Ragged Feathers

Steel-toed boots. Eyeliner. A good-quality trenchcoat. A Zippo, just in case. A pocketknife, a handkerchief or two, electrical tape, and a tiny first-aid kit. These are the things no girl should be without. You can, I suppose, substitute duct tape, but a roll of that is kind of hard to stick in a pocket. Though I have. Once or twice. Just to be sure.

“You need chains,” the Selkie told me, and proceeded to equip me with such. They go in the back of the car, along with the two first-aid kits (softcover survival and hardcover medical), the gallon of distilled water (great for washing the floormats after Sir Pewksalot gets excited), some rolled-up towels, bungees (you can never have too many) and granola bars, the roll of toilet tissue and the extra plastic bags knotted up and stuffed into a milk crate. Antibacterial handi-wipes and extra ibuprofen in the center console, a Sharpie, a tiny tub of Carmex (even if it melts, it will be okay, unlike a tube) and a multi-tool that can break a car window and slice a seatbelt…just in case. Ice scraper. Extra dog leash.

In the garage: the axe handle, the heavy bag, canned supplies and water, extras and just-in-cases on shelves next to the decorations and the boxes of author’s copies. (Maybe I could chuck them at an intruder. That might work.) In the house: bokkan scattered about, the linen closet stocked with first-aid and cold medicine and light bulbs, cleaning supplies, and a weapons check every day. Going through each room and making sure that no matter where I am there is a weapon within easy reach. It doesn’t have to be anything someone else would think of as a weapon, just something I can use for self-defense. Even the souvenir rocks from road-trips can be chucked at a poor soul who won’t know what hit them until too late.

Baby wipes. Sleeping bags. Extra umbrella. Go bags by the front door, both for paranormals (haven’t had a client in years, but still keep it packed and ready) and for emergency/disaster. Important paperwork stashed. Extra pens. Scarves hanging on pegs, gloves in a bucket just in case, flashlights checked and batteries tested. Charcoal, tealights, another survival kit, spare sheets for God knows what, a stack of rag-towels for sopping up spills or ripping into bandages. A stack of old cloth diapers, because they are useful. Cat litter, not just for the cats but also for cleanup of who-knows.

I was told, all during my childhood, that I was flighty. That I’d never make it in the real world, because my head was in the clouds. Instead, I’m the one with a stick of gum, the aspirin in the bottom of the purse, the pocketknife, the GPS or the candle or the cigarette lighter. Motherhood taught me some of that, but my instinct, even while living rough, has been to prepare, as far as possible, for whatever.

I am either going to be in great shape when the zombie apocalypse hits…or on an episode of Hoarders. It’s anyone’s guess which.

The weird thing is, I still think of myself as stupid and flighty. I still have the knee-jerk “oh, I’m a mess, I’m never prepared,” even when I’m the one with the spit and baling wire. I am rarely caught-without in any major way, which is probably helped by the fact that I’ve lived in this house for a good decade now. Which is another thing–even after that long, I’m ready to move at any moment. Ready to pack and torch and flee if necessary. I always have been, but if it hasn’t been necessary for the past ten years, well.

My point (and I do have one) is that readiness is a process, and that I am rarely as helpless as I am afraid I might be. As life lessons go, it’s a good one. I just wish I could get it into my skull so I could relax. Well, at least fractionally. But until that happens, it’s the trenchcoat and a pocket check before I leave the house. It’s checking the go-bags every month and eying the linen closet weekly. It’s packing for just in case and hauling what I might need if disaster, either physical or otherwise, hits. It’s getting ready, being ready, as a state of mind.

What do you do to get ready, kids? I’m interested. I’m always looking for readiness tricks to shamelessly steal borrow. Yeah, borrow. That’s it.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

First of all, we have a winner in the contest for a signed Flesh Circus! Random.org helped me pick a comment number. The winner is comment #11, kara-karina! Kara-karina, drop me an email with your snail mail address and I’ll send you a signed, personalized copy of Jill’s latest adventure.

