The Feminine in the Sky

A smart and talented woman I know wrote this book: The Coming of the Feminine Christ. (Which due to some technical difficulties, I’ve had to unlink to.)

at a church in London

This is not a review; I haven’t read the book yet. And this is not about your religion; I don’t need to know (and let’s not ruin a lovely relationship).

When I was a kid, my mother had a black tee-shirt that read in white script, “God is coming, and she is pissed.” My mother wore this in the 70s in our small hometown.

If she got any grief for it, she never said. (She was used to grief from people anyway.)

But my eight-year-old mind was stunned by that pronoun. She.

Not long after that I found a button in the bowling alley parking lot. It had been run over, but I could still read it. “A woman’s place is every place.” I pinned that button to my purse–my purse that held red rocks and barbies.

Sometimes I ask writing students to imagine how their lives would be different if they’d been born the opposite sex. My female students rarely have trouble with this. <My male students generally look horrified, make a joke about not being gay, and write either they'd go shopping and get married or that their lives wouldn't be different at all.

Sometimes I ask writing students to imagine a favorite character in fiction–and switch that character's gender. What if Harry Potter were Harriet? What if Batman were a woman–and I don't mean Batgirl. What if in Titanic you gave Leo Kate’s role and gave Kate Leo’s? What if James Bond were a woman?

(I’ve also asked them to change a famous character’s race or religion. Once I asked the students to imagine Edward from Twilight as Muslim…oh the expressions.)

Niamh Clune‘s book is not a game or a simple writing exercise. The book expresses a profound belief and way of seeing the world.

What are books about but seeing the world in a new way? (My mother used to say, “If you’re strong in your beliefs, you can always handle encountering someone else’s.”)

I’m looking forward to reading Niamh’s book. Maybe you would too.

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And for folks on Facebook, there is this.

Keep your mouth shut.

Do you argue with people online who you’ve never met? If you do, are those arguments mud-fests with names flying? If not, why not?

Most people I know who are on facebook have at least one I-shouldn’t-have-made-that-comment experience. If not that, then a I-can’t-believe-X-left that-comment experience. Haven’t you?

If you decide to pick a fight or take the bait for one, why? What triggers your I’ll-show-’em response?

Maybe you’ve never given in to the impulse–but haven’t you wanted to? Don’t some people deserve a good telling off?

I’m a diplomat by nature. Confrontation makes me tremble, literally. Nonetheless, every once in a while, I argue. Is that always wrong?

Just yesterday I ended up in a shouting match of sorts on Facebook on a friend’s thread. Part of me says that’s like going to a friend’s house and picking a fight with a fellow party guest. Rude. Unnecessary.

But another part of me–the part that won out in this case–thought that certain people will keep making sexist remarks if no one ever calls them on it. I decided to call him on it. I might not have said anything, but my fb friend had told him to “shut up” and he still made another comment. So. I told him he was being sexist.

He told me I had no sense of humor.

I told him that was the defense of a bully.

Now, maybe I don’t have a sense of humor. Maybe I’m the most unfunny woman on the planet. But I know that you-don’t-have-sense-of-humor is what people say when they make an unfunny, hurtful, or rude remark. Throw the blame on someone. I didn’t say anything wrong. You just don’t get it. As if the person’s unhappy response can be explained only in this way.

I explained clearly why I thought his comment was sexist. He said nothing about any of the points I made. Not one thing. He said he bet that I get called a shrew and a b*tch a lot.

I think it has been 20 years since anyone has called me a b*tch. No one has ever before called me a shrew. Not so as I heard anyway.

I told him that name-calling wasn’t much of a defense.

Someone else on the thread said that this guy wasn’t really that bad. He just said crazy things when he was bored.

Then I sent a message to my fb friend apologizing for the scene in her thread. She told me he’d been asked many times not to say certain rude things, but he always just replied that she didn’t have a sense of humor. She couldn’t unfriend him because he was the husband of a good friend. She understood how I felt, but I was wasting my time.

She deleted the post, which was probably for the best.

I’m sure I didn’t get this guy to change his mind. So why bother to say anything?

But why not call him out? Why not let him know that not everyone thinks he’s funny. If the other women in the post had stood up to him, maybe at the very least he’d have slunk away.

People have the right to say obnoxious things. Other people have the right to say, Hey, what you said was obnoxious.

