On September 28, 2015, I was invited to speak to Altrusa International of Anaheim on the importance of literacy, one of the ways this great group of women work to improve the community. It was my very first speaking engagement since becoming a published writer in 2011, so to say I was a little nervous was an understatement. I don't think my voice stopped shaking the entire time. But they were so warm and gracious to both me and my "assistant" (my son's girlfriend basically got volunteered for the job.) Several wanted me to publish this speech, which is basically one writer's story of how a passion for literacy changed my life.
So here without further ado... my speech.
Good evening. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak tonight. As a full-time writer, I'm a bit like that troll that lives under the bridge, so this gives me the rare opportunity to actually 'human'. I don't get out much. In fact, I call my work schedule my "vampire" hours, so if I start smoking suddenly do not be alarmed. My assistant knows my safety protocol.
I should preface this to say that I do not get paid to speak. Whenever I communicate with others, there's usually a computer in front of me. This includes my family. Having said that, thank God for technology [hold up phone.]
As someone who doesn't get paid to speak, I really had a time figuring out what I wanted to talk about tonight. I'm passionate about so many things, activism and community chief among them. I thought I'd just keep it simple and talk about the importance of literacy. As both a reader and a writer, it is an issue that means a lot much to me and has since I was a little girl. While I may have been invited because I create books, the simple truth is: books created me.
I grew up with the idea that Reading Was Fundamental. From my very first Sesame Street, to the weekly installments of Schoolhouse Rock, I’ve been a glutton for the written word since I first learned to read. I discovered at a very young age that books are magic. You can go anywhere you want to go and be anyone you want to be. Whether you’re battling dragons or falling in love, or doing both at the very same time, books transport you from the ordinary to the extraordinary. There are infinite possibilities.
Needless to say, I read a lot as a kid, but it really went into overdrive when I was in the fourth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Borger, spotted my passion for reading and wisely nourished this hobby that was dangling dangerously close to becoming an addiction. Nothing excites me more than walking into a large library or bookstore. You know the kind I’m talking about, the ones with shelves right up to the ceiling. Or maybe a dinky little used bookstore, with narrow aisles and filled with rows of books three stacks deep, where you really have to dig to find your treasures. I loved all of these places where I could browse titles for hours and walk away with a stack of books under each arm. Then and only then could I go anywhere and do anything.
It’s important to have that kind of magic in your hands, particularly if you’re unhappy with where you are. I learned this lesson when I was eleven years old, and my beloved father passed away. By the early 1980s, I routinely lost myself in books, so it became my refuge almost immediately. My aunt, who babysat me in those dark, depressing days following my dad’s death, used to get scads of books thanks to subscriptions to certain romance publishers. It was one of the emptiest times of my life, and thanks to those stacks of books, I could be transported anywhere. I could find love, even when I felt so alone. As a pre-adolescent girl, this was a big deal. I needed some fairytales to get me through a pretty harsh reality. My dad was a stay-at-home dad, so losing him meant I lost my best friend, and that’s a tough thing for a kid.
So I filled my world with fictional people in fabulous places. Romances are good for that. When I was depressed whenever I walked into our empty house, I could pick up a book and travel anywhere. And what I really wanted was to be anywhere *else*. It was around this time I found Janet Dailey, who had traveled all over the United States to write her stories. She published her Americana series, with romances set in each and every state. Thanks to her, I was able to see things and places an 11-year-old from Texas might not normally see. Later, I’d discover authors like Danielle Steel, who would write stories set all over the world, and in various historical periods. Whether I was on a ranch in Oklahoma or Russian nobility on the cusp of a revolution, I was encouraged to live a life bigger than my own. The possibilities were endless.