Also, I am over at SciFiGuy’s place today, with an interview and a chance to win a copy of Betrayals. I will be answering questions in the comments all day. Come on by and say hello! Plus, I’ll be at the Cedar Hills Crossing Powell’s this Sunday for the SF/F Authorfest. Come by and see me, fellow Dame Devon Monk, Barb & JC Hendee, and a bunch of other cool people, including the 501st Cloud City Garrison (Vader’s Fist). Good times will be had by all.

And now, my dears, for my Friday writing post. Are you all settled in with a tasty sandwich and frosty beverage? Good enough.

If I’d listened, none of this would have happened.

You see, I grew up being told that I was a quitter. That I never finished anything, that I had no discipline. I was told that I had my head in the clouds, that I was unreliable, that I might be booksmart but I would never be smart in any other way. I was just too dreamy. I always took the easy way out.

Part of the work I’ve been doing on myself lately has been taking a look at some of those core assumptions I was raised with. A big core belief is that I’m unlovable. Only slightly less huge is the belief that I’m a quitter, that all my success has been a fluke and that I have to live in constant fear of being exposed as, well, a fake.

I may know intellectually that this makes no sense. But the real work comes in when it’s time to change that sick heart-thumping feeling of danger, the feeling that you might be found out at any moment, that you are an imposter in a world of Real People.

I have two beautiful children I’m raising mostly-alone. I am making a living by writing, not the easiest task. I have over twenty books out. And just this week my editor at Razorbill called and told me Betrayals made the Times list for Children’s Paperback Fiction.

It was about twenty minutes later, when I was squeeing on the phone with my agent, that the ugly core belief came out.

“Do they ever make a mistake?” I asked her, anxiously. “I mean, will they find out they’ve been wrong and take it away? Does that happen?”

She reassured me that no, it did not happen, and we went back to squeeing. But later, after I hung up the phone, I wondered why I’d even thought that. It’s the New York Times list, for Christ’s sake. Why could I not accept and believe that I’d worked my ass off, day in and day out, and might deserve some part of the honor?

Because of that core belief that I’m a quitter. It was said to me so often for the first twenty-odd years of my life that I’ve ended up internalizing it, believing it–and it taints even the best news a writer could hope for with the sullen, gut-clenching feeling of being a faker.

But there’s hope. (There’s always hope.)

I pretty much accepted failure was going to be part of my professional life when I set out to get published. Rejection and failure happen every day, and sometimes multiple times a day for a writer. But total failure wasn’t an option. I decided to keep writing until someone, somewhere, liked what I did and offered to publish it. Sooner or later, I reasoned, if I kept working at it, I’d get on somewhere.

Lo and behold, it happened. I got my first break, and I kept writing. I networked like a mad bastard and kept writing. I got an agent and I kept writing. I got my first New York publishing contract and I kept writing. Other contracts followed and I kept writing. Foreign rights, requests for short stories, requests for other books followed–and I kept writing.

Do you sense a theme here?

The thing about challenging a core belief is that it requires that you take a look at the empirical evidence, not just how you feel. I am supporting myself and my kids with words I pull out of thin air. I do my best to hold up my end of the bargain with my Readers–to tell the truth–and you, my dear Readers, respond.

I made an effing NYT Bestseller List, for God’s sake. This is not something you get just by sitting back and smelling roses. It took hard work and a refusal to quit.

That refusal to quit makes me not a quitter. It means whenever that nasty little voice speaks up inside my head I can meet it with evidence in the real world that I am measuring myself by a broken yardstick. That’s the first step to replacing the yardstick with one that works–and not so incidentally, one that won’t stab me in the heart every time I’m down and a little low.

If I’d listened just to that voice, though, this would never have happened. I would never have even gotten published the first time. I would have quit when I got my fiftieth rejection slip, or even earlier.

Some part of me must have known it wasn’t true. Some part of me set its shoulders, lifted its chin, and said to hell with you and what you think, this is what I’m doing. That part is the real me, and it deserves to come out into the sunshine. This is the first jackhammer I’m going to take to that edifice of the core belief. I’m going to break that f!cker up and turn it into rubble, and build something better.