The gist of his comment that irritated me had to do with women needing Oprah to tell them what to read while men could make decisions for themselves. And the original facebook post my friend made was about a mutual friend getting her novel chosen for Oprah’s book list. (That’s another post.)

So, do you argue or do you let things go?

Chronicles of Ink and Paper

One agent suggested my novel was young adult. This surprised me because I wasn’t trying to write a young adult novel. The main character is a teenager though. But I never thought I was writing for teens.

Writing for teens…that’s a minefield. Well, it can be. Adults are allowed to read anything without much of the world getting into a snit. Okay, that isn’t entirely true, but you know what I mean. Suddenly what had seemed tamed in my novel then seemed dangerous.

Which isn’t to say the agent was wrong. I just hadn’t seen my novel in that category, and if I need it to be in that category, how will I be expected to change it? And my other novels…will I be expected to be a young adult author?

This is rather putting the cart before the horse. (The printer before in the paper?) The agent who suggested this decided she couldn’t represent my work–too tough a sell in today’s climate.

The thing is though is that I am liberal when it comes to reading. My parents let me read anything I picked up. My grandmother had treated my mother the same way. If you could choose the book and stick with it, you could handle whatever was inside.

Of course, I never picked up anything extreme, like porn. Well, that’s not entirely true. My dad’s second wife had a magazine of stories hidden–sort of–under her pillow. My step-sister showed them to me. I was about 10 or 11. The magazine looked like Reader’s Digest. I read half a page and put it down. The story gave me quite a shock and I knew I didn’t want to (and shouldn’t) read those stories. So, I didn’t stick with it.

Nor did it cause me to rush out and find a boy.

Au contraire.

But anyway. Adults worry a lot about what young adults read. And they should know what kids read and they should know their kids. Obviously. We know this and have heard it before.

But it felt different when I thought about being the writer instead of the parent. Writing for adults is so much easier! Right?

Young people are better fans though. Don’t you think? Do you love any book now as much as you loved a book as a teen?

The Dreaded “A” Question

I hate the “A” question.

So, I read a blog post by my friend JES regarding the “A” word–as in What is your novel About?

An agent is currently looking at my first novel, and this “A” question is on my mind. My first novel is about a difficult subject…a conversation stopper subject.

Now let’s be clear. I didn’t begin the novel intending to write about dark and difficult things. I started writing about marbles.

I was with my writing group (which is now no more) and the writing prompt pulled out of the box was “marbles.” Okay. Well, I didn’t want to write about a game of marbles because that seemed too obvious and I don’t know anything about the game. The sound of marbles hitting a hard floor came to mind. This became the sound of marbles hitting wooden stairs.

Why would marbles be spilling down the stairs? Someone dumped them on the stairs. Hmm. Who? A girl. She comes to mind. She stands at the top of the stairs pouring marbles out of a blue jar.

Why would she do this? It would make a mess. Marbles would probably be lost. So they must not be her marbles.

So again–why would she do it? Oh, they are her brother’s marbles and she is angry at him. She wants him to know she is angry.

Why is she angry? He has done something wrong.

And he sees his marbles falling down the stairs, go in different directions, and he yells at her. He chases her. I see them in my mind and she is about 16 and he is about 5 years older…still living at home.

Because he can’t hold a job.

Because he’s an addict.

Because he does terrible things.

And he chases his sister into her room where she hides. He finds her, but she pulls out a knife she keeps hidden her boot to protect herself.

Why would she need a knife?

Because he is violent obviously.

What violent things has he done?

And before you know it (if ten years count as a before-you-know-it explanation), I’ve written a novel with drug addiction, incest, rape, and prostitution. (First chapter here.)

Hmm. What is your novel about?

Ummm…?

Well, the novel does have a reasonably happy ending. Does that help?

Usually when people ask the “A” question, I say something vague, “It’s about loyalty and friendship in difficult times.” Yes. I’m a chicken.

I have had a few agents reject the novel because of its subject matter. Which surprised me a bit because these are not new issues for fiction. Maybe if the novel were about a detective hunting down a serial rapist murderer instead.

Anyway, I don’t think of my novel as being about those dark subjects. Crazy as it sounds, i think of it as a novel about friendship–two girls saving their friendship.

All right. So I guess if I struggled to be honest about what my first novel is about, I’d have to say that it is about a girl whose brother raped her best friend, and perhaps it was a secret the girl had kept hidden from her best friend and everyone that allowed the rape to occur.

