A Plum Heart

my art

Today a new friend in my life puts her heart out into the world. Her heart should be lifted up and celebrated.

Well, perhaps every heart should be.

Forgive the potential sappiness. But sometimes sappiness is okay. We don’t have to be all edges and armor every day of the week.

(Anyway, I don’t know why black holes exist in space any more than I know why black holes exist in some human hearts, but those lost souls–the ones that suck in and destroy everything that comes too close are a problem for another day.)

As I was saying, the determined and caring Niamh Clune, author and founder of Plum Tree Books, is putting out a very heart-filled project today. Niamh has a great deal of personal experience with the drought and troubles in the Sahel in Africa.

You can find out more about events here and even more about the work Niamh is doing on The Plum Tree Blog.

Art is part of the solution too. Plum Tree is hosting an art auction–and one piece of mine is included along with several other beautiful pieces (I’d buy the Geisha right now if I could). The auction is the 16th.

And then there is music. A live radio show by the talented Claudio Fiore will be (is) in progress to support the auction and the book. Music is available to buy as well.

Oh. And the book. The book!! A book of poetry, stories, essays, and art is for sale. Song of Sahel. My art is in the book and a poem. Well, a sort of poem. A few tiny words to go with the art.

The proceeds go to help the people of the Sahel. Niamh has written more movingly (and knowledgeably) than I can, so if you go to the blog or the Plum Tree site, you can read the history and about the organizations that are helping in the region. Or if you have any questions, please ask.

Niamh has put heart and effort into this project. It’s an important cause and maybe you could do something to help. At the very least, share the word. The more people that know, the better.

Wow. I hope I covered everything.

Thank you!

The Light around the Corner

Sending your work out into the world is an adventure–no matter the path.

E-publishing is a widening path these days, but that doesn’t make it easy.

Friend and colleague, Niamh Clune, launched her book a few weeks back, and due to technical difficulties, has had to launch the book again. Many lessons learned, including–Amazon isn’t as easy to deal with as it leads one to believe.

But when you’re putting your work out into the world and asking people to take part in it, you have to keep the faith. Things go wrong, you could take it as a sign that it isn’t meant to be. You could see it as a sign that you must really want what you say you want, that you must persevere.

I’ve seen women and men come to a speed practice, and never come back. Maybe the realized skating as fast as a person can wasn’t for them. Maybe they let the fear of the corner get the better of them.

Why do we say that anyway? Get the better of someone. Seems to me if you get what is better, they should come out shining, right?

Ah, language.

So, Niamh has worked hard and seen her efforts reach the light. See where it shines.

Find her book at Amazon.

Thank you. And keep writing. Don’t let those corners get you.

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.

Fandom

Unfortunately because of the lighting, you can’t read the sign on the door–but if you know the TARDIS, you know what it says. My friend is edited out since I’m posting this late at night and can’t seem to wait to get her permission to use her image on my blog.

Are you a true fan of anything? Ever written fanfic? Worn a costume of a favorite character? Waited in line for hours to meet a singer, writer, actor you love? Or have you ever wanted to but didn’t because you were afraid of the looks you’d get?

In time for our housewarming party, I turned the door in my office into a TARDIS from the long-running British sci-fi show Doctor Who. I have friends who are also fans, and they loved posing in front of the TARDIS. Other friends don’t know anything about sci-fi, and maybe they were baffled, but they were polite and appreciated my enthusiasm.

What is it like to create a story that people love enough to dress at the characters, to bake cupcakes based on heaven-knows-what from your book, to write fanfic, to make jewelry, to start a band, all from something that came out of your head?

Sure, we are subjected to marketing ploys, stories are created around toys, and conglomerates wait for us to spend our money on key chains, tee-shirts, and other nonsense. But not every story is like that.

In 1963 the BBC came up with the idea of a Time Lord traveling all of time and space in a blue box. In 2012 a woman in Texas spends hours of her life copying that blue box in her home. I doubt the BBC of 1963 dreamed of such a thing.

Then again, creating a story that people love deeply–too deeply? Is that possible?–can end up like this.