If I had listened, I would have stopped before I got published. If I’d listened, I would have stopped before I got an agent. If I’d listened, I would have stopped and accepted defeat years ago. I did not. I kept going, even while believing myself a “quitter” down in the secret chambers of my heart.

How’s that for crazy?

So, my dear fellow writers (and Readers), let me tell you this. You are not what other people tell you. You are not what other people say. You are what you do. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Get that jackhammer, get that wrecking ball, and start the process of being kind to yourself by chipping away at those voices in your head that judge you and tell you you’re Worth Less. Look at what you’ve done so far. Imagine, if you’ve done all this while believing those awful things about yourself, what could you do if you were not chained? How awesome would that be?

It’s not easy work. But, as my sister once so memorably said, “They call it life because it’s hard.”

I won’t give up. And if I can refuse to give up, so can you. Let’s go kick some ass, you and me.

Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

Crossposted from Deadline Dames

I’m being asked about writing Young Adult fiction a lot. (Go figure.) I can point to this post, where I could finally announce that Strange Angels had sold and went on to talk about YA, bullshit, and low expectations. That was a year ago, it’s probably time to revisit the subject.

I’ve mentioned in a few interviews lately that I never thought I would write YA. I knew, even starting out waaay back when, that I was not going to be very, well, PC as a writer. I write dark little stories full of violence and profanity. This would seem to preclude going into any genre where “won’t someone think of the CHILDREN?” is not just a sarcastic tagline. It just never occurred to me such a career move would be possible.

I mean, I had drabbles and finished novels where the protagonist was between the misty rocks of 13 and 20. I don’t care how old a character is, if they serve the story, fine. They’re in. The problem with those drabbles and novels (issues of first-draft quality aside, thank you) is that the kids in them cursed and bad things happened to them.

In the “young adult” fiction I read growing up, the kids weren’t allowed to cuss and the “moral” was always evident like the shape of a body under a blanket. The classics that could be trusted to tell the truth–like, say, The Outsiders or Judy Blume’s stuff–were good, but they were so few and far between. I started reading adult fiction at nine years old, with (I will admit this) James Clavell’s Shogun.

I’ll just let that sink in for a second. Let me tell that story. It might be instructive.

I was nine. There was a wooded path to some small shops behind our back yard. The shops were a sort of 1980s rural British version of a strip mall or a stop’n'rob–one sold what I’m sure was lingerie and other, ahem, erotic materials (I never went in, being uninterested in lace knickers), one sold tchotchkes and cheap commemorative tea services, and the most popular sold candy, I think cigarettes, small figurines of animals^[1], comic books, and racks of mass-market paperbacks. I didn’t have much money and I was tired of kid books, so I hied myself down to the store and bought the thickest book I could afford. I figured more for my money, right? I took it home, hid it, and had eye-opening reading material for WEEKS. The book starts out with scurvy and shipwreck on the coasts of Japan, a peeing-on-main-character-to-humiliate-him, political skullduggery, lots of fisticuffs and swordfights and muskets, and (gasp!) a Romance. With actual smexxors, or what passes for them in a Clavell book where the favored euphemism was “pillowing.” (Historical or linguistic verisimilitude aside, I found that hysterical and STILL DO.)

To my uncritical nine-year-old self, this was the Best. Thing. Ever. (I can trace my obsession with katanas to this one unfortunate childhood moment.) It was a Real Book. With Real People doing Real Things I knew grown-ups did, like sleeping in the same bed and cussing. From that moment, I read adult fiction and very rarely, if ever, trundled over to the YA section of the library or bookstore. I had found a brave new world of people who spoke the way I knew real people spoke, and very little was off-limits. (God bless the librarians who gave me curious looks but never stopped me. Librarians RULE.)

Things changed in the very late 90s-early naughts. I was well past high school but I found myself reading more YA, and not for nostalgic reasons either. It seemed to me there was a sea change in the YA slice of the publishing industry, and suddenly taboo subjects–obsession, drug use, even cursing–became a little more okay to talk about. I came across this with LJ Smith, whose Forbidden Game series I ate like candy. It featured an obsessive, stalking otherworldly male (sound familiar?) after a confused teenage girl, and there was real risk–dude, Smith killed a character in the first book! Sure, she brought her back later–but it was heady stuff in a YA.

I started reading other young adult titles after Smith reintroduced me to the genre, and YA seemed a lot better. The new books that were coming out had risk, rewards, the occasional bad word. They were a lot truer to the experience I remembered of being that age, under the strictures of school, hormones, and the crushing non-perspective of youth.

For example, I read Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland in 2000, when I was *mumblemumble24*, and was stunned at a young adult author taking on the subject of teen dating violence^[2]–something I had suffered, but that I had never seen directly addressed in a book before. It was like someone had reached back into a trauma of my youth and said, someone else dealt with this too. Your feelings are normal, you’re not alone.

I’m not ashamed to admit I cried.

It could be that the “sea change” I perceived in YA was just a result of my own limited experience, but I don’t think so. I was an omnivorous reader, hungry for just about anything that rang true. If YA books that spoke directly to my own experience would have been available, I think I would have found them. I think those books–the true speakers–have become much more common and have an easier time getting published as the YA genre has loosened up a bit. It could be kids getting more buying power, or the effect of MTV (back when it used to play music instead of Jackass) and a youth-obsessed culture, or publishing following the loosening of certain social constraints. I’m just grateful it’s happened, as a reader.

As a writer, though, I still never thought I would write YA. It took an editor point-blank asking my agent if I’d consider it before it even occurred to me as a possibility, and even then I made very sure the publisher knew what they were getting into. Particularly in the matters of violence and profanity. You’re not going to get a sweetness-and-light story out of me. It just ain’t gonna happen, honey, so you might as well not try. I can do certain limited short stories with a bit of light humor and happy endings, but there’s still the gore factor.

I write from a dark place, and I’m okay with that.

Profanity, too, is something I’m okay with. Like it or not, it’s how people talk. The trick in profanity is to use it appropriately.

People asked me if I was going to stop cursing when I had a kid. I really thought about it, and my answer ended up being, “F!ck, no.” In the privacy of my home I will cuss if I want to. But how to make sure my kids didn’t end up being filthy inappropriate little bandits without being a total hypocrite and saying “do as I say, not as I do?”

My answer: timers.

Here’s the deal my kids under 13 get: “Certain words are Big People words. They are used appropriately (and sometimes not) by Big People. Little People probably shouldn’t use those words, but I know you’re curious. Whenever you want to use those words, you let me know, we’ll set the timer and I’ll leave the room, and for two minutes you can say whatever Big People words you want.”

Then comes the pause and the Mommy Look. “I know you’re going to cuss when you’re out of my sight. Be careful with that.”

And you know what? Having an avenue to express those words takes all the fun out of the forbidden-fruit of saying them. We’ve only used the timer once or twice, and each time the kid in question actually didn’t want to cuss because it wasn’t fun anymore. I’m told how remarkably good-mannered and clean-mouthed my children are in public or social situations, and I just smile. The timer–and watching me clean up my language in certain situations when I’m on duty to be appropriate and reasonable–teaches the little ones all they need to know about how and when to use the Big People words.

Kids aren’t stupid. They’re hungry for answers, and they will find them wherever they can. I’m glad of young adult books taking on a wider range of issues more true to children’s experiences. I’m glad that I told the publisher “this is what you’re going to get from me” and they replied, “We’re behind you.” At the end of the day, whether I’m writing for adults or young adults, I’m seeking to tell the truth. The truth is that being a kid can be, and often is, just as dangerous and profane as being an adult. I’m thankful for the chance to tell the sort of story I wanted to read when I was fourteen.

I hope to do so again.

^[1] I bought so many of those. Wow. And now I have not a single one. It’s amazing. I wish I could remember what they were called–little ceramic animal figurines available in Britain during the 80s.
^[2] Please also check out Loveisrespect.org.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

First, check out Nathan Bransford’s excellent post on tropes and originality. This is why I tell new writers “be honest and the originality will follow”. The ring of absolute honesty will shine through a tired old story and make it new again; when it comes through your uniqueness as a filter it will be unique.

