“What kind of person writes a book like that?”

This is the question my mother-in-law asked about The Hunger Games. Now, she didn’t ask in a harsh judgmental way, but in a true mystified way.

My first thought was, “A person like me.”

She’s never read anything I’ve written, and I’m afraid if I ever get published and she reads my work, she will be just as baffled.

That she went to see the film surprised me. She knew nothing about the book and she doesn’t like fantastical, impossible things. She went to see what all the fuss was about, but she didn’t understand it at all. She had no reference points for the story. The story wasn’t good or bad because there wasn’t anything she could relate to.

She likes stories about things that can really happen.

When I talked about the book, she said nodded. “That helps me understand the film more.” And she liked Katniss, a strong female lead.

Dystopian novels aren’t for everyone–I’m not a huge fan of bleak futures either. But I’m always curious about why certain types of people only like “real” stories.

What does it say about individuals who love fantasy, sci-fi, magical realism, and such? Why can one person get lost in these stories, and others can’t. Others spend the whole time knowing this is impossible, not real, no way. Why do some people have a great ability to suspend belief?

I can think of the good and bad things that might say about the person. Since I love those fantastical stories, I focus on the good points…

My in-laws have no idea what I write. Should they ever read anything, well, they’re under no obligation to understand it.

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?

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?

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’re a Writer?

Maybe this happens to you all the time.

Yesterday, I was introducing myself to another parent at the roller rink. And a friend standing nearby asked if I were skating too. “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been at my computer so much this week, I need to move.”

And this father, who knew nothing about me other than I’m a mom of a speed skater, said, “Why do you spend so much time at the computer? Are you a writer?”

Of all the people who have heard me say something about spending too much time with my laptop, no one has ever asked me if I’m a writer. They’ve asked what company I work for. They’ve asked if I teach. They’ve asked what I did that required so much computer time. Never has someone looked at me seriously and asked, “Are you a writer?”

My first impulse was to say, “Oh! Do I look like one?”

My second impulse was to lie. Well, it wouldn’t be a lie. I am a teacher. But I still thought of just dropping the writing bit of my life for the conversation.

But I said, “Yes. Yes, I am.”

And then I realized he’d probably ask me what I’d published–and inwardly I groaned at my foolishness.

But he didn’t. He asked as if it were the most normal question in the world, “What kinds of stories do you write?”

I find that question—-are you a writer—-difficult to answer. Do you? Or did you ever? And if you used to, but don’t anymore, why did it change?

*

And I’ve got an excerpt of story 21! Ten more stories to go.

Asking for Trouble

When I say to her, “That’s a pretty bracelet,” she says, “Thanks! I bought it from a Christian jeweler!”

When I say, “I like the painting over the fireplace,” she says, “Thanks! I got it from a Christian painter!”

And I confess, I want to say, “Oh, well, thank heaven it wasn’t a Muslim or a Jew!”

Supporting people who share your values, worldview, or however you’d like to phrase it is something I do, too. If certain businesses slap certain political bumper stickers on their work trucks, well, I figure they don’t mind losing certain segments of the public. Fair enough.

But I don’t usually announce it. And if the item in question is art…I have no idea of the politics or beliefs of the artists whose work hangs on my wall or most of the books on my shelves.

Why are these adjectives necessary? I don’t want to be called a mommy-blogger or a woman-writer. It’s like saying, non-moms and men need not read. You-people-not-like-me go away. This is probably why I’m having a hard time trying to decide what kind of writer I am. It seems like cutting off other possibilities or, worse, readers. You know, the type of person who looks at the label and knows that label is all she needs to know. Oh, I don’t read that.

Of course, maybe we want some people to go away. And those labels can help me decide what to read so that I don’t read anything that disagrees with me!

I should read more people who challenge me and shows me where I might be wrong or at least shines a light on a world I haven’t bothered to see before. What have you read that challenges you?