I’m at my computer, fingers flying on the keyboard. It’s a good writing day. I’m in the zone–the writing zone.
What’s that? Oh crap! I hear a light tap at my door. I stiffen, sit up-right, tip-toe away from my window and plan to wait out the knocker until they walk away.
But wait!What if it’s someone important? I don’t know, like someone wanting to give me a big check or maybe it’s UPS delivering a really late birthday present.
Or it could be someone coming to tell me my roof is on fire. I don’t know. So, damn it, I open the door.
Argh. Just as I feared. A sales guy. Yeah, I’m interested in solar, but I’ll do my own research. Plus, I’m in a great writing groove. I’m in the zone.Doesn’t this guy know about the zone?
Me: Well, I’m in the middle of writing. Just give me a card, literature, or a website (Dude, I want you to go away and now). Okay?
Solar sales guy: Okay, I’ll walk around the neighborhood and come back.
Me: (As I’m closing the door). Sure, fine. (I realize he said he’ll come back) No! No! (holding up my pen and waving it at him). Not today. I’m writing.
He backs away, like: Okay, crazy lady with the pen. Just don’t hurt me.
And now for an educational “How to Deal with Door Sales” video:
What’s life without humor? One huge reason why I love reading Nora Ephron’s work: we have the same idea on life and writing. Here’s what she said about negative experiences and using them for writing material: “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.”
Her screenwriter mother always said, “Everything is copy.” As she was dying she told Nora, “Take notes.”
So if your skirt flies up in the air, a boss tells you you’re not cut out for that crappy job, you smash into a pyramid of Champagne bottles at the grocery store (all of which have happened to me)… turn that horror and humiliation into humor. Other people and/or bad experiences can make you feel lousy only if you allow them to. Laugh. Take notes. Write!
Sex! Now that I have your attention… I will talk about that, but mostly this thought spew may only interest personal essay writers/readers, memoir writers/readers, editors/agents/publishers, English lit academics, parents of kids under 10, kids who feared the VD man (explained below), and my daughter, to whom I wrote a personal note. Anyone else is welcome to read, of course. See, I know you’re scrolling by, notice too many words to deal with on a Sunday morning, and wonder if you should wade in to check out this post, so I’m telling you: Scroll on by! (This made more sense when I posted it on Facebook.)
Here goes: Writing academics, publishing experts, English lit types have defined story as ALWAYS FICTION. Always. A nonfiction story is called a personal essay. It’s that simple. Final. But for the last fifteen years or so, I’ve read my STORIES at bookstores’ open mics. Nobody asked me to get up and spout my personal essay. I go to theaters to hear other storytellers, like The Moth from NYC, which is nationwide now. There’s a growing STORYteller movement. People get up and tell personal STORIES; they call themselves storytellers.
In my book, “Craving Normal,” here’s how I’ve been thinking of the pieces in my collection – Some are stories where I’m the protagonist. There’s a beginning; what my character wants; conflict as my character tries to get there, and resolution. An example of this is my story “Suicidal Santa.” Within the story I do mention what’s going on in my community and the world, to give context. But it’s not the focus.
Meanwhile, in my book, I do have personal essays, where I wrote commentary on societal subjects, with personal anecdotes. I am not the protagonist in a story. It has a thesis statement, ending in a personal anecdote to back it up.
For example, there’s “My Barbie the Slut,” where my focus is one subject: SEX, the message I, at nine years old, received about sex. Sex as filtered through my kid mind and how I perceived what I was being told via TV, movies, songs, books. I’d pluck books from my parents’ filled book shelves, read Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying,” and Michael Medved’s “What Really Happened to the Class of ’65?” Wow. Lots of teen sex (Hey, I thought those early 1960’s kids waited until they married?). My nine-year-old brain spun. Eye-opening! (I’d like to read that now as an adult.)
While adults thoughtfully gave me educational talks, those were in conflict with the messages all around me. So, in “My Barbie the Slut,” I storify my essay with my nine-year-old moments: beginning with my friend and me playing Barbies. Now, as often as I heard Helen Reddy sing “I am woman hear me roar,” and my mom gave me nice talks supporting women… Please! Barbie was all sex – big boobs, tiny waist, legs that could go behind her ears. AND! Accessorized with mini dresses and a sports car. That, plus the messages I got from movies: “Hi. Nice to meet you! Would you like to get naked and go to my bedroom? Or should I just tear your clothes off here in the doorway?” – no wonder I had my Barbie and Ken humping so hard, I scuffed their smooth plastic crotches.
Watch out, tangents ahead!
