When I was eight, in the summertime my mother had to call me in from playing outdoors at least twice before I even acknowledged I’d heard her voice. Then I’d beg her to let me stay outside for a while longer, until she issued dire threats if I didn’t “come in right this minute.” It was only at that point that I would petulantly stomp back into the house.
Once inside, she’d grab onto me and try to hold me still as she “pre-cleaned” me before setting up my bath. She knew if she didn’t, my bathwater would turn muddy within minutes of my being placed in it. That was because when I was eight, I played in dirt ─ sat right down in it, made mud with it, dug up some very fine rocks and wiggling earthworms hiding beneath it. And so, my mother would put my hands and arms in the bathroom sink and attempt to shake off some of that dirt which had caked onto my arms, into the crevices and lines on the palms of my hands, around my cuticles and under my fingernails. After that, she’d lean down and attack the skin on my knees with a washcloth. My knees were literally black with grime, sweat, and tan. In fact, my skin was so dark from my playing out in the sun so long that she could never tell when she’d rubbed hard enough to get down past the dirt and just onto bare flesh, so I’d end up with raw skin from her efforts. I’d never even heard the word “sunscreen” back then, and when I was eight, I wouldn’t have cared if I had.
When I was eight, I wore my hair to my shoulders the same as I do now, except back then I was too busy being a kid to keep it neat. It stuck out and up in the way only coarse, thick hair can, and I was forever pushing my dirty hands through it to keep it out of my eyes. That’s why my mother also had the nightly task of pulling bits of branches out of my hair that I’d picked up from climbing trees or crawling through the woods in the “forts” we made. My hair was so wiry and tangled that once, a brush my mother was trying to force through it snapped right in half at the handle. In frustration, she had my hair cut pixie short. It did not look trendy, but it was convenient, and instead of being traumatized, I loved how my shadow now looked on the cement patio when I moved my head back and forth and wiggled my arms out to my sides ─ sort of like one of the dancing skeletons in my favorite cartoons. I looked like a shadow skeleton somewhat, because even though I ate three healthy meals a day and all the sugary candy I could buy with 25 cents a week, (which was a lot) I was downright skinny from moving so much, using my body so much for the things it was meant to do.
When I was eight, boys were just more people with whom to climb trees and have racing contests or rock-throwing contests. They were sometimes annoying because they were stronger and could beat me more often than not, and of course, I wanted to win. Some of them seemed to like bugs more than I did, too, and most certainly they often smelled bad. So, why would I care if creatures like that thought I was pretty or not? Why, with so much fun to be had, like running and climbing and sticking my hands in dirt, finding baby birds that had fallen out of trees and nursing them back to health, would I care myself, if I were pretty or not?
When I was eight and if for some reason we couldn’t play outside, my sister, cousins, and I made up games like “Spy” or sang songs out loud in the basement so we wouldn’t bother our parents who were upstairs, smoking, drinking coffee, and talking about stupid, boring stuff we had no interest in knowing about whatsoever. We held plays, and sometimes we could get our parents away from their stupid, boring stuff to come downstairs to watch them. My cousins, sister and I were all bossy, and we all argued about who was going to play what part. Our mothers would tell us to behave. We didn’t listen.
We didn’t meekly submit. Not to our mothers, not to our friends, not to anybody else’s idea of what we were worth. In that world it would have been unfathomable to know of another eight-year-old girl who would hold in her tears while her mother put needles filled with poison in her face, just so she could “be beautiful.” In that world it would be unfathomable to want “boob jobs and nose jobs”, because we felt we were perfect the way we were.
We were real. Life was real.
How to Have a Successful and Rewarding (Writing) Life
Oscar Wilde, 1882
So a number of people have written to ask me for tips for a successful writing life. (Yes, believe it or not, they have. Why they’re asking me and not JK Rowling is a puzzle, but there you go.) In response, I thought I’d post my rules for doing that here. In fact, on pretty much every point, the points below are most likely the way I’d lead my life even if I hadn’t chosen to be a writer:
1) Work hard.
2) Have a supportive spouse/partner and family. If he/she is not supportive consider that this person may not be the person for you. (I’m serious.) If your family (parents and other relatives) are not supportive, ignore them completely. If your children are not supportive, unless they’re under age 18, ignore them, too. Don’t let other people’s discontent with their own lives taint your perspective, even if you happen to love those people. You giving up your dreams will not make them any happier.
3) Work even harder.
4) Remember every single person who helps you get a step up ─ the people who give you blurbs, the people who leave comments on your blog, the people who review your book, your agent, your fellow writers who show up at your book events, the book seller who hosts your events, the local newspaper columnist who does a story on you, the editors who critique your work (they’re your friends not your enemies) ─ and even if that person never does another thing for you, try to help them at least twice as much as they helped you whenever you can.
5) Keep working hard.
6) Take no notice of anyone who is jealous of you and/or seems to wish you harm. Don’t be offended by those who trash your work, who say “no” to any requests, who ask to be taken off your mailing list, who give you an *unrealistically negative review. If you expend energy worrying about these people, that is that much of your energy used up in a negative way and ─ believe me ─ you will need all your energy. (See points 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.) Also, don’t be jealous of other people’s success. Don’t compare yourself to others, ever. Because what you’re comparing are two very unalike things; what you’re comparing is your inside to what somebody else’s outside appears to look like to you. Again, a big fat waste of energy.
7) Keep working. Now is not the time to get discouraged.
8) In point six, I say ignore the “unrealistically” negative review. But if someone takes the time to critique your work and make a criticism or two that you keep hearing over and over again, it’s time to silently thank those detractors and look over your work with a more critical eye. They took time out of their busy lives to write about your book. Heck, they even spent money to buy your book, and if they’re telling you something, perhaps you ought to mull over. This is a positive, not a negative thing.
9) The more successful you get, the harder you work. Yes, that part sucks, but that’s the way it is. If you have one book out, you should be marketing it, but at the same time, you should be at least thinking about your next writing project. Can you say, “10-hours-a-day workday, 6 days a week?” Better be able to do more than say it.
10) On point #9, if you want to have a life outside of writing and still be successful at it, plan every moment of your day to get the most out of your time. 10 hours a day includes your marketing time as well as your writing time. The rest of the day includes your sleep, your dinner time, exercise, your hobbies, your chores, your time with your family and friends. So plan it out well. Savor it. Don’t waste it.
11) Embrace your workday, don’t resent it. You will be extremely unhappy if you can’t do this one thing.
12) Take time off when you need to and do not feel guilty about it, ever. Want to spend time with your young children, even several years of time? Do it. Want to go away with your partner or some friends? With few exceptions, don’t make it a working holiday. (Unless, of course, you’re in the middle of book tour. Ahem.) Embrace your time off as much as you embrace your work day. Because the definition of “success” is being able to look back on your life without too many regrets.
Anyone care to add their own ideas on the above? I’d love to hear them.
(P.S. Isn’t this a wonderful photo of Oscar?)