What a week it has been for WORDS!  I am talking about the one word that brought down a marketing empire, destroyed major product endorsements and threatened to undo all that its Queen – Paula Deen – had built up.  That word is the N-word.

Out of respect for anyone who is offended by the N-word, I will not spell it out in this post. I have no desire to stir the pot of rancor that this word elicits.  I do not know anything specific about the current controversy regarding Ms Deen, nor do I need to. (Google Paula Deen and see how much she has accomplished and you will understand why I respect her as a person because of the enormous odds she has overcome.) It is painful to watch all the hurt that the media has caused Ms Deen by reporting in minute detail every facet of this controversy. But I do understand exactly what Ms Deen meant when she said (and I paraphrase), Anyone over 60 who grew up in the South has said that word as a noun without thinking about it, and especially without intending disrespect. 

First, a little background. I was a Sociology student at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi when it came to our attention that the N-word was offensive to some of our people.  I remember all the discussion that this engendered.  If they didn’t want to be called by that name, what would be acceptable?  Negro/Negra, African-American – what? Finally many of us decided that “black person” or simply “black” might do, since we did not find it offensive to be called “white person” or “white”.  Unfortunately, none of us bothered to check our choice with an actual person of the offended demographic. When I went home after this buzzstorm had hit the papers, I asked the lady who worked in my aunt’s house (where I lived) what she would prefer to be called.  She said: “Julia”.

Lesson learned – Interact with people by their name, not their race…

I am fascinated by the power of this word. Nowhere else have I heard about a word with so much actual power except the word Yahweh, which we were told had the power to strike one dead, if he/she were so callous as to take the name of God in vain, unless the name of God was being invoked to actually curse someone.  Well, we all know how that worked out.  “Curse” words have now become reduced to “cuss” words, and we don’t give a thought to uttering God’s name in any string of words, for any reason. (Well, some of us do, but that’s another story.)

As always when a certain word intrigues me, I have to research it.  And so today I googled the N-word and got Kevin Cato: Intertext. (I am probably on a list now for googling the N-word itself, but no substitutes would do in a precise search.) I read about the background of the N-word with great interest. Please read it completely through to the end, as it is a bit wordy, but well worth the trip.

No one owns individual words.  We don’t even own our own names. We can trademark all we want, but someone else could use that name as well, no problem.  So to that extent, ALL words have power. On the back of my business card, I wrote the following:

I write.  You read.  I speak.  You listen.  Together we learn… Words Change Lives!

When writing fiction, it is interesting to see all the possibilities raised when you name your characters. Research the meanings of their names  and work those meanings into your characters as their personas develop throughout your work.

What is your name? Who chose it for you? Were you baptized with a long name, such as the the string of names to be given to the forthcoming British heir? What does your name mean? If you were allowed to re-name yourself, what would you name YOU?

Several years ago, I asked my husband “What do you think?” regarding a segment of a book I was writing, An Agreeable Man. Instead of his opinion – a man’s opinion, which I desperately needed – I got this: “Why would you want to write about that?!!” (I realize that he’s an engineer and can write excellent reports, but he isn’t exactly gifted in the flights of fancy that I take when I write.  Also he kept seeing himself in my description of the lead character which was devastating to his ego since the leading character was also the villain.)

This was the last straw after several months of finally being able to get back to writing this off-and-on again book.  I knew there were areas that needed working on, but honestly I couldn’t see them. So I decided to look for and join a writers group.

The first one I found met in a library and there were several people there, a nice mix of ages, and a good ratio of men to women.  I especially liked the fact that time would be allotted to read a snippet of our work in progress and that people would follow along on copies provided by each reader and write their comments in the margins.  Instant feedback! Just what I needed…Until the copies of the RULES were handed out.  Page after page after page of rules.

After attending a couple of times, a future meeting was cancelled because the two women who started the group were attending a Writer’s Conference – on behalf of our group.  We were asked to donate to their travel expenses. They would come back and tell us all about it, they promised. Meanwhile, no meetings would be held until they got back.  I declined to donate, but I did go to the next meeting.  Information was exchanged between the two women with lots of insider jokes, rolling of eyes, nudging of elbows and other signs of a VERY good time – but sadly, nothing of value was shared with those of us who stayed behind.