Parents of young kids – Be alert. Your kids sure are -> TV. Movies. Racy magazines found. Those nice talks adults gave me with healthy messages? Totally drowned out by the loud outside messages coming from a variety of sources. Hey, I was an observant little human (as most kids are). I paid more attention to the world around me than listen to lectures. Even though my parents limited my TV viewing, what little I saw I absorbed. I’d seen enough “Love, American Style,” episodes to dream of becoming a foxy stewardess with a guy in every city (Oh the conflict! Having to remember not to mix up boyfriends… flabby formulaic sitcom fodder). Hey, I was no dummy. I knew what Bob Eubanks on the “Newlywed Game” meant when he said “making whoopee.” His smirk gave part of it away. And then the way the contestants giggled and gushed, “Oh, Bob!” as they blushed, confirmed whoopee was about “It.”
IT. Doing IT if it feels good. Getting IT on. IT was piped into my head as if on a corporate Muzak loop. But do I want IT? When do I want IT? What if I don’t want IT?
And then cut to a commercial break for, say, Summer’s Eve. Those ads totally confused me. What in the world made these women so happy they would run through fields of wildflowers, huge smiles and flowing hair?
Even the choice of boogie monster we San Francisco State University student housing neighborhood latchkey kids feared made it clear how influenced we were by our sexually-charged era and society. We created scary neighborhood lore, the way other kids might say the most dilapidated house on the block is haunted. It started with the older teenage boys on our street. They told us about a naked man running through the eucalyptus groves near the handball courts of San Francisco State University. To enter the grove area we had to go through a hole in a chain link fence below a sign that said, in large red letters, “Danger!” So we appropriately called the land where The VD Man supposedly lurked, Danger.
NOTE TO MY DAUGHTER: If you read this, now you know why I was so on top of what movies and TV shows you watched, so much so that little you would ask, “Mommy, is this appropriate?” And why teenage you thought I was such a nagging bore. I know from my own experience being a kid, how messages are absorbed and how it’s confusing. Heck, soda and beer companies don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars (or whatever it is) to advertise during the Superbowl because TV messages DON’T work. (Remember this if you become a parent. TV as a babysitter is like leaving your kid with a whacked out crackhead who also likes to sell you lots of pharmaceuticals and fear. Fear is a great manipulator. But it does sell drugs and insurance. Would you leave your kid with that crackhead?)
Anyway, my point is this: “Suicidal Santa” is in story form vs. “My Barbie the Slut,” which is societal commentary with personal anecdotes has some storyification, and what I call a personal essay.
Because I will be publishing under my own Exotica Gooch Publishing, I can do what I want. I will continue to blend my genres. *Exotica Gooch is my alter ego (There’s a story behind it, but I’ve yammered enough.)
Me: You know that Crowded House song, “Mean to Me”?
Ian, my husband: (Staring at his computer) Not sure.
Me: Yeah, you know it. (I begin to sing) “I’m down on my knees… So please don’t be mean to me.”
I think it sounds just like it. I’m sure he’ll nod his head in acknowledgement.
Ian: (Eyes haven’t moved from his computer.) It’s a good thing you can write.
***
Wow, so mean! Ouch. Ah, that’s okay. Ian’s not wrong. And as a musician/songwriter, he’s gotta be honest. Plus, I’ve admitted my lack of singing talent in this previous blog post.
Wow, so mean! Ouch. Ah that’s okay. I’ve admitted in this previous post my lack of singing talent.
Do you have a superpower? I bet you do. Mine? I create universes, control the actions of others and can even time travel. How? I write.
Ever since I was a kid, I have been creating worlds I can control. Darn, I only wish I still had the story I wrote, when I was 8 years old, about a little farm girl kidnapped by fun-loving aliens. She went to live with them on their planet, where she could stay up late and eat junk food.
“Michele, you don’t have a future in…” an idea for another book chapter title. It’s something I’ve been told, after being pulled aside, more than a few times during the plethora of crappy jobs I’ve taken. But it’s hard to be too crushed, unless I had dreams of my future in grocery store sample hander-outer, perfume sprayer, Orange Julius maker, retail worker (aka men’s underwear folder – well, okay, I did a lot more than that), aerobics instructor, car dealership prisoner… errr, car salesperson (I’d work nine consecutive 12 hour days going on test drives with speeding lunatics. All that, and made no money!) – all of which I detested. But now I have plenty of stories to write about. See, there are no crappy experiences – only material for stories… or lessons. P.S. And yet I’ve NEVER been fired.