If you’re bored with posts about weight, body image, and food, you might want to skip this one. Just warning you.

Last Labor Day I started an exercise regimen. Slowly and carefully, I’ve dropped almost five sizes. I’m shooting distance from a size 16; 14 is my eventual healthy goal. It’s taken me months, mostly because I don’t want to yo-yo. I want to steadily get into the habit of being healthier and more fit. And because, well, I love food and see no reason to set up the nasty boomerang of denial and binge. I have enough to feel bad and guilty over, I don’t need binge to add to it.

I suppose that I could cook low-fat. I really could. But why? Real butter, real vegetables, real cream, all these things satisfy in a way ersatz doesn’t. A very small bit of the “real” will satisfy more than a ton of the ersatz. For example, a small square of high-quality, very dark chocolate will satisfy me more than three or four Snickers bars. A small serving of pasta with this roasted red pepper sauce made with heavy cream (Oh. My. God. Worth the work, I SWEAR) will satisfy me more than a pound or two of fettuccine alfredo from that chain Italian place down the street. The real may be chock-full of Bad For You fat, but I end up eating less–and less chemical preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, etc. etc.

But this is only working, I suspect, because of the other half of the equation. It’s hard hauling my ass up on that treadmill every weekday. The weeks that I get in five whole weekdays of workout are few and far between. I get three or four days in every week, and my energy level has risen to the point where I’m also getting in a lot more playing with the kids and going for longer evening walks. Five days a week of treadmill and shovelgloving is the goal–but like the Pirate’s Code it’s more of a guideline.

Some days I hurt. Some days I’m sick or there’s an Event or some kid is throwing up or having a Bad Day. Some days it’s the story burning up inside my head. Some days I just plain don’t wanna.

But most days, I do. When I’m ill and I can’t get the exercise in, I feel it. I suppose I’ve reached the point of being addicted to running. And addicted to swinging a sledgehammer around for fifteen minutes or so.

Now, I am never going to be a supermodel. I love food far, far too much and I have a sedentary job. Besides, have you seen supermodels these days? They look like shit.

I’m sorry. I really am. But “starvation” is not something I find attractive. I like a girl with a little flesh on her, just like I like easygoing men with a little flesh on them. And I have all sorts of problems with the persistent message from mass media that women need to starve themselves to paper-thinness. Our place in the world is already small enough, for Christ’s sake.

The more I don’t watch television, the less I find I have in common with a lot of advertising. I never realized how pervasive this crap was until I took a year and a half off the telly (way back when I was first dating the Muffin, lo those many years ago) and found I didn’t miss it. Not only did I not miss it, but my sense of proportion (ha ha) came back in a big way.

Another thing that’s dropped by the wayside: fast food. Cheap fast food…isn’t. In terms of community cost, health cost, and my pocketbook, cheap fast food isn’t. Once in a great while I’ll take the kids to a local burger chain, and the little dears are always very excited. But burger-and-fries doesn’t taste as good, and even the fries–I have such a weakness for fries, you would not believe–don’t move me the way they used to. It’s like soda–once I was off it for a long while, all I could taste were the chemicals when I tried it again.

This is turning into a foodie post instead of a weight post. Which probably means I’m avoiding the subject.

So, I’m spitting distance from a size 16. Dropping steadily through clothes sizes has meant getting new clothes, which I absolutely hate. If there’s anything I hate with a flaming fiery passion it’s clothes-shopping. Just the thought of it makes me shiver. I will buy six of something at a time just so I have a “uniform” and I don’t have to pick clothes every day OR shop for them again. I mean, why spend time on that when I could be reading? Or cooking? Or playing with my kidlings?

Along with the steady weight loss has come an unpacking of hurtful assumptions and trauma from growing up. Food has been an anodyne most of my life, and grazing on trash-cooking full of preservatives and corn syrup was the only thing keeping me reasonably sane during a large proportion of my young years. Food didn’t mock and it didn’t judge, and when I felt empty inside it provided a type of fullness. Like any substitution, though, it had to be paid for. And I did. Over and over again.

