I’d Like to Thank … My Muse

My brother-in-law gave me a mug that reads, “Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you.”

I found that hilarious – and a perfect gift for a tea-drinking writer when I received it.

People who don’t write assume – from my experience – that writers use people they know as their characters, as if they couldn’t create characters on their own.

I’ve had people tell me – usually during an argument – “I don’t want to be a character in one of your novels!” To which I reply, “You wish!”

This is not some conceited retort. I think, at least to some degree, the people who say things like that do fancy themselves as the perfect “character” for someone’s novel. And there are writers who fancy themselves characters for their own stories.

Those of us of a certain age are familiar with Alfred Hitchcock making a cameo in every one of his films. And if he weren’t a screenwriter, Woody Allen wouldn’t have an acting career. Don’t believe me? Name one movie he was in that he didn’t write.

But seriously, I don’t use real people to play the part of my characters, and never have – even when I was 10 and made my first aborted stab at The Great American Novel.

My inspiration consists more of taking a line from a conversation. For example, a recent blog was inspired by something a friend wrote me in an email.

Another example comes from one of my novels, where one of the main characters’ father dies. The whole aftermath at the hospital is a recreation of what happened when my own father died – and that was only a year earlier, so it was still fresh.

Everything the wife did and said was what I remember my mother doing and saying. Yet the wife, a very minor character in the series, is otherwise nothing like my own mother. I only used that particular scene.

I also find it amusing that people who have read my novels will say, “Oh, so-and-so is you.” And they’re usually wrong. Yes, I am a character in nearly every one of my novels.

 But before you start thinking I’m a complete narcissist, let me clarify. My books are not autobiographical. I never set out to write a book about me, and so far I’ve succeeded.

One character in each book is who I wish I were instead of me.

And it’s never the character people think. (Okay, maybe in the first Unicorn story it is.) It’s always the first left-handed character you meet.

I am essentially a watcher. I observe the human condition, and apply it to my stories.

This is not unique. This is what writers do. Yet you never hear a writer receiving an award say, “I’d like to thank my muse, so-and-so, for giving me the line that inspired this film.” No, they thank the academy, their parents for sending them to a good university, their wives, partners and kids for giving them the space to create.

Yet it doesn’t all come from them. Someone sparked the idea. Anyone could be that muse. Writers just don’t usually talk about it.

Now a word of warning to all of you non-writers out there: Lest you think of making some grandiose speech you think I’ll include in my next novel, forget about it. The thing I find particularly inspiring is usually something insignificant that you say when you’re not particularly paying attention.

Besides, the wrong thing could annoy me, and I might put you in the next story and kill you.

Blogs Happen – And for Me, This Is How

Recently – okay, this morning, which is probably about three months before you will actually get to read this – I was lying about in bed. Because of the pandemic lockdown, as well as a dreary-looking day, I didn’t have much reason to get up.

The result was that I had plenty of thinking time, and as a consequence, two things came to mind: the idea of pretty, swiftly followed by the idea of feminism.

It started when I began thinking back to a blog I had written about dresses and why I hate to wear them. And I wondered when the last time I did wear one was.

My sister-in-law’s wedding, probably 20 years ago? My first trip to Wales at a posh castle-hotel 18 years ago? My brother’s wedding 12 years ago?…

No, to my horror, probably only about 5 years ago, on one of the river cruises Blue Scream and I took. It wasn’t for more than an hour, and I can’t imagine why I bothered. Probably because I packed the thing, and I like to wear everything in my suitcase at least once.

Then I remembered a friend’s comment on that blog, and how she disagreed with my assessment. She liked wearing dresses. They make her feel pretty.

Fair enough.

I presented my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t expect anyone else to conform to them. In fact, I’d be worried if they did.

But pretty – there it was again.

I’ve never felt one way or another about myself because of clothes.

Okay, I’ve felt uncomfortable in some clothes, either because they didn’t fit properly or because they didn’t fit the occasion for which I was wearing them.

But pretty? Ugly? Like a princess? Like a virgin – Oh wait, that’s a song!

No, never once.

I’ve looked at clothes and thought, That’s beautiful! Or, You could not pay me enough to touch that, much less consider wearing it.

But clothes have never transferred their beauty to me or how I feel. I guess that’s why I’ve never been a slave to fashion.

But as far as pretty goes, I consider it a false bill of goods women have been sold for centuries. Even though we’re no longer seen in society as purely ornamental, we’re still expected to feel ornamental.

“Oh, but doesn’t wearing sexy underwear make you feel sexy?”

Um, no.

Those lacy bits of butt floss that pass for underwear and padded, wired brassieres on someone who neither needs nor wants wiring or padding are simply uncomfortable. Even if I knew what “sexy” felt like, I couldn’t begin to have any notion of it while wearing such uncomfortable clothing.

Sell sexy if you like. I’m not buying it.

Which brings me to feminism.

Growing up, I always insisted I wasn’t a feminist. My rationale was that I didn’t believe in “girls are better than anyone.” I believed in equality. And I didn’t think feminism was about equality, but rather, about pushing girls to the fore, above everyone else.

I didn’t like being disqualified from doing things because I was, “just a girl.” I didn’t ask for it, so why should it be held against me?

My mother used to frequently say, “There may be people who aren’t as good as you, but no one’s better.”

She never said there were people better than me. I was as good as anyone else. (Irish mothers aren’t known for praising their children.)

Still, I did not see myself as the next Betty Freidan.

It wasn’t until the new wave of feminists, people like Emma Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch in the “I am a feminist” ads that I realized, That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I am a feminist.

It isn’t about girls being better. It’s about equality.