When it came time to read my current work, I was last by (my) design.  It was a poem about my mother and her declining health. I did not give out any copies.  I knew it was good because I wrote it from the heart, and delivered it from the gut. Of the twelve writers there, none had dry eyes when I finished reading my work.  When I stopped, there was silence – and then they clapped enthusiastically and asked me questions and cried some more. It was perfect, they said, no help needed. The two women asked if they could have a copy “for the records”, but I declined, especially since they had told us that the next event they would go to “representing us” would be a writing contest that had a $1500 prize, which no doubt would go to their “travel expenses.”

So I went next to a writers group that met in a bookstore. Again, a good mix of writer types; but also “again”, there were those “rules”. This time, the structure caused the group to divide in half, with some coming during the noon hour and some coming in the evening. The best thing about the group was the critique sheets, which we used to give feedback as each writer read his/her work.

I attended 3 or 4 meetings until one evening, the organizer of that group told us we would be participating in a writing exercise. She gave us a few particulars about a story idea and asked us to write the introductory paragraphs for it.  We dashed these off and turned them in.  Turns out, she, too, was going to enter the best one in a contest for which she would be paid.

So I left and went to my third – and last – writers group. This one met at a Starbucks. We had only 8 people, but they were feisty and opinionated! And kind. And just decent people. There wasn’t a Diva in the bunch! We listened to each other as we read our works, and noted our comments on copies provided by each other.  Here’s an example of the kind of help I got:

In An Agreeable Man, I used as my opening sentence a sentence that I had carried around with me for years, handwritten on a small piece of paper. “On the way home from the funeral, Mrs. Evans stopped by the pet store and bought a puppy. She had been visiting the pet store every day on the way back from seeing Mr. Evans at the hospital.”  Ten pages later, it was revealed that Mr. Evans died in his den, in his comfy chair, in front of the fireplace AT HOME! If there was no event sending Mr. Evans to the hospital, how could Mrs. Evans visit her husband there, much less pass by the pet store?

I never saw this discrepancy because I was too busy carefully crafting the next chapter where the central plot and characters of this thriller are laid out.  (Beginner’s mistake…!) It didn’t take those writers two minutes to figure it out.  And they all caught it immediately!  And they all agreed that I would have to choose between my beloved opening sentence and the scene of the crime, both of which were necessary to the outcome of the storyline.

And the one thing they did NOT do was try to tell me how to do this. “You’ll figure it out,” they said.  Oh, how I hated to leave that group!  But our meeting place was jeopardized when the Starbucks had to move.

So listen: Is anyone out there willing to start up a writers group with me? It will be a Read Aloud and Critique Workshop. We will be each other’s audience as we read our works to each other. If you are interested, I will be glad to share some emails with you and maybe we can come up with something fun as well as something that helps us write and get published! (nancybaker@comcast.net) Are you in?

 

 

 

So…Happy Father’s Day! Right? It occurred to me yesterday, Father’s Day, that I had never said those words to my father because he died before I was three. Growing up, Hallmark card holidays had not been hyped to the extent they are now, so thoughts or memories of one’s father did not attach to one particular day. I was the one in a large extended family who did not have a father, but it did not matter then. Also, I was raised in a matriarchal family where the women were the breadwinners, owned the businesses and ran the households with a little help from the help. Our business as children was  not to speak until we were spoken to, always be polite to our elders, do not cry, never ask “why?”, and stay out of sight when the elders gather, except at mealtimes.  Being on time was a really big thing with punishment attached if we were late. Not big punishment; things like “we had dessert first tonight and you missed it.”

But as I got older, I began to realize the function of a father. He stood up for you; he provided for you; he taught you things like how to drive and how to camp; and above all, he taught you how to size up people and situations. He seemed to know when someone was teasing you, and when they were verbally hurting your feelings.  His arms were strong. His hugs felt safe. He knew how to make you laugh, even when you felt like crying. And he showed you all the different ways to love each other. I never quite got the concept of romantic love because I had never seen it in my home. But there was respectful love, brotherly love, love of work, love of learning, love of country, love of God.  I saw this through the actions of all the men in my family and the warm way my aunts and grandmother talked about their ‘menfolk.’ And I saw husbands and wives who were each other’s best friends.

It never occurred to me that fathers might not be considered as necessary as mothers are to a family. Who in their right mind would choose NOT to have a father, given that they were good people? And who in their right mind would choose to be a single parent, a single mother? I knew how hard that road was. My mother raised two children in the homes of various relatives, and even though she had a good job and a support group, it was not the same as having a husband and it certainly wasn’t easy.