The Scariest Part

So it begins.

I’ll edit my novel. My novel will go out into the world.

I’ve worked many years for this.

Today I told my dad that my book will be published. I never talk to him about my writing. Once, years ago, I told him I’d written a book. His only reaction was to say, “Oh. It must be about something.”

“Yes.”

He changed the subject.

I imagine he’s worried I’ve written about him. My dad doesn’t appear in any of my novels. Not knowingly anyway.

He doesn’t read, so I can’t picture him reading my novel.

But other people will read it. Even if the only people who read are my friends, people will read it. Finally.

And some of them will like it.
Some won’t.

We all know–pick any book in the world and there will be people who hate it. Who gets through life being loved by everybody?

But it will be strange to hand my book to people who know me, who’ve been waiting for this moment too, who’ve been supporting me…

Like any good adventure, this is scary and exciting.

The Wrong Explanation

Why I Write by George Orwell…have you read it?

Many other writers have taken this title and run with it. Have you?

When non-writers ask, “Why do you write?” maybe they should be asked, “Why don’t you?”

What if all written words vanished? What if every written word in the world–in every language–drifted up into the atmosphere never to be seen again? No words in books, no words on billboards, no words on cereal boxes, no words on the Internet, no captions, no words anywhere at all. What would you do? What if you took out a pen, wrote your name on a piece of paper, and saw it disappear?

Would you value writing then?

Why are people so afraid of writing? Why do they balk at writing when they can express themselves and take time to consider what to say? Why is that so hard?

If the government decreed there would be no more writing–all writing banned–would it become more meaningful?

I don’t know. I am full of questions…

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?

Kill the Ones They Love

a different end for the 9th Doctor

Fans are a mixed blessing. I’ve been reading about True Fans and I’ve been reading commentary by the fans of Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Torchwood. And it seems there’s a lesson in there about Fan Rage.

Fan Rage may be more prevalent in sci-fi and fantasy genres sicne they’re the genres in which fans dress up as characters–truly inhabiting that character and walking public streets in the character’s clothes and attitude. So the writer who kills off that character may never be forgiven.

Now, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got sick of Holmes and killed him off–only to have to bring him back to life to satisfy Fan Demand. But I’m not really talking about writers who come to hate their creation and commit murder to liberate themselves. That’s another issue.

No. I mean writers who create a story, see what has to happen to follow their vision of the story, and killing characters accordingly. J.K. Rowling kills off loved characters. Russell T. Davies killed off more than one beloved Torchwood character–and he is still getting grief for it.

Some fans refuse to watch Doctor Who because Rose Tyler was no longer the companion or because David Tennant regenerated into Matt Smith or because Russell T Davies left the show to Steven Moffat. For some fans it isn’t a matter of they just don’t like the show anymore. The vitriol spewed at Davies for killing certain Torchwood characters is amazing. They talk about Davies as if he roams cities to suck the blood of pretty children. They haven’t even seen anything past the death of “their” character because they are so angry.

And Davies wasn’t trying to get rid of anyone. He believed that the death of this or that character made for a stronger story. Fan Rage seems to prove him right, doesn’t it? Who wants to kill off a character and get a big blah, “meh.”

But these fans won’t watch his show anymore.

Are they True Fans? Do True Fans stick by you no matter what? Or do they kidnap your imagination? How beholden are you to fans who love, LOVE, a character?

Or forget characters. Think of stories. How many writers (singers, actors, artists) begin in one genre, change genre, and then must suffer the outrage? How dare you?

Oh well.

Over at The Imaginary Lake I’ve posted a few first chapters of the different novels I’ve written over the years. Some stories I’ve written have magic–I’ll call it magic though I’m not sure that is the word I really want–and some a straightforward stories without one drop of hocus-pocus. One story is a dragon and quest adventure. Another is a dark emotional magical tangle.

Not sure what fans–should I have some expect–but all readers are most appreciated.

Have you ever been angry at a writer for changing their style or killing a favorite character? Did you ever get over it?

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?

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