Do Writers Have Big Egos?

March 15, 2013 / roughwighting / 33 Comments

That’s the question I suddenly ask myself after I’ve been on hold for 13 minutes. Thirteen minutes with a faceless woman who spells my name wrong, three times. Who can’t find my order for 6 minutes (see above re misspelling), and who does not make me feel confident that the order, once placed, will be correct.

And what am I ordering?

Faceless woman.

Bookmarks. Customized bookmarks that feature my book and links to my book as well as my blog.Now, see where I’m leading?

Who wastes their time on faceless people after creating a bookmark for hours (oh yes, it took me a total of over 8 hours in front of the computer cursing, screaming, pulling out my hair and scaring the dog) while the ‘easy to use’ website crashed, burped, blinked, and generally made my life hell as I chose colors, downloaded my book cover, and then added text.

Scared dog – see him rolling his eyes at me?

Self-involved people, that’s who waste their time on these frustrating tasks. I never ever considered myself one of those people who think only of themselves – those kind of self-important people who are clueless about the world around them.

But. Gulp. Have I just described writers?

We sit in a room by ourselves and make up people, imaginary people with whom we use up (some would say waste) a lot of our time and energy.

We join our friends at a café but our eyes glaze over during the intense conversations about….life…. while in our heads we plot the next chapter in our imaginary characters’ lives.

We create blogs that talk about ourselves, and our writing, and our characters, so that everyone will know about our work when we publish. (Thank you, Karen Elliott for featuring my “A Brave New World” post on your Word Shark blog today!)

SEE??

We go on Facebook and post ‘Buy my book!” or “Like me and my blog and my newest publication.”

We spend our time marketing our books and stories, creating bookmarks and accepting invitations to women’s groups and book clubs, and library workshops to talk about ourselves, and our writing and our books and…

Oh dear.

Writers must have big egos!

I sit back in my chair as the faceless lady takes my credit card number, and I realize I’m a self-involved, heartless soul, despite my years of parent-ing and wife-ing and attempting to be a good sister and daughter and meditating peace and good will to all.

But perhaps those of us with a passion, those of us who believe in what we do, whether it be writing fiction or skiing down a mountain or collecting antique cars or hitting a small ball on a long stretch of hilly grass, perhaps we all stroke our egos to allow ourselves to believe (and to encourage others to believe) in what we do.

And what, exactly, do we do?

We make up people – but in doing so, we help ourselves and our readers to understand life just a fraction better. To understand what makes us humans work (or not work) in the scheme of this confusing universe.

So really (my big ego says) we writers are quite important.

Perhaps I should have ordered 200, instead of 100, bookmarks… 🙂

Tunnel Vision

March 8, 2013 / roughwighting / 24 Comments

I make it through the six-hour flight from Boston to LA. I endure the two-hour wait at LAX, a sprawling compound of too many high-stressed, higher ego-ed people, and then the hour hop to SFO.

I hold my breath, remember to release it as we wait, and wait, and wait for our baggage, which finally rolls around the moving horseshoe 45 minutes after we’ve landed.

Our driver, as roly poly as a malt ball, leads us to his small sedan. I fall back in the car seat, my guy’s briefcase sitting like a rock between us as we speed away from the airport and toward the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin County, and freedom from motion once our front door is reached.

But no, instead the car idles in stop and go, bumper-to-bumper malaise on 19^th Avenue. On this beautiful Sunday afternoon, thousands and thousands of Bay Area lovers are traveling – somewhere – and are stuck instead on a concrete highway to nowhere.

I look out the window at tiny duplexes, the commercial shops selling rubber tires and plastic flowers, the newly sprouted garden lots and dingy gas stations, and I think… uh oh.

A hundred yards from the MacArthur tunnel (the big dark hole we have to drive through to get nearer to the Golden Gate Bridge), I exclaim, loudly yet unintentionally, “Okay, I have to get OUT of here!!”

My guy’s startled glance helps me realize that I sound a bit – crazy? – and the eyes of the front-seat malt ball get rounder and bigger as he stares at me through his rearview mirror.

I open my window – car fumes, anyone? – and pray we don’t stop inside that tunnel. I could lose it – like an inmate too long in her cell. I could kick open the door and run away from the dark dangerous hole of a tunnel toward – what? Would there be light at the end of my tunnel? Or would there be…

Something is tapping my knee. Softly at first, then more insistently.

I open my eyes (not realizing they had been squeezed tightly shut) and reach for the item my guy is handing me. His cell phone? With a cord attached to it?