I’m also beginning to unpack the sense of security having a fat layer gave me. You can hide inside a mass of yourself, you know. For a girl who equated fisticuffs with attention and any attention, good or bad, with the only approval I could get, the extra poundage was a blessing. It absorbed much more than punches.

Which means that, as I’m slimming down, I’m having to face parts of myself and my life I frenetically ate to avoid. It’s probably no accident that I’m writing YA through all this and really remembering what it was like to be young. On the one hand, I wouldn’t be between twelve and twenty-five again if you PAID me. There isn’t enough money in the world to put myself through that again. But on the other, I can’t hope to achieve any sort of peace within myself without looking hard and long at these things and Dealing With Them. Dealing is better than Drugging Yourself With Food or Frantically Avoiding Dealing With Things By Chopping Off Bits Of Self Or Engaging In Crazymaking Behavior.

I console myself with the thought that the most awesome and stunning people I know had Bad Young Years and didn’t Find Themselves until their late twenties. Being forced to find resources within yourself pays off, if you survive long enough and intact enough. The layers of fat were a survival mechanism, one I am trying to teach myself not to need. It was good while I needed it, but now I don’t–and the price of poor health, acceptable while I needed the fat to preserve some kind of psychic integrity, is no longer one I can continue paying.

It was a good cocoon. It kept me safe and it kept me sane, and I’m grateful. But now I’m almost out of it, and spreading those papery, wet wings. Sooner or later this girl is going to fly.

That, dear Reader? Is the very best revenge at all. I wish I was a bigger person and didn’t need that for motivation. But I realized a long time ago that I wasn’t. And I’m taking what I can get. There’s a certain amount of freedom in recognizing that you may not be a bigger person, but you’re going to do what you can with what you have.

Over and out.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
–Hamlet

I did not know how good or bad my life was until I started seriously writing.

I’ve often talked about this with the UnSullen One. Repressive or abusive families depend on a kid not knowing that what they’re forced into is wrong–it seems natural because it’s all you know. Perspective is impossible to obtain when you’re young and these things are etched on your brain and soul with acid.

A lot of my twenties was about unpacking this long list of things from my childhood and really thinking about them. The baseline assumptions one operates on largely get formed during childhood, and after that it’s hard work uprooting and modifying them. Writing was (and remains) for me a priceless tool for excavation and modification.

I literally had no idea how weird and outre some of the stuff from my childhood was until I started putting it on paper, in one way or another. Sometimes it came out in fictional themes and situations. Often it came out in long passionate diary entries or poetry where I would disgorge pages and pages of stuff, and it wasn’t until later as I reread and thought about things that it started making sense and coming together.

When I say “making sense”, I don’t mean I understood all of it. The crazy doesn’t make sense. That’s why they call it crazy. But I had to find some way of making these things bearable inside my own skull, of drawing their teeth, milking their venom, transforming them into strength instead of the kind of pain that eats holes in your life.

In other words, becoming a monster is not the proper way to fight monsters.

I don’t know if other forms of art–film, dance, painting, etc.–are like this, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t. For me, the writing was a lifeline I grabbed in the middle of raging seas. Writing down and rereading gave me a critical few inches of perspective, enough room to turn the knife so the blade wasn’t in my flesh. It was hard, yes. Examining one’s basic assumptions about life and digging up things one would rather not remember is hard work.

But the art seemed to do it, not me. It provided the perspective, and that perspective provided me with a fighting chance to decide who the person I wanted to be really was.

There’s a price to be paid for this. (Of course.) I always have the writer in my head.

For example, a few Decembers ago I was in a car accident. (Slippery road, deer in my lane, the ditch reached out and grabbed my car.) Afterward I wrote about how the different parts of me were dealing. It went a little bit like this–and you must imagine all of these different parts of me reacting AT ONCE, in the space of a few seconds.

The Inner Self: OMG! OMG! OMGWTFBBQLLAMA! OMGWTFBBQLLAMATAPIR! OMG! OMG!
The Mother: Okay. We’re all in one piece and upside down. First order of business is to get that seatbelt off, then punch out a window in case there’s petrol leaking out…
The Humorist: Holy shit, a deer in the road. Nobody is ever going to believe this.
The Practicalist: Worry about getting out of the car first. Then flagging down help. You have your cell phone. Good. Get out of here.

