.” She waited for me to answer. Mom was good at waiting in silence for my answer.

I had thought that woman had liked me. I had thought all the adults in the group liked me. “But I would like to be those things. Maybe because you talk about them, I know about them. We like lots of the same things.” I didn’t look up. I hoped my mom believed that I had a mind of own, but I didn’t know what to say that would prove it. The word automaton pinged about in my head for a long time.

What do we like or dislike because of our parents or some other grown up in our childhood lives? Are all your likes your own? In books, what books do you like or read because you think you are supposed to if you want to be well-read? What books do you look down on so that no one will think you have no taste? Is there a writer whose style you knowingly copy? Unknowingly? What is the difference between imitating and being inspired?

How to Be on Display

the first panel of the display

1. Spend an hour with a friend in Lowes trying to figure how to make a display.
2. Spend another hour in Lowes with husband seeing if the first idea was any good.
3. Figure out how much everything will cost. This total will be wrong.
4. Buy PCV PVC pipes that don’t fit in car and must be cut down with handsaw in Lowes parking lot.
5. Buy 200 lbs. of rocks, 6 buckets, paint, wire. One bag of rocks tears open in trunk.
6. Strain back carrying rocks. Break wheeled cart used for carrying rocks.
7. Buy peg boards which won’t fit in car. Return peg boards to store.
8. Get mother-in-law’s van and go buy peg boards again.
9. Learn that the hooks for the peg boards must be bought in assorted sizes even though you need only one size.
10. Paint one peg board. Realize you were an idiot to think spray paint would work. Go buy paint in a gallon can.
11. Paint peg boards. Dog investigates fresh paint. Dried paint takes the fur off the dog.
12. Figure out where to keep everything where the kid won’t bother it and the dog won’t pee on it.
13. Wait til rainstorm to decide you must buy metallic tulle from fabric store to make PCV PVC pipe pretty.
14. You’ve never used a power drill. Use power drill to drill holes in PCV PVC pipe. A power drill is harder to control than expected.
15. Put rocks and PCV PVC pipe in buckets. Realize display is too wobbly.
16. See that the pipe won’t stay in place and rocks get inside the pipe.
17. Steal son’s clay to seal the bottom of the pipe.
18. Realize the next pipe that goes inside the first pipe will stick to the clay and pull the entire thing out.
19. Get wax paper for the bottom of the pipe.
20. There is no room in your apartment to keep this display. Hope family won’t mind them in the living room.
21. Realize you’ve been calling it PCP pipe. It’s PCV. No, wait. It’s PVC. SIgh.
22. Consider sprinkling display with pepper to keep dog from peeing on the display.
23. Hope you don’t come across like a kindergartner showing everyone a scribble and expecting high praise.

Cheating… because it cheers me up!

Preparations for the art festival are wearing on the imagination, and so I’m borrowing someone else’s for today.

Hey, it’ll be okay…

Be a Star! Everyone’s looking.

telling stories

“All she ever does is entertain. She never has a real conversation,” my mom said.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the woman mom was talking about. I liked B. She made me laugh. I was 14.

“It’s a performance every single day,” mom said, walking to the car. “Drives me crazy.”

I didn’t understand what mom was talking about. B. made everyone laugh. People lingered to talk to her. I wanted to be like that. Who didn’t?

Writing is conflicted. You stay alone in your room playing with imaginary people who can’t do whatever you say. Then you seek out attention–if you want publication that is. How easy is it for you to make that switch? If you can’t stand the attention, can you get published?

The Wished for Older Brother

in the living room my dad made

I loved his voice. Most girls did. He flirted with my friend T. and me in a college history class. He flirted with every female in the room and we flirted back–because of that voice. He looked like a tough guy ready to break someone’s leg if ordered.

On a Saturday night in the spring I went to a fraternity party. He was security at the front door. We chatted as he checked my ID, and then I went in to dance. Later, I heard what happened back at the door.

A girl who’d been behind me in line handed him her ID. “Do you know her?” she asked him about me. “She’s an RA in my building. She’s such a bitch.”

There in his security uniform he looked at her calmly. “Yeah, I know her. She’s my sister.”

Ha! From then on several girls in the dormitory believed I had a cop for an older brother. I saw no reason to set them straight.

When you’re sending your work out into the world, it helps to have someone in your corner. We need critical readers who point out the crap and we need people who will cheer us on in spite of the crap. Who defends this crazy creative dream of yours? Is your defender someone you’d expect or a surprise? And really–are you cheering someone on yourself?

Old Enough

the kiddo

“Mommy, how old were you when your mom died?” my son asked.

“Twenty-one,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “At least you were old enough to walk to school by yourself.”

But am I old enough to write a good book? I read an article recently that talked about age discrimination in publishing. Does it help to be young and pretty? I wonder about this when the New York Times Book Review publishes author photos. Why a photo here and a sketch there? One doubts the the NYTBR decides these things on a whim.

Maybe I haven’t worked hard enough yet to be published. Maybe I don’t know enough yet. But maybe if I don’t figure these things out quickly enough, it won’t matter.

How do you think age affects your writing, your attitude towards publishing, and publishing’s attitude towards you?

What Other Girls Do

traditional showing off of ring

I got the news over the phone before lunch. I clutched the edge of my desk to keep from leaping to my feet and jumping up and down. My coworker, S., looked across her desk at me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I was just accepted into the Peace Corps,” I said. “I’m going to Bulgaria!” I spun my chair back and forth. Twenty minutes until lunch. I could scream then.

S. looked at me. “The what? Where?”

We worked in the back office of a bank. My job was to review spreadsheets and find the mistakes tellers made before the customer did. “I’m going to be a Peace Corps volunteer. In Bulgaria. Teaching English.”

My supervisor looked up from her desk. “What are you doing?”

I repeated myself. In a few minutes all the women in our department were staring at me. Most of them said about the same thing, “Oh. Um, really? For two years. Well, yeah, that’s great.” Someone asked if Bulgaria was in South America. Someone else asked why Belgium needed English teachers. Someone else asked if I would have to eat snake.

A girl from the department next to ours came bounding into the office. She waved her hand around. “I’m engaged!” she shouted.

The women around me all squealed. They crowded around her to see the ring. “Congratulations,” they said. “Tell us everything.”

When you put your work out into the world, some people will be with you and some won’t. Bulgaria was a great experience even if plenty of people said, “Oh, I’d never do anything like that.” Or “I wish I could do that.” Or “Why?”

Why is it so scary if someone doesn’t like what you write? It is entirely possible that I will sell no art at the festival and that I will never get published. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like I’ll give up and watch TV. What would make you change your mind and decide writing is something you shouldn’t do?

If you get nervous about sharing your work, who inspires you to keep going? What keeps you from giving up? If you don’t get nervous about sharing your work, why the hell not? What’s your secret?