When I was first introduced to the word, I was still enmeshed in being disqualified. My brother, Rob, told me I would never be accepted to Penn State because I wasn’t smart enough – don’t even get me started on the fact that nearly all of my high school classes were what would now be considered AP classes. Then, when I was, in fact, accepted, he told me it was because I was a girl, and the university was trying to get more female students.

I proved I was as good as. But, to my mind, that didn’t make me a feminist.

“Women’s libbers” as they were called at the time were generally the ugly, long, unkempt hair, braless, paisley-clothes-wearing women who carried signs and didn’t know how to use their indoor voices.

I didn’t want to be one of those. Short hair, three-piece-suit with a shirt and tie and Oxford shoes was more my style.

At about that time, Janis Ian’s At Seventeen album came out. The eponymous single was the anthem of every girl from puberty to 30. Everyone of a certain age born without a Y chromosome could identify with the “ugly duckling girl like me” in the song, even the tall-thin-gorgeous women who hadn’t known an ugly day from their Gerber Baby beginnings to prom queen.

Yet, even though I strongly identified with the song, that was the only one on the entire album I never figured out the guitar chords to. I could sing and play all of the other songs a la Janis, which, in their own way, were feminist, but for some reason, I shied away from that one.

I suppose it was too close to the bone.

“To those of us who knew the pain /of valentines that never came/ and those whose names were never called/ when choosing sides for basketball…”

Maybe I wasn’t quite a feminist then.

Perhaps I was still seeking permission to be one.

Perhaps I should spend time lazing in bed considering things more often.

Pandemics and Other Disappointments

 A friend of mine was waxing nostalgic in a letter she wrote me in my birthday card. I suppose she was trying to put a hopeful spin on shelter-in-place.

She mentioned the fact that, because of the pandemic, high school seniors would miss the last events of their senior year, like sports awards ceremonies, dances, the prom and graduation. Her point was, that in the grand scheme of things, how important are those things to your future? Would it matter that you didn’t have a prom?

To her, what is really important is the friendships you form, the memories you have with those friends outside the formalities of school functions, over a lifetime.

I see her point.

But I also feel for those high school students. This is their lifetime, so far.

In my own life, my elementary school graduation was marred by my parents not attending. You might laugh. Elementary school? Who cares?

But it was the first graduation I’d ever had, and as I saw it, I wasn’t important enough for anyone in my family to come.

True, a couple of neighbors who wouldn’t ordinarily have come filled in for my missing parents. The point, to me, was that my parents didn’t attend.

A little perspective here.

Normally, the Catholic elementary school I attended had their graduation on a weekday morning, attended by everyone’s mothers. But the year I graduated, they decided to have an evening graduation.

And the evening they chose? The exact one that the local public high school was having their graduation, the high school my older brother was graduating from that same year.

I have always thought the Catholic school did this intentionally, knowing many of the eighth graders had siblings graduating from the high school. Many of us asked for our graduation ceremony to be moved, to no avail. I have always believed they did it to punish the parents who “weren’t doing their Catholic duty” of sending their children to the Catholic high school.

Still, it never occurred to either of my parents that one of them should probably attend my graduation. No, they were both going to see my brother graduate, without the slightest guilt over leaving me high and dry. They were going to see their son graduate from high school. Mine was only elementary school. Besides, I was only a girl.

I was left asking how I was going to even get to my graduation – skipping it was unthinkable, although a couple of my classmates did so they could attend their siblings’ graduation.

In the end, one of my neighbors took me. Grateful as I was for their kindness, it hurt that my parents didn’t think I was important enough.

And I never let them forget it.

When it was time for my high school graduation, I asked my parents if they were going to bother coming, or did I have to get a neighbor to bring me to that one, too? They did come, but I felt it had more to do with my brother graduating from college a semester early. Besides, he didn’t even bother going to his university graduation.

So, I understand the disappointments, and how huge they feel to the class of 2020.

What you do in high school affects your start in college. If you’re in sports, university scouts determine whether or not you get a scholarship. And there are the trophies that will eventually end up in the attic. But the celebration with your teammates is important.

For those not attending college, high school graduation is your farewell to years of education.

And prom is one of the important events of senior year. Although it became fashionable I the late ’70s to shun the prom, for most people, it’s the first formal event they’ll attend. It’s a time to shine, a time to show off the boyfriend or girlfriend.

As one of the nerds who had no boyfriend, I had to beg, plead, and scramble to get a date, just as I had for the junior prom. Both times (with different boys) I was disappointed that I had a date who didn’t want to dance, and spent most of his time talking to the other guys at the table.

But I wouldn’t consider not going. Not going would have been social failure. As a nerd, I wasn’t familiar with failure.

So, I understand.

It may not have been as momentous to my friend who, 40+ years later is still married to the guy she took to the prom. She also went to his prom, so another prom wasn’t that big of a deal to her.

Looking back over the years, my friend has children and a grandchild whose milestones are more important to her than her own. So many events have overshadowed the things she did as a teenager that she often doesn’t remember the details.

Maybe she’s more pragmatic, and better at putting things into perspective than I am.

I also find my university years have overshadowed high school. That was a time I came into my own and proved to people that I could accomplish at least some of the things that were important to me.

But high school mattered to me.

I get it.

Some of the friendships that were important to me in high school didn’t stand the test of time and distance. Others did. My friend, plus two or three others are still friends and we have at least weekly email communication. Her house or mine are available to those who come to our area to visit as theirs are to us.

We get together two or three times a year for what have become fixed gatherings, and try to find other times to reunite. We’ve been friends at least since the beginning of high school. Some of us have been friends far longer than that.

We can reminisce about high school or more recent events. But we have those memories.

The class of 2020 will have the memory of what didn’t happen. They’re not the first to be disappointed because of world events, and no doubt won’t be the last. And that’s not the end of the world that it seems now.

Still, it’s a shame.

And I get it.