I loved stories so much that writing a story of my own didn’t really intimidate me much when I was first given the opportunity. It was a writing assignment in October of 1981. We were all given a drawing of a house, which we could color however we saw fit to honor the Halloween season. Part of the assignment included coming up with a corresponding story. Despite having creative playtime with my Fisher Price Little People and my Barbie dolls, where I routinely made up stories all the time just for the fun of it, I had never actually written a story of my own before. I wasn't even sure that I could. But I was a good student who always excelled in whatever academic endeavors were put before me, so I wasn’t that worried about pulling off a simple story about Halloween.
The minute I put my pencil to paper, however, the story ceased being simple. I really did want to write a scary story about a haunted house, but something happened once the pencil started moving. I wanted to go left. My muse decided to go right. A story began to emerge about a couple so in love that the husband built a big house for them to share lots of children. Sadly, they never had any kids at all, and after the couple died years later, it was turned into an orphanage in their honor. It just sort of happened, and I just sort of went for it, even though it was pretty far removed from any Halloween story I’d ever read.
Still, I finished the story, colored in the drawing with happy, pretty colors and submitted my paper. Only after it left my hands did I worry if I had really screwed up. I was used to entertaining infinite possibilities, you see, so in my creative world all was permissible. The people pleaser in me quickly became neurotic that I may have messed up by coloring outside the lines. By the time our papers were passed back, I was one anxious little sixth grader. That I didn’t get my paper back and everyone else did only made the anxiety worse. I needed confirmation I had aced it like every other English assignment. And I needed it yesterday.
I’m pretty sure my knees literally knocked when I walked up to Mrs. Adams’ desk to ask her, in a halting, shaking voice, where my paper was since mine was never returned. She indicated to the wall behind her. It was the part of the wall where all the important things were kept, and there was my paper, with my happy, cheerful house right as the cover. Circled in red ink was a big, bold A. It was like angels parted the heavens and sang a chorus of hallelujah. Here I was, worried sick that I hadn’t colored within the lines and the universe was about to teach me the best lesson ever in infinite possibilities. Not only could I transport through the books I read, I could then transport others with what I wrote.
My pencil became a magic wand in an afternoon.
Over the next few years, I courted all sorts of writing to find the one that fit me best. Poems were first, quick little kisses where I could examine a feeling, just a spark of an idea. In Spring of 1982, one of my poems graduated to the big wall in the lobby of my elementary school, to show off exceptional achievement. My mother’s company included my poem in their newsletter, meaning I was published by the time I was twelve.
I finished my first novella when I was 14, inspired totally by the Barry Manilow song “Ships” which I found myself
daydreaming to one afternoon as I entertained endless possibilities. It never dawned on me that I couldn't or shouldn't reach out to Mr. Manilow to get permission to use his song in my book. I wasn't afraid to ask for that permission,and it was generously and graciously granted.
Like I said... No limits.
By no surprise I finished my first full-length novel by the time I was twenty-one. I started this story when I was nineteen years old, when I was living out of my car. Call it escapism. Call it therapy. But there's nothing better to get a creative through a crises than allowing them to create.
See there’s only one thing better than losing myself in a book I read, and that’s losing myself in a story I’m writing. You want to talk about infinite possibilities? There’s nothing like creating a world, and all the people that populate it, out of nothing at all. It’s magic. Powerful, powerful magic. Within the pages of a book, I could write about a homeless girl who happened upon a savior, who rode in on her shiny Harley Davidson and saved my sweet clueless runaway from the heartless and cold city streets. I needed to believe it was possible. Best of all I got to embody both the clueless runaway as well as the brave heroine, which I needed more.
Thanks to the infinite possibilities of books, I could be both, which reminded me how truly powerful I was. Powerful enough to change my circumstances - which I ultimately did.
In fact, the only real limit I found with the writing was earning the right to do it for money. Hobby writing, I had down. I fit it in wherever I could, writing a total of eight novels between 1989 and 2011. Those twenty-two years were mostly spent raising a family and keeping a roof over our heads. But whenever I needed to escape from my ordinary existence, writing gave me refuge. When my nine-day-old son died in 1995, I wrote two books in one year. I desperately needed the empowering magic of creativity. It was the only way to fight against the limitations we’re force-fed every single day.