As advertising and marketing began to mold and shape us far more than family influences, we learned that credit was easy and facilitated our wants.  And we were encouraged to “want” any and everything because we were ‘worth it’. The focus of the family slowly turned inward to the children.  Whatever WE didn’t have as children, we were determined to give to our children as their “right.” Divas were cute and tantrums were in. Putting one’s self first was not considered selfish, but an art form to be cultivated.

And when the entertainment industry decided in its infinite wisdom to schedule programs that promote and reward people in situations where the wedding is planned and the baby is planned but the father is jettisoned after the stud service is over, well, I decided to write about it.

I researched the topic. (Google the stats on single mothers.) Yes, good men are hard to find. Yes, women are too picky because they base their requirements on tinseltown values. Yes, the hard-working single moms are to be admired, but learning how to grow within the yin and yang of male/female relationships is mainly learned in the day-to-day ebb and flow of family life. Something is lacking in our children when that element is gone. We have failed to prepare them for the outside world.

One of my friends had 3 sons who were young adults. The previous year one of her sons chose to leave the family and set up housekeeping with his girlfriend. That caused a lot of unhappiness, but not to the extent that the latest problem did. The couple had come to my friend and her husband and told them that they were expecting a baby. And they had no plans to get married. My friend, who was happily looking forward to being a grandmother someday, now saw a situation develop where she might not be able to enjoy the situation they proposed.

My advice to her was to write out her problems in a letter to the one who is causing you the problems. Write it out and take as many pages as you want. Use words you can’t say in public or maybe words you can’t even say in the dark.  Get it all out. And then put it in a drawer or on a shelf overnight. Re-read the letter. Then distill the essence of the letter into a single sentence. When you are satisfied that this is THE definitive sentence, take the letter outside and burn it.  (Just be sure NOT to mail the letter. ) Here is her sentence:

The best thing you can do for that baby you want so much is to love its daddy more than anything else in the world, including yourself.

The takeaway from writing about an emotion-flled topic is to not get caught up in the emotion. That takes mental discipline and if it doesn’t come out right the first time, if it doesn’t say exactly what you want it to say, keep writing and re-writing until it does. Distill your comments until their meaning is so pointed it cannot be missed or misunderstood. Or put it on the shelf. The day will come when you are in control enough that the message can come through you – as the facilitator – loud and clear.

Using a fictitious name to conceal one’s identity as a writer is a time-honored tradition. I don’t know that there are actual rules for doing this, but one needs to think long and hard before anything that you write is published or distributed to others without being attributed to you. Personally, I feel that using a pen name has its purposes. Agatha Christie used the pen name Mary Westmacott when she wrote outside her murder mystery genre because she felt that writing intuitive romances might negatively impact the sales of her mystery books. She was correct. She wrote them anyway, and published them, because she had something important to say that she wanted to share. Her publishers convinced her that sales would go down, but since she didn’t write them for economic reasons, she used a pen name, Mary Westmacott. By the time her cover was blown, so to speak, she could have sold paper napkins as long as her name was written on them.

I have all of Agatha Christie’s published works and I read and re-read them many times each year.  I like that her murders have just enough violence, blood and gore to establish that a real murder has occurred. Figuring out “who done it” is interesting because I couldn’t have figured out her twisting and turning plots by myself. And Justice is always served. But it is her ability to create meaningful characters with a few well-chosen words that intrigues me the most. Christie leaves no loose ends.  That is why I frequently use her murder mysteries to put me to sleep. It is the satisfaction of a job well done and I can breathe a sigh of relief as I turn out the light and turn off the worries of my day. On the other hand, her romance novels, which are filled with suppressed emotion and the irrevocable results of bad choices, do not interest me other than as being other books written by Agatha Christie, using a pen name.

I wrote a book titled Touchpoints and published it in 2011 under the pen name Sally Shirley.  I chose the title because certain events occurred to me and several women I knew many years ago which affected us all – they were in fact points in time that touched us all. I wrote them down on those bits of paper and saved them, packrat that I am. Early in 2011, I found enough of these disparate pages to realize that I had a book about women of a certain age and time of life going through rough times – and good times.  I chose the pen name Sally Shirley because my aunt called me “Sally” when I was a little girl.  “Shirley” is my mother’s maiden name and my middle name.