There. Said it.

Reading posts like this about women writers doesn’t make answering the “A” question any easier.

What is your novel about? Marbles.

You Are Not Like Other People

The garbage disposal was broken. The maintenance guy and I were sharing stories of growing up without garbage disposals. As a kid I carried my plate outside, walked to the side of the house, and scraped whatever was on my plate into the cow pasture. Mr. Maintenance asked me where I grew up. Florida. And he asked what my parents did.

“My parents divorced when I was little,” I said. “I was raised by my dad–a single dad in the 70s.”

Mr. Maintenance looks thoughtful. “I can see that,” he said. “That really makes sense to me because you carry yourself differently than most people.”

I laughed. Other people have asked me what country I was from, and when I’ve said I’m American, they’ve acted surprised. “You seem like you’re from somewhere else.”

A few times I’ve even had people say, “Your English is really good!”

“Well, it should be. I’m American.”

“Really?”

Once when I worked at Barnes & Noble a customer–who turned out to be French–said, “You don’t seem American to me.”

I’ve tried to figure out why some people say these things to me. Might be my name, which isn’t a typical American name. (Sometimes when people hear my first name, they say, “Funny. You don’t look Mexican.” Which proves to me they don’t know that many Mexicans, but still, I’m not Mexican.) Might be my height, but Americans aren’t known for being short, so that doesn’t seem to be it.

Many times in life I’ve felt I was missing some essential aspect of girlness. Not that I could tell you what that is. But I wasn’t one of those girls who got along better with guys either. I wasn’t a tomboy. I didn’t have mostly guy friends.

So when the maintenance guy said I carried myself differently, I wondered what that meant. When he and I had chatted other times–usually when I was walking the dogs–what was different? Maybe it’s that we are both Doctor Who fans. Or maybe it’s that I always stop to chat with the maintenance guys.

I’m probably never going to know.

But I wonder too, of course, when people read my work, what they will think about me. What assumptions will people make?

Wouldn’t someone like VS Naipul guess I was a woman writer? When you read a story without knowing the author’s name, what do you think you can guess about them? Gender? Politics? Ethnicity? Religion? The parent they were raised by?

Have you ever been startled to learn who a particular writer was? Really? A woman wrote this?

Faking

I got through high school and college without a boyfriend. I had a few dates, but no one you could call a boyfriend. (By boyfriend I mean someone who would actually refer to me as his girlfriend.)

those college days

So after dating (and I use the term loosely) guys who seemed incapable of anything resembling a actual relationship, I was willing to be someone else.

A friend set me up on a blind date–the reason she decided he and I would make a good pair was that he was taller than me, the general belief being that no relationship begins when the woman is taller than the man. Fine. All my blind dates had been based on height.

We went on a double date to see a play, and while sparks didn’t fly, when he called me to ask me out again, I said yes.

The thing about seeing a play is that you don’t talk much. And when you’re on a double date, you can let the other established couple do all the talking. You can end the evening not revealing much about yourself at all.

He showed up for our second date wearing running shoes, jeans, silver belt buckle, and a plaid short-sleeve shirt. I wore a copper-colered silk blouse, dressy black shorts (pleated and almost to the knee), black stockings, and black flats. And he said, “It’s too bad that’s not a skirt.”

My roommate said to him, “The thing you want to say is, ‘You look great.’”

He looked back at me. “You do. You do look great.”

This, I thought, was going to be a wasted evening.

But okay. Open mind! Positive thinking!

Then I had to climb up the steps of his oversized pickup truck with gun rack.

Open mind! Ooo! Look at that red flag! Isn’t it pretty?

When we pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, my mind made a foolish decision. I decided to barely speak to him and to tell him next to nothing myself. I decided not to be me. I would be the way I thought a desirable girl was supposed to be.

I’d be rubbish at it, of course, and he’d never want to see me again.

All through dinner he talked. I’d ordered a salad, which I’d never done before on dates because salads are too girly and I like to eat. I nodded, and said things like, “Really?” and “Hmmm.” and “Oh, interesting.”

He said, “So, you’re working on some kind of paper thing?”

“Yeah. My Master’s thesis–but you know, I like have to do it.”

He changed the subject. “You’re thinking of joining, what is it, the Peace Corps or something?”

I shrugged. “I’ve filled out the paperwork and had my interview.”