I'm ashamed to admit that one of those limitations I even attempted to perpetuate myself, when I started writing romance novels of my own in the mid-90s. I had read more than my share, so I thought I knew what the readers wanted. I created books very much like the Janet Daily books, or the Danielle Steel books, or the Jackie Collins books (God rest her soul) that I had read all my life. One of these stories actually got the interest of a literary agent, who tried to shop it around for me, only to be told that my heroines were "too" perfect. I wrote that, because I read that. Anyone who has ever read any romance novel knows the heroine is generally beautiful without the benefit of knowing she's beautiful.
It took me until 2007 to realize it was just one more limitation. Why was I perpetuating this myth that only one type of woman is beautiful? What if we were ALL beautiful without the benefit of knowing it? What if we were ALL worthy of starring in our own love stories?
Though I had found love and passion and romance throughout my life, even though I didn't look like I was supposed to look, I usually had never read about women who did the same. Up until the 2000s, all the books I read about overweight women in particular usually delegated women like me to the plucky co-star, the funny fat friend - the DUFF who makes the women around her more beautiful and more exciting by default. I started to entertain the possibilities of what it could mean to society - and women in general - if that message changed. What if I demolished the limitations on the romance genre and wrote about beautiful women of ALL shapes and sizes, who didn't have to change to be swept off of their feet by a handsome, wealthy, exciting alpha male?
Why on earth would I limit myself to just one type of heroine, if I didn't limit myself to one type of story?
People suggested that readers wouldn't want to read about my atypical heroines, because it just wasn't realistic. But my love story was real. I was real. And I was ready to kick free from these limitations. I just needed the opportunity.
In 2011, I learned about self-publishing, which pretty much obliterated all the accepted limitations to making this my career. Between 1991 and 2011, my biggest problem was getting past a gatekeeper, who got to decide for themselves whether I had anything anyone wanted to read. In 2011, I could get those books right to the reader, and they could decide for themselves. That first year was pretty bleak. I only made $300, which is actually pretty common for self-published writers. Eighty percent of us make less than $1000 a year.
But there’s one thing we all still have – infinite possibilities.
All it takes is one reader, one blog, one opportunity to change it all around. In late 2012, I started getting some buzz about a series I had written – one where I broke a few ‘rules’ (as I’m known to do). This included writing about a size-16 girl-next-door who won the heart of a sexy rock star, because why not? Since I have no one to answer to but the readers themselves, I had the freedom to color outside the lines. In a story that I worried would (and did) alienate readers, I actually landed on a popular blog and watched my sales skyrocket as a result.
Thanks to that blog, I graduated into the top 20% of all indie writers, where I've stayed for the last three years. Thanks to that milestone, I started making an actual living with my books. I earned passionate fans who love the fact that I write about women who look like them. I was invited to book signing events. I even got an agent at last, where I published my first traditional title – a rewrite of that original story I wrote when I was nineteen, while living out of my car.
I became everything I wanted to be because of the limitless nature of books. I endured great tragedy and crisis, and got through it because of books. I overcame my circumstances because of books. They truly are magic to me. When we teach our kids that literacy is important, we’re doing more than instilling a passion for reading. We’re teaching them about infinite possibilities. Kids who read learn how to be successful as adults, because their minds are opened to the Great What If. We’re teaching them how to think critically to resolve conflict, since that is all fiction really is. We're teaching them to empathize, by living in the skin of another person. Most of all, we're giving them permission to dream of a life much bigger than what they could have imagined. When you give a kid a book, you’re giving them more than a passport to travel between worlds. You’re giving them the tools to build a world of their very own.
Whether you read them or you tell them, stories give us all tools to create our existence. And you never know, the very next child you entrust with a book can be the next Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or Stephen King… or Ginger Voight.
So thank you for allowing me to share my story, and thank you for the work you do promoting the importance of literacy. Long live books. Long live the magic. Long live the infinite possibilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment