Tag Archive | life

Class Reunion

Oct12

So today my twenty year class reunion begins.  And for weeks and weeks I’ve had it in my mind that I would write a big, somewhat ranty post about why I’m not going to my class reunion.  I’m not going, by the way. For several reasons.  But now that the day is here, I don’t actually feel like being ranty about it.  Huh.

I didn’t have a good time in high school.  In fact, my freshman year was probably the worst year of my life.  Agoraphobia, therapy … it was not the best time in the world.  But as I sit here I keep thinking that the whole four years couldn’t have been that bad, could they?  Surely I had to have had some good times in high school.

My high school … fairly recently

One great moment that sticks out in my mind from my freshman year was the first time my friend Rita saw snow.  Rita came with her family from Ghana the summer before.  It doesn’t snow in Ghana.  So there we were sitting in English class one dreary morning, the sky clouding up more and more.  The air had that cold, dry, impending feeling.  Then all of a sudden Rita yelped in joy.  Class came to a screeching halt.  It was snowing!  Well, a few flakes were meandering through the air.  Our wonderful teacher, who was from South Africa herself, let her class be interrupted so we could all go outside so Rita could experience snow.  That was probably the only time she ever enjoyed the cold, wet white stuff.Another fun memory that sticks out must have been from my junior year.  Brief background.  We had “clubs” that were comparable to sororities in high school.  Every year the sophomores pledge into the clubs. … Okay, no idea how to explain that to anyone who’s never done it.  I guess it’s like hazing for sororities only much, much tamer and with no alcohol.  Anyhow, my friend Jess and I were in charge of teaching the pledges our club’s motto, which is in Greek.  I remember having so much fun as we wedged them two-by-two into a dark, narrow basement stairwell and shone flashlights on our faces as we chanted in Greek.  At least I think we had flashlights.  I mostly remember how fun it was to freak the pledges out … and how many of them came up to us later and said they thought our thing was the best.

Let’s see….  I also remember a balmy afternoon in the spring of my senior year.  We had less than a week of school left.  I was really starting to feel that soon, very soon, I would be free from the torture of the last 4 years.  It was so liberating to finally feel like I could be whoever I wanted to be and not to play the role I had been cast in.  I threw caution to the wind and got really goofy and started saying all of the funny things I’d always wanted to say.  I forget what class it was we were having outside or how I ended up talking to Megan, who I had always considered one of the popular, cool girls.  What I remember vividly is the smile on her face and the way she laughed in the sunlight at all of the silliness I was letting break out.  And then she said, “I had no idea you were this funny!”  Such a great compliment and so heavy with both possibility and regret.  I realized in that moment that yes, I was funny … and I also wondered why I hadn’t been funny like that for all those years when I could have.  It was a deep, beautiful moment.  Thank you Megan!

But you know, it’s strange that as I sit here trying to think of my best memories from high school that I can’t come up with much.  I don’t know if that’s because it was all twenty years ago plus or if it’s because there weren’t that many good memories.  I have far more miserable memories.  But I think a lot of that is because I was in a miserable place.  And it wasn’t just my class that caused me to be there.

My school and surrounding area a loooong time ago

You know, the interesting thing about growing older is that you start to hear bits and pieces of what was going on behind the scenes of your childhood and the childhoods of the kids you spent all day with five days a week.  Not only do you hear them, with age you start to understand them.  You start to understand that the cool, popular kids were under tremendous amounts of stress.  You see that the rich kids who had every material thing handed to them had absolutely wretched family problems.  You come to understand that everyone was hurting in one way or another.  What made the situation unbearable was the fact that no one knew how to deal with it all.  So people lashed out.  The anger and hurt that was inflicted on each of us could only stay trapped inside for so long before spewing out all over the easiest targets in our lives, our peers.I don’t know if my classmates have gotten the help they needed for those miserable childhood problems.  I did and it was the best thing I’ve ever done.  The road to recovery was and is a long one though.  I had to smirk the other day when one of my classmates found out I wasn’t coming to the reunion and sent me an email which contained the phrase “It was twenty years ago, we’re much better people now.”

The fact is, it wasn’t twenty years ago.  For some of us it’s every day.  It’s every time we interact with family or stand on the verge of making a new friend or dealing with the opposite sex.  The damage done by bullying, peer pressure, family destruction, the pressure to be perfect, to make things alright so that the pain has a chance to stop is every day.  It follows us to adulthood and won’t let us go until we turn and face it.  Even then it might never fully let us go.

For me the answer is to avoid the people and situations that rip the Band-Aids off of old wounds.  I can’t stand to feel certain varieties of pain again, to be made to feel the way I felt at the worst times in my life.  So I avoid.  Some might argue that isn’t healthy.  Well, maybe not if we’re talking about family or romantic situations or something that has to be faced.  There is no rule that says I have to associate with my school peers again.  They’re the past and it’s okay with me for them to stay there.  I’m still friends with the ones I need to be friends with.  As for the rest, I wish them all the health and happiness and healing that I firmly believe each and every one of them deserves.  But I don’t need to deliver it personally.

So that’s why I’m not going to my twenty year reunion.  We’ll see how I feel when our twenty-fifth rolls around.  In the meantime, I wish the Class of ’92 every good thing and hope they have a spectacular time this weekend.

What to Do With a Random Act of Kindness

Sep28

Wow.  So for those of you who were hanging around my Facebook page yesterday, you probably saw me post about an amazing random act of kindness that was perpetrated on me.  A coworker (I’m pretty sure I know who but haven’t’ confirmed it) slipped me a $20 bill all ninja-style and stealthily.  No note, no explanation, she didn’t even own up to it when I asked if it was her.  So how do I know she did it?

Well, earlier in the day I had laughingly said that I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it home that night because my car was almost out of gas and I didn’t have the money to fill it up until we got paid today.  Granted, my car did make it home without sputtering and dying, and I’m sure I could have found some pennies somewhere to pay for gas if I was really desperate.  But that doesn’t matter.  This lovely coworker saw a way that she could help someone and discretely moved in and did it.

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I felt just a little awkward.  My thoughts instantly zipped to “Wait, I didn’t give off the impression that I was desperate or begging or anything, did I?”

But after I thought about it for a while, and after I took a poll of my Facebook family, I shook that thought off.  My wonderful coworker was just being nice.  Super nice.  Oh, and she also brought me a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte because we had been talking about that too.  I feel incredibly blessed to have her as part of my daily life.

And then I started thinking….

We hear about random acts of kindness and the beauty of paying it forward all the time.  We talk about charity in action and treating our fellow men with love and respect.  Everyone knows that it’s good to do kind things for people.  But for all the publicity that doing the right thing and being a good person get, we never really teach each other how to receive kindness.

How many times has someone complimented you only to have you contradict them?  “That’s a great shirt you’re wearing!”  “Really?  This?  It’s nothing.”  “You’re looking good!  Have you been working out?”  “Who, me?  I’m a lazy slob!”  “You smell good.”  “Ugh, I stink.”  You know what I’m talking about.  I’m not exactly sure why, but a lot of us live in a world where we just can’t take a compliment.

But it goes beyond that.  Not only is it hard for us to accept compliments, it’s even harder for us to accept help.  My first reaction when I realized someone had given me money was to protest that I was not that poor.  I’m not!  I swear!  Although I do have to tread a lot of water to keep afloat and I don’t have any help to do it.  I’m proud of my independence though.  I identify myself by it.  This is who I am!

And that’s who my dear coworker is.  She’s a wonderful person.  I’ve known that for four years.  That’s what started me thinking that the best way to honor her kindness and her generosity is not to return the money, which was my first impulse, but to pay it forward.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Have you made a friend today?
© Shailesh Nanal | Dreamstime.com

Still, it’s hard to adjust your thinking from being the do-er of generous things to being the do-ee.  It can feel strange, awkward.  We can feel like we don’t really need it or like we don’t really deserve it.  But if we outright stop it then we’re stopping the flow.  No one wants to stop the flow of good in this world!  We need goodness far too much.So I’m going to take that money, or the spirit of it at least, and be on the lookout for someone who needs a helping hand.  Something might come up tomorrow or it might wait a year.  But the time will come.  And I would encourage all of you to take the spirit of that $20 and pay it forward as well.  If you know someone who needs a boost, then boost away.  Even further, if you find yourself in a position where someone is offering you an act of kindness, accept that act with gratitude.  Hard though it may be, don’t shut it down.  Let’s fill this world with goodness and love!