The Writer: Oh, so THAT’S what it feels like to hang upside down in a seatbelt. Look at how the glass is broken. Take notes. Hmm. I wonder if I’m bleeding? How would I describe that?

A few months later I was writing Mindhealer, and a car crash figured in the first part of the book. After I finished writing that chapter, I felt…purged. Lighter, even. It wasn’t until much later I figured out that was the last part of a process of transmuting a very scary thing into something else.

That process of transmuting is in my opinion a very basic part of what makes us human. But this means that I rarely experience anything anymore without viewing it through the lens of language, of the writer. This is a good thing for me–after a lifetime of feeling too much, I have some insulation. A way of making the world make sense.

The act of writing down what happened to me in my childhood birthed the adult I wanted to be. Before you can become something different, you first need to figure out who and where you are. The perspective provided by writing gave me a way to examine all these things that threatened to destroy me, and gave me the ability to map out where I wanted to go instead.

It functions a lot on what I call the “mask principle”, which is related to the “fake it ’til you make it” I learned in palpation training for massage. If you understand where the anatomical structures are but you can’t feel them, pretend you can. One day the click will happen, and you will feel those structures under your fingertips clear as day.

The mask principle is a little different. We become the masks we wear, in magic, in psychology, and in life. (Vonnegut said it better. He always did.) Choosing your mask becomes a matter of utmost importance. You can choose to be something different–something better, or something else. Writing provided a way for me to see what mask I was already wearing and choose one closer to what I wanted to be.

Here’s a very personal example. I have never spanked my children. I don’t need to, I rarely even raise my voice. The Little Prince and the Princess do not have behavior problems. People come up to the Muffin or me in public places and compliment us on how well-behaved our young ones are. It takes only a look or a word for them to settle down.

This is not the way I was raised.

It was a harsh struggle when the Princess was a toddler to not use spankings. Brutal corporal punishment was a feature of my early life, and I often just wanted to spank because it was all I knew. It was easy, it was the way I’d been taught things should be.

It took a long time of me pretending a calm I didn’t feel and wearing the “mask” of a parent who didn’t need to beat her kid before the mask became reality. The Princess was a sweet baby and a toddler who didn’t need spankings, and she taught me well. The Little Prince is a more challenging child, but I’ve become a parent who doesn’t need to spank.

Writing helped me do that. I poured out frustration, anger, impotence, hard memories, and tears onto the page. I literally wrote my way out of a rage problem, because I did not want to raise my little girl the way I was raised. She was a defenseless, helpless human being–what, in God’s name, did she need to be beaten for?

The breakthrough came one day when I was so mad I was literally shaking. I can’t remember what had happened–probably just some normal toddler stuff, testing the boundaries or a simple mistake. It would have been so easy, so goddamn easy to spank.

I remember my hands turning into fists and the temptation to yell and spank rising…and then, something clicked.

I do not have to be this way. I do not have to live this way. I heard it as clearly as I’ve ever heard anyone speak to me, but it WAS me, the core of who I was, speaking to myself.

The rage evaporated. I took a deep breath, picked up my daughter, and thanked God that I’d never hit her and I wasn’t about to start. I had become a better person by wearing that mask, by constantly asking myself, “What would a parent who never even dreamed of hitting a child do?” And faking it as best I could until the reflex became natural. The habit became reality, and since that moment I have never felt the urge to hit any of my children. That urge literally vanished. The childhood programming had been rewritten.

Without writing, the habit of writing, I’m not sure I ever would have arrived there. And that’s just one instance (albeit a huge one) of what I’m talking about here. Those few inches of perception are hard-won. They really are just enough space to take the knife from your flesh and turn it so it won’t hurt anyone. It’s hard, hard work turning that blade.

But it is worth it. Not only for other people but for yourself. And if you can become what you want to be, the people you love (or who truly love you) will be happier than you can ever dream, for you.

That, my friends, is worth the pain and effort, spilled ink and tears.

Over and out.

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