The reason life is like dating is if everything went smoothly, just as we plan, all the time – no awkward experiences, no “get me outa here!” moments – it would be much harder to appreciate the pleasant moments. Life can be like people we may date: Awkward, odd, horrifying… but then, along comes a good one. After all the bad dates, you appreciate him/her all the more.
Here’s one blind date I experienced:
Right when we met and got into his car, the guy started making goo-goo eyes at me, trying to hold my hand, not taking the hint from my don’t-touch-me body language – arms folded over my chest, body pressed into the passenger door, and nervous laughter. At a stop light, he stared at me for an uncomfortably long time and said, “You remind me SO much of my dead sister.”
Nooooooooooo!
Oh, and it only got worse. The entire night he stared at me with a creepy reverence, as if I were an angel whom he’d never let go. Hence my physically wrestling him all night until I finally fled.
Still talking to myself on this blog, but if you happen to read this share one of your “date from hell” stories. I’m not the only one, right? We’ve all endured crappy dates. I know. Tell me about it.
You can take the child out of the wild, but not the wild out of the child… apparently. This may explain many of my stories. When your brain is formed a certain way – on freedom, travel, adventure – makes it hard to be happy sitting in a cubicle, or locked up in school, following bells, rules and clocks. It’s a huge reason I’m self-employed. And why I’m still wild today.
Photo: Nude beach, Mykonos, Greece. I’m second from left; Little sister, far left, with beach friends.
I write about living in a rock hut on this nude beach in my book, “Craving Normal.” The story’s called, “That’s Not An Eel!”
(Photo: Here I am orating behind the podium at Anarchist Forum in Hyde Park, London. And, yes, I’m wearing lederhosen. See, you’d be ranting too if you had to wear suede shorts with suspenders, didn’t have a TV or any junk food. My dad wrote on this slide, “Michele mouthing off.” My mom said I drew a small crowd.)
Look I’ve been working on my book, “Craving Normal,” for so long I have posts on my dusty old blog about it… from – gulp! – ten years ago. As a lover of words, writing and books, every year I attend the LA Times Festival of Books. Here’s one such visit I blogged about on my now defunct (or is it de-funked, as in lost its funk?) blog, “Aprilbaby’s California Life” –
I walked by the NPR booth and heard author Susan Straight being interviewed. I stopped because I heard her mention her eldest child was at the Coachella music festival. The interviewer asked, “Oh, so do you think she’ll tune in to hear you on the radio?”
I knew I could relate to Susan when she said, “Uh, no. She doesn’t listen to me at home. Why would she want to hear me on the radio?” Spoken as a true parent to a teenager.
Susan Straight is an author from the Inland Empire. I only learned that after stumbling upon the book, “Inlandia,” and saw that the forward was written by the very same Susan Straight. Intrigued, I bought the book and attended a panel discussion with Susan and other writers from “Inlandia,” an anthology of writers from the Inland Empire.
My only time spent in the Inland part of California is whenever I have to pass through it heading for the San Bernardino Mountains to go skiing or the one time I cruised down part of Route 66. As the writers of “Inlandia” tell it, their home has been disparaged as nothing more than where the Hell’s Angels, neo-Nazis and smog dwell. Until then, I knew so little about the Inland Empire, I didn’t even realize that much about the area.
During the panel, the writers spoke of a place they grew up where orange groves and date tree forests were so vast they’d get lost in them; where the Santa Ana winds and the sand would blast the paint off of cars; where the air smelled of Eucalyptus and orange blossoms. It was where they arrived, grew and stayed.
As a resident of the San Fernando Valley, another maligned Southern California area, I could relate. While I’ve only read a few chapters of “Inlandia,” I’m really enjoying getting lost in the stories of their misunderstood land.
As I bought “Inlandia” from the Heyday Publishing Founder, Malcolm Margolin, he asked me what I do. I told him I’m writing “Craving Normal,” my stories of growing up in California and traveling the world as the kid of hippies. Malcolm, the bearded Allen Ginsberg look-a-like, threw back his head and laughed. “Did your parents feed you lentil loaf when all you really wanted was junk food?”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, how’d ya guess?”
He told me his kids could relate as children of hippies.
“Yep, I just wanted a Twinkie,” I told him.
He nodded in sympathy, as if he’d heard it a million times from his own now-adult kids.
Yet I’ve got a craving to be heard, so I persevere, closer than ever to having my book, “Craving Normal,” published. In all these years a lot has happened – raised my daughter who went off to college; started a successful business, Tree Audio; dealt with life and death – but always I go back to my stories, crafting them, shaping them, editing them. My craving is a constant obsession, as you see.