Why I Don’t Have a Blog Post Today

Sep17

Blogs are an essential part of the writer’s experience.  I think most writers have them these days, which makes perfect sense.  Our blog posts are aimed to entertain, educate, and keep in touch with our readers.  They’re also here to find new readers by providing a sampling of what we have to offer in our books free of charge to people who randomly stumble across us while searching the internet.

Blogs are the one thing that I feel like most writers are doing right.  Twitter is a dismal wasteland of people barking, or rather tweeting up the wrong tree.  Facebook is something most writers almost have right, but at the same time I’m not sure if all of us know what we’re doing with the tool.  Everything else, from LinkedIn to Google+ to Pinterest, is sort of catch as catch can but mostly head-scratching on the part of writers.

But blogs are something we’ve got right.  And it makes perfect sense.  Blogs are all about writing.  Strangely enough, that’s what we writers do best.  I’ve come across some of the most fascinating bits and pieces about everything from the writing craft to up and coming books to slices of wisdom about the particular writer’s area of expertise or interest.  I’ve learned so much and been so entertained just by reading blogs.  So bravo for the writers out there.

© Aleksey Ipatov | Dreamstime.com

If I had one complaint about the way that writers write their blogs it would be the same complaint I have with the rest of the way we do social media.  Too much of what I see is aimed at other writers instead of at the reader.  It’s an easy trap to fall into because other writers are the “low-hanging fruit” of the social media audience world.  Other writers are looking for attention, readers aren’t necessarily.  Writers are like the people at the airport hanging around baggage claim with signs that say “Smith” as they try to attract the attention of their audience.  Readers are just there to get their bags and move on.  They’re much smarter than we writers are.Anyhow, blogs are the best way to attract the attention of the people we’re trying to reach.  Here in this forum we can be ourselves and we can do what we do best.  And we don’t have to go out and aggressively recruit readers the same way we would with Twitter or Facebook.  We do have to reach out, but not as invasively.

Yep, blogs are important, but today I didn’t have time to write one.

You see, I usually write my blog posts for the week over the weekend.  I aim for three blog posts a week these days, four if I’m feeling chatty.  I try to include one about history, one about writing, and one fun or silly post about me each week.  But this weekend I just didn’t have time to write.

Saturday I spent more than six hours working on revisions for my next book, The Courageous Heart.  See, I wrote the first draft under less than ideal circumstances, gave it to my trusted beta readers, who kind of quirked their eyebrow at me and said “Really?” and then I rewrote the entire first half.  In the process I changed so much of the plot and focus of my characters that it’s kind of a whole new story.  Which would be fine under normal circumstances, but I have a deadline.  It’s due at my editor a week from today.  So my nose was firmly to the grindstone of work on Saturday.  I don’t think that the majority of the world understands how hard writers have to work to produce something readable.  Remember writing term papers in school?  Multiply that by a thousand and you’ll begin to have an idea.

I also ended up grocery shopping on Saturday, which was depressing because of how much money I don’t have.  And I ended up buying twice as much meat as I needed because I got distracted talking to the nice butcher guy at The Fresh Market who I like.  What?  Merry distracted by a man?  NEVER!

Now I would have had time to catch up on my blog writing on Sunday, but once again I had to work on the book in the morning, then I went to help my friend Kristine move some of her stuff into my brother’s apartment (they’re getting married in December).  My brother, Stewart, lives on the second floor.  He has a wonderful balcony up there.  We had to hoist a mattress and a sofa up over the balcony and into the apartment and move two chairs and a different mattress out over the balcony and down.  We did this by backing the U-Haul up to the side of the house and working in teams to lift stuff.  Note to anyone who might want to try this in the future: the roofs of U-Hauls are made of very, very thin sheets of tin foil.  Be careful.