“But you might not go, right?”

I shrugged and changed the subject.

At the end of the evening, I let him come upstairs. My roommate wasn’t home. When he said I was amazing, I assumed this was just talk to let him stay until morning. He told me I was the most interesting girl he’d ever met. “Maybe so,” I said, ” But you’re still going to have to leave soon.”

He said he thought I was “the one.”

He said a few more ridiculous things. They were things no one else had ever said to me, the sorts of things a lovestruck boyfriend ought to say. But he wasn’t my boyfriend and after a while I made him leave.

And that, I thought, was that. I’d talked about almost nothing and let him think the night would end differently than it did. And he lived over an hour away. Surely he wouldn’t call back.

Well, he called. A lot. He sent flowers. He sent a teddybear. He sent a poem. He told my friend that he knew I was the right woman for him.

When my friend asked what I had done to the poor guy, all I could say was, “I wasn’t even me!”

I did feel bad I’d led him on, but I hadn’t thought it would actually work.

I was angry though that apparently the only way I could get a guy to pursue me was to lie. From the moment I’d ordered that salad to the moment I kissed him goodnight at the door, I had been faking who I was. The fake me was called amazing.

The real me…not so much.

All these years later I remember this and wonder about my writing. All the rejections and no agent calling me, I wonder–what about my writing should I change? What would make my work desirable? Maybe I should write about completely different things in completely different ways.

I worry that I would have not to be me.

And then! And then I would have an agent.

But it might be an agent who likes teddybears holding heart-shaped balloons.

Women Are Awesome. How about if We Stop Murdering Them?

I don’t remember when I started to care about women. (And I’m not going to say women’s issues because it’s not a self-contained status sort of thing. We’re half the population—-nothing special interest about that.)

In grad school I complained about a professor who told the class his favorite bar was called “The Silent Woman” and out front it had a picture of a woman with her head chopped off. I was told he had tenure and to go away.

In college I complained about a physics professor who said, “You ladies with your pressure cookers will understand this…” I was given extra points on my grade and told to go away.

In 10th grade a male classmate who sat next to me in the computer class told me repeatedly how he was going to find out where I lived, force his way in, and show me how he was “a real man.” I complained to the office. They told me to avoid him and try not to provoke him. (Even by sexist standards, I failed to understand this. I was a flat-chested, make-up-less bookworm. Short of not existing, I didn’t see how I wasn’t going to provoke him.)

In 7th grade I was sent to the office for slapping a boy. He had me pinned to a wall and was about to punch me. He wasn’t sent to the office. I didn’t get into trouble because, as the guidance counselor said, everyone knew I was “really a nice girl.”

In 5th grade I had a button on my person that read, “A woman’s place is every place.” I’d found the button in a bowling alley parking lot. I think it had already been run over. But I pinned it to my purse.

In 3rd grade I complained to teachers about a boy because, “He shouldn’t be talking to girls that way.” He had looked up my skirt and asked me to kiss him. I kicked him really hard. I was told to play nice. He got in no trouble at all.

And those are only the moments I’m going to share.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of about violence against women around the world and in school shootings. And today I read a piece riffing on the famous quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

And another piece about having The Right Reader.

It’s funny how everyone agrees with the saying, “You can’t please everyone,” until they’re the one not pleased.

Recently a male facebook friend made disparaging comments about the Duchess of Cornwall–Camilla Parker Bowles. His main complaint wasn’t that Charles had cheated on his wife. Sure that was bad. But the bigger sin was to cheat on his wife with someone ugly, and he hoped the if William ever cheated on Kate, it would be with someone pretty.

I am insecure about my looks, and I had to ask my friend if he really thought that women judge unattractive were underserving of loving relationships. Really? Honestly, while I think Charles is a cad, I reluctantly admire his ability to devote himself to a woman whose looks are constantly insulted in the media. Here is a man who ignored his pretty, young wife for an older, dowdy woman. How cliche breaking is that?

In most places a woman is only as valuable as she is pretty. And virtuous.

I think one reason I had trouble killing a character in a short story recently was because that character was a teenage girl. Before her death, she had not been virtuous… Gosh, now I’m rethinking the ending again. Don’t we have enough violence against women and girls? Then again, because it happens, shouldn’t we write about it?

So, I realize that my “right reader” would be someone who cares about women too.

Do you ever consider how your characters reflect the culture or an issue that matters to you? And I don’t mean being didactic about it. Just, do you consider such things?

My Narrow View Is Sharp Enough to Stab Him in the Eye

I spend a stupid amount of time worrying if my writing is good enough. But apparently what I needed was a good old-fashioned sexist attack to make me know my writing is a damn well just fine.

Have you seen the article about VS Naipaul?

NPR picked up the story from The Guardian. And Naipaul said that

He felt that women writers were “quite different”. He said: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.”

He also said women can’t write at his level because they have a “narrow view.”

My head spins.

And yes, I think labels such as “women’s fiction” encourage this kind of thinking.

But as women do make up half the population, I’m not sure how anything that concerns them is narrow.

Really, I’m too irritated to write. I’m glad, however, that I’ve now been relieved of the effort of ever reading one of Naipaul’s books.

What do you think when you read stuff like this?

Maybe You Can Blame Your Parents

Your parents may bequeath you many things… like brown eyes, a house, a fiery personality, an obsession for antiques.

My parents have not left me any of those particulars.

One thing about writing a separate story every day is that you notice what your repeat. In fact, I think I’m repeating that idea. Was that in an earlier post? Maybe. But this time I want to focus on a particular type of character of issue that keeps appearing in my stories. What you think of someone who kept writing stories about bankers? Or construction workers? Or nuns?

Literature students do this all the time, right? They look at a writer’s collection of works and they notice threads, themes, motifs…like bullfighters and rich men who throw too many parties. Next thing you know, you’ve got a thesis.

I noticed a lot of my stories have prostitutes in them.

Why the blue blazes is that?

Of course, marginal characters, people who live on the edge of society, who skirt danger, who make terrible choices, they are more interesting to write about. Sure. But I don’t write about homeless people much.

Sex sells. There is that. But I’m not sure I’ve ever written anything with a market in mind. And I’m not really writing stories like that even if there are prostitutes in them.

When I was 14, I was traveling alone on a plane for the first time. At the Houston airport my mother decided before sending me on my way to give me advice about how to stay out of harm’s way. Almost 30 years later and I can still remember the chairs we were sitting in when she explained to me how certain types of men and women trap girls into lives of prostitution. I’ll spare you the details. But not only did she give a deep fear of strangers, but she very likely if inadvertently ruined years of dating.

What character keeps appearing in your stories? Why is that do you think?

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And so I’ve got part of story number 23 posted. Make of it what you will.

Maybe Characters Do It

Many things may befall your characters, but one of those things, eventually, somewhere, in some story, unless you’re writing for children, surely—-implied or direct (have I drawn this out enough?), good or bad—-is going to be sex.

And I’m going to avoid the euphemism “love scene.” Plenty of characters aren’t in the story for love.

Now, I don’t know how many officers are in your troupe of morality police or how much control these officers have in your world, but unless you’ve found a way to get rid of them all together (locking them up in a dark corner of the mind), they’re watching over what you let your characters do.

And maybe they’re going to call your parents, your children, your friends, your partner, your students, your boss, somebody, anybody, who will look at you in shock or dismay or in some way you aren’t going to like.

(On the other hand, you may well like that sort of thing. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t know what all the fuss is about then this post isn’t for you. Go take your giggling and smirks elsewhere and come back tomorrow. And I’d like to point out that being comfortable writing about sex and being good at writing about sex are not the same thing. Lots of folks can talk a good game, but…)

There is the less-is-more philosophy. Sometimes true and sometimes the cowards way out. All depends on the story. What does the reader need to know to understand what the characters are going through? How a character treats a lover or spouse and how the character allows themselves to be treated speaks volumes about them.

This may be an area where the common writer mantra, “Show; don’t tell” is most tested and abused.

Have you heard of The Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award? Now there’s a reward you don’t want to win! Read some nominated passages (at your own risk).

You can’t possibly write anything that bad!

All the same, I find myself thinking–how do these guys get published and I don’t? My morality police isn’t nearly as upset as my foolish Libra sensibility. It isn’t fair! I can write better than that!

And I’d like it noted that out of the nine nominations—-only one is a woman. You could either conclude that women write better sex scenes or that even this award panel takes male writers more seriously.

So. Do you write love scenes? Do you have a watchful morality police force?

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Well, I don’t have any sex scenes in my short story for today…but such a thing is implied…