I chiefly write about relationships in a diary style, as if I am chronicling my own life, which is unnerving to some of my readers because it is so intensely personal. For example, this poem struck a nerve with several of my readers:

AVAILABLE

I need a hug, I said.

I’m always available for a hug, you said.

And then you went to sleep,

Your hand on my shoulder.

Available?

You could go down to the funeral home

and lie down beside the corpses there

And be ‘available’…

You,

The computer expert,

Should know the meaning

of the word

“Interactive,”

And I,

The computer user,

Am considering

Whether to hit the “esc” key

Or

Just “delete” you.

A couple of years ago, we were in New York at Christmastime. Our hotel was beautifully decorated; holiday music was piped in; shoppers were loaded down with packages – and smiles! Two couches were aligned back to back in front of a gigantic fireplace in an alcove just off the lobby.  A middle aged couple was sitting on the back couch, having an intense conversation. So I took the front couch where I could see our family members come through the revolving door. The doorman in his white uniform with gold braid looked like a tall toy soldier. Shimmering to my left was a huge Christmas tree, laden with balls and tinsel and ornaments. Ah, Christmas!

As I focused on people coming through the door, my mind wandered to the couple and I tuned in on this vignette:

“Well, all I know is you weren’t like this before you got the sentence.” The woman clutched her purse to her stomach as she spoke, looking straight ahead.

“What sentence?” The man slumped on the couch asked.

“The Death Sentence. You know, you got Cancer.” She spoke angrily as she turned to look at him.

Silence.

The man looked to his left, away from her.  “Well, yes. It made me feel…shell-shocked.”

She began rummaging around in her purse. “You act differently. You seem more…feminine, crying and all.”

Triumphantly, she pulled out her lighter and a cigarette, and began the ritualistic lighting up ceremony. “I don’t like it…”

His head slumped further down on his chest. “I can’t help it! I have no control. It just happens.”

She blew smoke in his direction as she turned towards him.”Oh, please! Decide what to do and do it.”

He tried to process this and finally said: “Deciding what to do is hard but it’s harder to decide what NOT to do.”

“Is that a riddle?” she snapped. “Because all of a sudden I don’t know who you are any more.  I can’t live like this.”

“Like what?”

“All you talk about is dying. Or what treatments you might have to take.”

Slowly, he spoke. “Well, there’s lots of things to think about. Lots of decisions to be made. It’s hard to do.”

Harshly, she spoke. “Well, I don’t want any part of it, so keep away from me…”

Suddenly, she half-rose. “I need a drink.”

As she started towards the bar, she turned to look at him. “Well, are you coming?”

He hadn’t moved. “Well, I don’t know. Am I supposed to drink now? Not drink? I don’t know how to think about things…”

He raised his head to look in her direction. “What do you think I should do?”

She practically yelled at him. “I think you should leave me out of it!!”

His face crumpled. “But I need your help…”

She stood twisted, body half turned to the bar, her purse dangling. “I have no help to give you so don’t bother me about it.”

The man hunched forward on the couch, in the midst of getting up. “About what?”

“You know, about your cancer, about your dying. About all of it. Just leave me out of it!”

She waited on him to complete his laborious rise from the couch. “I’m going to the bar now. Are you coming?”

Halfway up, yet still halfway down, he mused more to himself than to her. “I don’t know. Should I drink anything? What should I drink? I could use a drink, but I don’t know. What do you think?”

Mercifully, my family showed up at this point, but I almost begged them to wait so that I could get some more of this fascinating conversation. God only knows what delicious words angst plus alcohol would spew out of their mouths! I already had the characters pegged as to looks, and had decided that a play was the best vehicle for their story. The disconnect between the characters was so palpable that they needed that audience interaction to feel people lining up behind them, taking his or her side and flinging it back to the other side with the force of a battering ram. It hurt to watch them interact, and I knew that further words would hurt even more. There was no pity here, no love, no compassion, and certainly no offer of help. Now that I knew WHO the characters were, all I needed to do was to go up and down their timelines to flesh out their individual and combined stories.

BUT WAIT…

(I am going to pause here to tell you that this sounded very familiar to me and I had to identify when and where I had experienced it before developing my characters further. Finally it came to me.  It was another winter but not in New York. It was at Lake Tahoe and I had gone with my husband on a business trip. I was behind closed doors in the ladies room when two women came in. As they washed their hands, the following conversation ensued – and I will tell you if you haven’t already guessed that this exchange was taken down verbatim with lipstick on toilet paper. I felt like I was in Dolly Partin’s 9 to 5 movie!)