Oh, ear plugs.

Wordlessly, he motions for me to put the ear pieces on. I do, reluctantly. What bad news am I going to hear? The traffic report, for God’s sake?

But no, I hear flute and cello, violin and piano, harmonizing the sounds of angels singing. The music wafts into my brain and my body and my heart. Sweet soulful sounds symbolizing life on the other side of the highways and small cars and tunnels. Life full of green grass, blue skies, puffy clouds, birds soaring, lovers hugging, children laughing. joy trumpeting.

The car stops. My guy reaches for his phone and turns off his app to KDFC, the classical station, because…

Are

Home.

Turning Into An Age

March 1, 2013March 1, 2013 / roughwighting / 27 Comments

Blowing away age myths.

My mom just turned ______.

Well, I’m not going to fill in the blank. Let’s just say she turned yesterday.

When we celebrate a birthday, why do we exclaim that we’ve “turned”? Like, “Joe just turned 60 and he’s so grumpy.” Or Jilly turned 13 last week and is now a true teenager.”What happens to us, when we “turn” into a new age? Do the wrinkles around our eyes suddenly crease deeper? Do our muscles turn stiffer, or weaker, on our birth date?

Or is it more ethereal than that. Do we suddenly turn into a “new” person, a different person,because the calendar says we’re now one year older?

All I know is that if I filled in the blank in the first sentence of this post , my mom would never talk to me again. Or worse, she’d talk to me, but believe me, her words would not be loving or kind.

And I understand that – now.

age, age discrimination, birthdays, mothers, daughters

Cute as a button, at any age.

When I was a child, I never knew my mom’s age. She never revealed it to my brother and me. Of course, at 5, or 10, or even 15, who cares how old our parents are? They’re ancient and we’ll never be that old.

But I do remember the time, when I was in my 20s, when my mom turned a certain number, let’s guess 53, and she told everyone at the birthday party that she’d just “turned” 43. I did the math, and wondered if she really gave birth to me when she was only a teenager. Because all along, I’d been told she didn’t have her first child until she was almost 30.

I approached my dad with the sensitive subject. He kind of smiled nervously, shrugged his shoulders, and suggested I ask my mom. From the nervous tic in his shoulders, I figured that was a bad idea.

For years after, I noticed that my mom gave a different number to her age anytime my bro or I asked her. One month she was 51, another time 48, three months later, maybe 52. And we were in our late 30s by then!

By the time I was 40 and lying about my age as competently as my mom, I snuck up to my dad and begged him to tell me how old mom was. He shook his head at me in disappointment. As sagely as the good witch telling Dorothy that all along, all she had to do was click her red heels to go home, my father said, “All you’ve had to do is check out her driver’s license.” After a pause he added, “but don’t ever tell her I gave you that advice!”

birthday, birthday party, greatgrandchildren, parents, mother/daughter

Sharing her wish with great-grandson, not her age.

So, I’m ashamed to admit right here, to my readers across the world, that I did just that. Me, a parent, an upstanding citizen with no arrest record (and just one speeding ticket…or two), flew across the country to supposedly “visit” my mother. Then I sent her off for an errand, and like a thief lusting for a hidden diamond ring, I peeked into her purse and found her driver’s license.

There it was – in black and white and I felt sorry all over.

Teaching her grandson that attitude is everything.

What did it matter how old she was? Age is only a number. Attitude is everything. She looks at least 20 years younger than her “licensed” age, she acts 30 years younger (I’ve been known to whisper to friends who ask: “my mom is 80 going on 18”). She’s beautiful and trim, laughs a lot, surrounds herself with delightful friends, yells at me if I try to carry her suitcase when she visits (“I’m perfectly capable, thank you!”), and reads voraciously.Honestly, I can’t keep up with my mom – her energy is friskier than a puppy’s, yet her wisdom hits the mark whenever I need a mother’s words to get me through life’s kinks.

“People have perceptions of what 60 is supposed to be, and 70, and 80 and beyond. I don’t want to be categorized,” she insists.

Mom, I salute you.

And I’m so glad you didn’t “turn” into anything other than your most wonderful self on this birthday.

Mother and Daughter – Ageless

How to Embarrass Your Kids

February 22, 2013February 22, 2013 / roughwighting / 40 Comments

One of the perks of being a parent is embarrassing your kids just by being…you.

Yes, I see the quick smirk on your face. I hear you thinking about the time you sang, “I Can’t Get No…Satisfaction” loudly while standing in line at the grocery store as your kids squirmed in…dissatisfaction.

It’s not like we start out trying to mortify our kids. They initiate it!

For instance – socks.

My man has worn long tennis socks with his shorts since he was a studly 25-year-old, and by god, he’s sticking with those socks (or ones like them) for his entire life. So, when our kids were…kids, they moaned on vacations as we walked the beach together in July, or attended swimming lesson or tennis lessons, or even soccer games, and they had to endure their dad in shorts and “tall” socks.

They’d save their allowance and buy short thick Agassi tennis socks, and stick them in their dad’s sock drawer (and throw out the offending “tall’ socks,” of course). But by that time, tall socks became a symbol of our independence, our stubbornness, and our parenting.

No child of ours was going to tell us what we could or could not wear, or sing, or even admire.

One day I was driving my kids home from a lesson – ballet or soccer or piano or chess or, well, the list goes on. Because we lived off a scenic, hilly road called “Paradise Drive,” we always passed many buff bicyclists. On this particular sunny afternoon, I unknowingly let out a sigh while exclaiming, “look at the calves on that man.”

bicyclist legs, biking, muscles, parenting, children

Well-muscled legs (note the lack of “tall” socks).

My son and daughter both bellowed in two long syllables: “MOOOOOMMMMM!”

“What?” I asked innocently.

“You’re married,” my son expounded. “You can’t look at another man’s legs!”

I came close to muttering back, “I’m married, but I’m not dead,” but instead said, “I’m just commenting on the muscles this guy has built by bicycling so hard.”

No good. My kids were adamant that I should not and could not notice the muscles on any other man but their dad.

Paradise Drive, biking, parenting, embarrassing, kids

On the embarrassing Paradise Drive home.

I realized then that I’d just found a supreme opportunity for future parental embarrassment. So each time the kids and I drove home on Paradise Drive and we passed a well-muscled bicyclist, I’d open my mouth and begin, “Wow, look at the…” And they’d stop me with groans of dismay and the two-syllable pronunciation of my name.

If one of their friends was in the car with us, my children would blush stop-sign red before I even pointed.

Ahhh, the perks of being a parent. 🙂

P.S. I won’t even start with how my stories embarrass my (now adult!) children. Let’s just say, I’m not supposed to write about negligées, sexual attraction, bedroom eyes, or passion (if you’ve read my book THE RIGHT WRONG MAN, you know I still embarrass my kids horribly). My poetry seems okay to them, though (as long as it’s not about them). Please check out Karen Elliott’s poetry-themed blog this week – she features one of my poems this Friday.

Never Give Up Chocolate

February 15, 2013 / roughwighting / 21 Comments

chocolate, writing exercise, wish I'd known

Pondering the things I wish I’d known.

What do you wish you’d known in your past, now that you’ve reached some type of maturity and can look back?

When I encourage my writing class students to write their list of “Things I Wish I’d Known,” I write along with them, thinking it’s an easy exercise.But I’m surprised by my first esoteric response:

“Never, ever give up chocolate.”

Embarrassed, but intent on following my own instructions of just writing out the first things that come to mind, I continue my list:

“Give to others, but be sure to also give to yourself.”

My grandson already knows some of the things I wish I’d known.

The following one surprises me:

“Don’t worry so much about hurting someone else’s feelings.”

Wait a minute. I catch a glimmer of something.

The next insightful “wish I’d known” advises:

“Those you love, love more; those you don’t like – avoid more.”

Ah, I’m connecting all the dots, or all the “wish I’d knowns,” to be more exact.

Never ever give up chocolate expresses all of the above platitudes, only better.

Never give up what I am, what I need, what is right for me.

Ever.

I’ve learned that yes, it’s important to keep others happy, to take care of them, to be a “good” mother,wife,daughter,friend,colleague,sister,aunt,grandmother,mom-in-law,sis-in-law,cousin.

But, I shouldn’t have to give up ME to be a good anything.

Not that I’d give up my mistakes and misdirections and missions lost. I needed each and every one of those experiences to get here – to a chocolate-loaded life of love, wonder, worry, pleasure, sadness, but mostly joy.

Particularly if I have a piece of saved (and hidden) dark chocolate buttercream nearby.

What’s on YOUR list of “things you wish you’d known”…?

P.S. I also wish I’d known that poetry can be fun, instructive, soul-searching, and beautiful. If you feel the same way about poems, my blogging friend Karen Elliott is featuring a Poetry Week February 18-23 – check it out at http://karenselliott.wordpress.com/ (one of my poems will be featured on Friday, 2/22).