This wasn’t yesterday, but that’s what yesterday looked like

After that I went to a cricket match.  My team won pretty easily.  But the best part about that was that my “cricket daddy” Mike had come down from Boston, where he moved last year.  I haven’t seen him since April, and it was SO wonderful to catch up with him.  After the game I went to the pub with the guys and ate nachos and drank a shandy while watching the end of the Eagles game.  Then we talked loudly about cricket for over an hour.  So much fun.After that I had to go to my aunt’s house for a family dinner.  I didn’t get home until well after 8, and I was so exhausted that I couldn’t look at the computer, let alone write a blog post.

So that’s why I didn’t write a blog post today, even though blogs are essential for writers.  Oh well, the week is young yet.  I’m sure I’ll get something out there by Wednesday.  ;)

Write What You Know (And What Exactly That Means)

Aug24

Strangely enough, I have never been a part of a dystopian alternative reality where men outnumber women ten to one.  I have also never lived in medieval England under the reign of Richard I while he was away fighting the crusades.  I’ve never visited Montana in 1895, and I’ve never been part of Earth’s first interplanetary colonization mission on a transport ship that was sabotaged.  But these are all stories that I have written in the last couple of years or am working on right now.  Am I breaking the rules?

Everyone, writer or not, has heard the saying “write what you know”.  It’s part of the bread and butter of Story Writing 101.  If you write about what you know the story will be that much more vivid and the characters will have an authenticity to them that they wouldn’t otherwise have.  The only way you can create stories that sing is by writing what you know.

There are a lot of writers out there that take this literally and produce some amazing stuff!  Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, grew up in Mississippi in a world that was very much like her fantastic book.  John Grisham practiced criminal law for years before writing legal thrillers.  And J.K. Rowling obviously attended wizarding school in Scotland for eight years before growing up to write one of my favorite series of all time.

Ah.  I do believe we’ve reached the point.

How can you write what you know if it is impossible for you to have experienced it?  While literary fiction and the like present situations that it is very possible for authors to have lived through, genres like Sci-Fi and Historical Romance and hopefully Horror are so far off the beaten track of the world that we actually live in that the best we can do is sit around day-dreaming about them.

Now, I have two degrees in History from two different universities.  You could make the argument that in writing about History I am indeed writing about what I know.  Because I know enough History to do very well at Trivial Pursuit or as a contestant on Jeopardy!  But I’m single and I’ve had terrible luck with men, so how can I possibly write about Romance?

I have experienced sunrise over Twin Lights in Rockport, Mass.

Well, it’s a simple point, really.  I’ve lived.  I’ve loved.  I’ve been disappointed.  I’ve been overjoyed.  I’ve struggled for things that I want.  I’ve fought for causes I believe in.  I’ve been smacked down and I’ve been rewarded.  I have friends and I’ve lost friends.  I’ve experienced death and I’ve gone on living.  My life has provided a wealth of experience to draw on.Take The Loyal Heart, for example.  No, I have never been a young lady in medieval England fighting to rescue her friends from imprisonment in a castle.  I have, however, taken a stage combat class and have some rudimentary knowledge of how to wield a sword.  And I know what it’s like when the people you count on back out on you and the frustration of having to fight alone when the person you thought you loved lets you down.  That’s where I was writing from what I knew.  I would also make the argument that my heart knows what it would feel like if someone finally came along who stood up for me and fought for what I believed in.  In my book that also counts as what I know.

Okay, so what about the novel I’m working on right now?  It’s an alternative reality where men outnumber women ten to one, homosexuality and polyamory have become the norm and heterosexuality and monogamy are taboo.  With sex scenes.  How on earth can I write m/m sex when I have not and never will be able to truly experience it?  M/m Romance is a huge sub-genre of Romance right now and a lot of its writers are women.  How do we keep to the rule of “write what you know”?  Same way that I write about the Tower of London as it existed in 1194 for my novel The Courageous Heart: a little research and a lot of imagination.