“She did what?!”

“Honey, she hauled him out of the nursing home and made him come on this trip!”

“She did NOT!”

“Yes, she did! It was a couples tour and you can’t come if you aren’t a couple.”

“Well, couldn’t she have asked a friend…?”

“Martha, you know the woman.  Do you think a friend would come with her? I mean, I don’t even think she has any friends…”

“You’re right. Someone told me they thought her husband faked his dementia symptoms just to get put in a place where she couldn’t get at him…”

“Well, it didn’t work. She got him out two days ago and he’s been on the bus obviously sick and upset every day since.”

“Poor man. All he wanted was just to live out his life in peace…”

“Well, she can’t get to him any more. When she got up this morning, she started shaking him to get him up so they wouldn’t be late for the free breakfast…and he was DEAD! The couple in the room next door said that she screamed and yelled at him, ‘You sorry bastard! Now I’m going to have to cancel my trip!”

(Years have passed since then and I am sorry to say that I have seen this type of couple several times. Sad, but true…)

Okay. Now I am ready to place this real couple in a scene I have made up to see if I have, in fact, “nailed” their characters…

The scene is a doctor’s office. The man is on the examination table; the woman sits forward on a chair, clutching her purse with both hands, in her lap.  The doctor enters and (reading from a chart) says:

“Well, Mr. Abramson, we have your test results back and…”

“How long do you think he has? How long does it take to die from this type of cancer? Will he be done by Spring? I could go to my sister’s by Spring cause her kids are out of school…”  The wife stands up, pulling her skirts out of the back of her legs with one hand, holding the ever-present purse in the other.

The doctor nods in her direction, then turns to face his patient. “Before I get into the technical part, do you have any questions for me?”

“Yes, I do, Dr. Wenn, and thank you for asking. I do have questions, but I can’t keep them in my mind long enough to ask them.  It’s like a movie marquee in there, in my mind. And on the marquee it says ‘It’s all over, Sol.  You’re dying…Prepare to meet your maker’…It’s scary, doc.”

Silence.

“Sorry. What did you ask me, Doctor?”

The Doctor pushes his glasses up his nose says, “Well, Sol, I asked if you had any questions…”

Sol:  “Oh, right. Well, yes.  Is this a death sentence?  Are you certain I will die?  Is there anything that can be done here?”

Dr. Wenn: “Before I answer those questions, let me tell you what helps most of my patients.  You can go online and look it up. I have suggested some medical sites here which will work with the patient; in fact, a couple are interactive. Here’s a summary of my diagnosis and the medical terms are highlighted.  Those are the ones you will want to look up. You know how you are feeling, so look for those symptoms. And remember not to believe the worst – or the best – advice you are given.

Now for your diagnosis…”

AT THIS POINT, I usually try to identify at least two scenarios that the play can take, and develop the plots accordingly. I would probably go to a medical blog and read patient reviews of how they were treated personally and chemically with this same condition. There’s a wealth of conversation on blog sites!

And this is a good time to flesh out your main characters by imagining how and where they live. Go there, if possible, and walk their neighborhoods, talk/listen to their “imaginary” neighbors. What habits are they defined by? What speech patterns make their conversations predictable?  Do they have a pet? If not, why not? Children? Grandchildren? Do/Did they work? At what? Where? Church? Synagogue? Politics? Read the demographics on their age group. Did they travel? What was their proudest moment? Their biggest disappointment? Any lost loves? Close friends?  The more you can dig up about these imaginary people, the more your characters will shimmer and shine as REAL people to your readers.

This is a good rule in general, but it has failed me at the most inopportune times. For example, my grandmother, Nancy Elizabeth McClellan Shirley, was in many ways a self-made woman. Born in 1888, she had a career as a teacher long before she married my grandfather because, as he said, she “needed someone to take care of her.” How he missed the fact that she had managed 8 grades in a single schoolhouse, I’ll never know. What I do know is that she spent 50 years taking care of 7 children plus two invalid inlaws plus an entire farm that involved raising those children, feeding those children plus hired hands, plus relatives plus growing her kitchen crops plus supporting a husband who ran for political office, plus being active in the community and church. I just knew there was a great story there, but when I began to research it, here is all I got:

• she seemed to enjoy having her family around her
• she gave us socks for Christmas
• she had yellow cornsilk hair that was past her waist which she wore braided around her head
• she combed her hair every night 100 strokes
• she thought her yellow hair was too bright, so she had it “grayed” at the beauty parlor “which was more seemly…”
• she taught me how to turn milk into butter by working the butter stick up and down, saying the magic words “Come, butter, come…”
• I never saw her cry
• she rarely showed her teeth in a smile but she just might push out her dentures!
• I never heard her sing
• she was a listener
• even after I graduated college, we never discussed religion or politics or sex
• she said she never ate anything twice that belched her once
• she was an advocate of “early to bed, early to rise…”
• she loved to garden and was taught by Indians how to plant and harvest
• she liked fresh air in the house, so she slept with the windows open
• she kept peppermint candy under her pillow
• she was an excellent cook
• she said you should ‘winter and summer’ with a man before you married him
• she rarely went to movies or any other forms of entertainment
• she never bought anything on credit, saying that if you wanted something, you should save for it.
• she took snuff
• she took rock candy and whiskey for winter colds
• she raised chickens and had no problem axing off their heads for Sunday dinner
• she had practical solutions for every problem. For example, at age 2, I still had not learned to tie my shoes and my mother asked her mother what to do. Grandmother Shirley put me up on a high stool and said “You can get down when you can tie your shoes.” It worked.

I may yet write about the woman for whom I am named. I realized that I only knew Nancy the grandmother, and hadn’t a clue about the girl/woman she was. Yet when I began interviewing her contemporaries, I got a picture of her true identity. I learned from her cousin Percy, who was deeply in love with her, that she “had jet black hair to her hips, blue eyes, and a waist so small that you could touch your fingertips if you put your hands around her waist…” I had asked him what she looked like as a girl. Then I asked about her essence, what she was like as a person. He said she “sang in church and around the farm and was a dancing’ fool! No man could keep up with her or out dance her. She didn’t drink but had “high spirits.” He said he was hurt pretty bad when she married Bard. I asked why she married him and he said “because Bard told her that she needed somebody to take care of her…”

The takeaway to this is that sometimes you can know too much about a person to be able to share that with your writing public. Taking a step back and seeing them through another’s eyes is helpful. But my favorite thing to do is to fictionalize factual situations through imagined conversations and comments. You’ll know when your characters are  IN character by the way your copy reads from the printed page.  Are they in the room with you? Perhaps looking over your shoulder to see if you got it (them) right?

I frequently go to Cracker Barrel to write. There are dozens of people around, it’s very noisy, and I find that the act of “tuning out the people and the noise” helps me focus on the writing I am trying to get done.  A couple of years ago, one of the waitresses came over to my table and asked if anything was wrong with the couple she was serving. I told her that I had written a poem about them during their lunch meal.  Here it is:

HE LOOKS AT HER

He looks at her

Like my dog looks at steak.

He smiles at her,

Delighted to be in her presence.

His jaw, resting on his hand, is firm.

His smile is lopsided, a little goofy!

“I only have eyes for you”

Is the clear message he sends.

His eyes are riveted on

Her lips,

Her eyes,

Her face.

He listens to every word she says

With no distractions.

“I understand,” he says,

As he leans forward,

Eager to hear more.

He’s not lecturing,

Or explaining,

Or teaching,

Or telling her anything.

He is just enjoying her company.

Clearly, they are not married.

This poem was the impetus for my first book, written under a pseudonym, featuring many of the poems I had written and saved over a 30 year period. Many poems were on scraps of paper, some in those blank books that are supposed to inspire one to write, and a couple were written in lipstick on toilet paper! (We use what’s available when the Muse starts dictating!) That’s when I learned that I should carry a pen/pencil and small notebook or yellow Post Its with me at all times, in case of a writing emergency! I will get up in the middle of a good night’s sleep to write down whatever occurred to me, because I have learned that the Writing Muse does NOT strike twice for me! The takeaway from this is that you should write wherever you find inspiration. Chances are you can return to your special place many times and find it conducive to your need to write.

Sometimes reading an article will provide the perfect opportunity for you to express yourself.  Writing is a good way to get your opinion across without confronting a person who might have an opposing opinion. When I worked in Nashville, I became a fan of the Nashville Business Journal, whose editor at the time was Jeff Wilson.  So I combined a “fan letter” with an article written in response to his editorial on Voting.

I read with great interest your column: “Voting is the essence of liberty in the U.S.” in the November 7-11, 1988 issue of the NASHVILLE BUSINESS JOURNAL, and I must say it evoked some strong memories of my first time to vote. It was 1961. I remember the year because I turned 21 that January, graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, got married in May, and had my first job as a married woman. In my mind, being able to vote was just the icing on the cake of adulthood.  Our home was in Starkville, where my husband was a student at Mississippi State University, and I just about drove him crazy talking about finally being able to vote. But to this day I don’t remember who was running, whether it was a state/local/or federal election or what.  And here is the reason why…

I was working as a secretary downtown, and had decided to vote during lunch.  I remember walking up the front steps of our “new” courthouse building – which some had criticized for being “too modern” – and of going into a large room where two people sat in front of a table which held a wooden box whose hinged top had a slit in it. There were some sheets of paper with a single column of names on each, and some pencils over to one side of the box. “Hi!” I said. “My name is Nancy Baker and I’m here to vote!”

I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t what happened next.  One of the two people was a man who looked liked the character portrayed by Junior Samples of Hee Haw, including the bib overalls. He stopped chewing his toothpick, took it out of his mouth and pointed at the pile of paper. “Go to it, honey.” “Well,” I said, “I’ve never done this before and I need a little help.” His face lit up. “Sure thang, darlin’. Now here’s all you do.” He picked up one of the papers. “You take this here ballot, and you pick who you want to vote for, and then you get your pencil…(he picked up the pencil) and then…(he folded the paper and put it into the box)…you vote!” Then he and the woman sitting next to him just about fell off their chairs, laughing.

Well, it seemed simple enough, so I reached for a ballot, got a pencil, marked a candidate, folded my paper, and started to put it in the box. “What cha doin, hon?” the woman laid her hand over the hole in the box. “Why, I’m voting,” I said. More laughter! When the woman caught her breath, she said “Honey, you done already voted!” Then she pointed toward the door and made a waving motion with her hand. And I’m sorry to say that I just left.  I was so totally taken aback by what had happened that it took me a while to sort it all out.

So you see why I can say with you (though perhaps for different reasons) “‘I will never forget the feeling that evening. I remember it every Election Day, and every Election Day I commemorate that feeling with one simple act: I VOTE.'”

When writing this – in 1988 and today – I am back in that voting room. I can see the man and woman. I can smell his snuff and her body odor. I was definitely more educated than they were but I certainly was at a serious disadvantage as to what was going on.  These “volunteers” owned that voting box and they had the fate of every voter’s ballot in their hands. It was the first time I encountered The Game, and I have made it my business ever since to know what game I am in when I interact with other people, in public or in private. Secondarily, one must choose to play or not. When you have been “had” through ignorance or intimidation, what choices did you make? I fumed about this for years, until I wrote about it. Now it is part of my past and I can go forward. The takeaway is that it matters even more to always vote, no matter what.

 

Why do writers write? And how do they find the inspiration to write about meaningful things? This is a question I have been asked to address many times and here is my answer: Writing is not a choice with us. We have to write! Our waking and dreaming moments are spent trying to make sense or beauty or catharsis out of our worlds. Sometimes it hurts to write, and sometimes it stops the hurt. Word Play is delicious! I personally enjoy arranging the words on the page as much as I enjoy writing them down. Writers see things in a different way. I invite you to check out my blog a couple of times a week to see how I process my world through my poems and short stories as I write them. I will tell you why I chose key words and try to explain the satisfaction I feel when I know that a poem or story is “done”. For example:

I am a storyteller.

I embellish what I say!

If I don’t like what really happened,

I’ll re-tell it my way!

So read my words carefully –

(The facts may be skewed in your eyes…)

But when you read my version,

You’ll understand my lies.

So, come sit beside me at my computer and watch me write a short story – a vignette, really – about something near and dear to every high school person’s heart – THE PROM! Unless you didn’t get to go, that is…

Prom (K)Night

June 13, 1999. THE TENNESSEAN. This headline grabbed my attention: “Grads who never went to prom get chance to dance the night away.” Writer Sue McClure  continued: “Anyone who missed his or her high school prom will have a chance to relish the experience of dancing the night away in a high school gymnasium under a spinning, sparkling silver ball when Retro Prom ’99 will be held in the old Spring Hill School.” Since I never got to go to my high school prom, to think I could go back and do it at the Retro Prom was almost beyond belief!

I was a junior at my high school when I found out I would be graduating in June.  I was a girl “nerd” who took English courses each summer because it was both easy and fun! My plan was to take the harder physics, chemistry and mathematics courses my senior year and graduate with my class. But the school officials decided that I had fulfilled all the requirements for graduation and therefore would graduate early, at age 17. Since I had no boyfriend, a date was assigned to me from the Senior Class. I got an engraved invitation in the mail, naming my escort and giving the place, date and time of the event. I – who had never even had a date – was thrilled to death!

Shopping for the perfect dress began in earnest. I finally found a teal blue strapless dress with a bouffant skirt that just skimmed my knees. It made my green eyes sparkle, mother said. But it wasn’t just the dress. It was THE PROM! The event warranted a trip to the beauty parlor, a luxury usually reserved for my elders. The beautician offered to do my makeup since I didn’t even wear lipstick! My mother kept saying “You look so grown up,” as she wiped her eyes. New shoes pinched my feet, but I was confident that I would break them in before the evening was over. Dancing was frowned on by my church, but this was THE PROM!, an occasion to celebrate. A lot of money (or so it seemed) was spent on getting me “all dolled up”, money my widowed mother could ill afford. But it was worth every penny because it was for THE PROM!

At last the big evening came! I was almost drunk with excitement, anticipating the wonderful evening ahead. I got dressed. And for the first time in my life, I got a glimpse of how I would look as a woman.  My shoulder-length reddish-brown hair was the perfect background for the beautiful opal earrings my aunt lent me. The matching opal necklace and bracelet were just the icing on the cake!  I felt like a queen all dressed in my finery as I went into the living room to await my date.

I sat down in the chair facing the front door. And I waited. I got nervous, just sitting, so I got up and paced.  After a while, the new shoes began to pinch my feet, so I sat back down. And I waited. And I watched the clock…I got up and moved to the couch, to await the sound of the doorbell which would be rung by a Senior member of the FOOTBALL TEAM, who would then whisk me off to a fairy tale evening of dancing, and maybe even of romancing!

My mother came in to the living room every fifteen minutes or so to check on me for the next couple of hours. But no phone rang to tell me of my date’s wreck or sudden illness.  When it finally occurred to me that my date wasn’t coming, I got up from the couch, took off all the “finery”, washed my face, and went to bed.

The next day, no one in my family even  mentioned The Prom. It was a non-event. Sunday I went to church where I saw all my friends. No one said a word. And Monday I went to school. And thankfully, things seemed to be back to normal.

But things weren’t normal for me. I buried my feelings of anger, rejection, and betrayal for years. Whenever the event would surface in my memory – which it did at the most unexpected times – I still felt so numb that I couldn’t even cry. It was a gash in my very soul that never got better, never healed.

Years later, after college, I met and married a wonderful man. Dancing was not – and is not – a priority for my husband, but the need to dance still burned within my soul. And, after reading the “Invitation to the Dance” article, I asked my husband to the prom – and he accepted!

And so began the flurry of pre-Prom activity! I found the perfect dress – cerulean blue with a filmy matching scarf. I found the perfect (comfortable) shoes. How should I style my hair? Should I wear eye shadow? Would there be pictures? Would my “date” bring me a corsage? As I looked at my husband, who wore his dad’s tuxedo and looked so handsome, I realized that a mature man was a way better date than a high school football player!

The high school gym had been transformed into a dance venue, complete with a sparkling spinning silver ball! There was a buffet dinner. And then the swinging sounds of a dance band took over. That’s when I felt we were truly at THE PROM! We danced, and danced, and danced! And when it was over, we were ready to leave.

I had been so excited, looking forward to an evening of dancing – and romancing – with someone assigned to me NOT by the Senior Class, but by a Higher Power. I was 100% sure that THIS date would show up and whisk me off to a fairy tale evening! And the best part was that I got to go home with my Knight in Shining Armor, after the ball was over.

As I wrote this, I carefully chose words that not only expressed my feelings, but also the feelings of a 17-year-old girl. I used exclamations to show excitement, and run on sentences to imply breathlessness – and, and, and.  I wanted to set the scene of a hugely hyped event with the attendant build up of emotions balanced by the dull realization that something was over before it began. I carefully avoided using the word “Why?” I do not think I could have written this piece had it not had such a satisfying ending. I summed this up with one sentence.  Can you guess which one it is?