Because in the end it’s not the physical descriptions of acts that are even remotely important to the story, it’s the emotions and the dynamics between the characters that count.  It’s about someone who has fallen out of love with their partner (been there) and someone who is desperate to keep that love (also been there).  It’s about learning everything you were told about the world was skewed (felt like that) and about a burning need to fix injustice no matter how destructive your attempts (felt that too).  It’s a story about a family trying to remain stable when the world around them is dysfunctional and their home is built on shifting sands.  I think we can all identify with that.

Knowing what you’re writing is not so much about the form of the work, it’s about the content.  Whether you’re writing about dystopian worlds or the town where you grew up, knowing your writing is about connecting with it and identifying with it on a visceral level.  That’s what makes a work dynamic.  That’s what makes readers want to come back for more.

So as you’re working on your next story, reach deep inside to test where you feel it.  If something isn’t working maybe it’s because you don’t know it well enough.  But I’m also a firm believer in the fact that if you’re moved to write something it’s because you DO know it on some level.  Look inward, reach deep and find it.  Your story and your characters will thank you.

Birthday Questions 2012

Jul27

My brother has a tradition with friends and family.  Every year on someone’s birthday he asks them a series of questions.  These questions have to do with events of the past year, from birthday to birthday.  This year he was on a business trip for my birthday so he didn’t get to ask them.  But his fiancé, my best friend, was happy to ask them instead.  Here are my birthday questions for 2012 and my answers:

(In no particular order, because I can’t remember the order)

What was the best movie you saw (for the first time) in the last year?

Mmm… Daniel Radcliffe!

It’s a tie.  On the one hand, I have a super fun time going to see The Woman in Black with my friend Felicity.  We are both big Daniel Radcliffe fans, but I’m not much of a horror person.  But the movie turned out to be more of a suspense film than a blood and guts kind of thing.  And Daniel did a great job.  But the best part of the movie was watching it with Felicity.  Felicity jumps at everything!  Every time anything even remotely unexpected happened on screen she jumped and gasped.  Every time she did I giggled.  So basically every time anything scary happened I laughed.  It was fantastic.The other best time I had was watching The Muppets with my friends Kristine and Molly.  Not only was it a fun girl’s night out, it took me straight back to my childhood.  I was a big fan of The Muppet Show and all of the Muppet movies as a kid.  And when they rolled the closing credits and sang the “Menomenon” song we had to sing along.  So fun!

At what time in the last year did you laugh the hardest?

Me and my brothers

It was just one random night at my aunt Martha’s house after dinner.  We have family dinner every Sunday night in the house we all grew up in.  I don’t remember what my brother Stewart said or did, but we apparently both had a side of silly pills with supper.  We were just laughing over nothing and cracking Kristine up in the process.  I think Molly was there too shaking her head at us.  It just goes to show that sometimes the funniest things that happen to you are those spontaneous moments when you’re being family.What was your greatest accomplishment in the last year?

Absolutely hands down, it was fulfilling my lifelong dream of becoming a published author.

What was the biggest lesson you learned in the last year?

This was easy to answer, but the answer was a hard lesson.  In the last year I learned that some people are just crazy … and there’s nothing you can do about it.  This applies across several levels and in several situations that I ran into.  There are difficult people with legitimate psychological problems out there.  Sometimes you can’t avoid them.  Sometimes they come into your life like a wrecking ball and leave you forever scarred.

The hardest part of this was learning that no matter how rational you try to be, no matter how clear the right course of action seems to you, and no matter how hard you try to help, sometimes you can’t do anything.  Certain people will drive themselves down the road to destruction, and if you spend too much energy chasing after them it will only drive you crazy along with them.  I’m just glad that I don’t have to see some of those people ever again in this life!

What was your theme song for the year?

This one was easy too:  “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John.  Some of you know why.

(I always forget how utterly bizarre that video is until I watch it!)

Those are the only questions I can remember.  I’m sure my brother has more of them that I wasn’t asked this year.  But as the tradition goes, once the standard questions are asked, the floor is opened for other people to ask questions.

So now it’s your turn.  What birthday questions would you like to ask me?