YA? Why Not?

I used to get asked a lot why I was writing a book for young adults. Now, with the young adult market booming (have you seen how much space Borders now gives to its YA section?) I don't get asked so much. I think people assume it's because the market is there. Now, I'm grateful to be writing for this audience and happy that kids, teens, today are reading, especially after a friend of mine just told me that he has students at his college, and it's a good school, English Lit majors, who brag about how they get away with reading as few books as possible, and never the whole book!

I can't blame these students, okay, I can, but really they are the lost reader generation. You see (and, yes, I know I am aging myself here again) when I was a child, we only had 6 channels, well, really 5 because who watched PBS? Except for when the Electric Company was on. I'm too old for Sesame Street. We didn't have a lot of choice but to read when we were stuck at home and we needed an escape from the pressures of teen life or teen angst or just from our freaking parents who we thought were too old to get it, and “it” as in every thing. When I was thirteen my mother was only thirty-three.

It was different when we could go outside where we played in traffic and, I mean, literally we played in traffic. When it came to us kids, our parents had their long lists of things they pulled their hair out over — our using drugs, having protected or unprotected sex, planning the wedding after the rabbit died, making sure we ate fish on Fridays- but what wasn’t on their freak-out lists was when we played games like—see a car coming, jump into the middle of the street, and when the driver slams on his breaks inches away from your body, extend your right arm out in front of you, and sing, “Stop in the Name of Love.”

Like our parents once were, though we could never imagine it, we were city-kids and city kids played in the streets. When it was hot we swam in fire hydrants and when it was cold, and the pavement icy, we hitched on the back bumpers of city buses and slid until we lost our grips or the bus driver slammed on his breaks and cursed us away.

Yes, this was our version of snowboarding. Only we didn't need a snowboard. We probably needed our heads examined, and we certainly could have used helmets, but those were for people who did really dangerous stuff, like Evil Knievel. We were just kids having fun. And this kind of fun may have not kept us off the streets but it did keep us off drugs, well, for a few years anyway.

But on the days you stayed home sick, especially if your mom knew you were faking but she didn't have the time to argue because she was already late for work, you couldn't go outside and play in traffic, you had to stay home. And Grandma controlled the TV. Grandma and her Soaps--A woman is held hostage in September and nine months later when you turn on the TV that same woman is still tied up in that same room. Only now she's fallen madly in love with her kidnapper. You see that scenario once, twice, and well, it just gets boring. So what else was there to do but read? Sure, there were books for kids-- Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown-- but you were a teenager, a pre-teen anyway, and you want sex, drugs, and rock and roll, adult stuff to read about. If you were lucky, your mom had another book that she had bought that she hadn't read herself, or she wouldn't have left it right there on the shelf in between Betty Crocker’s Cook Book and the Dr. Spock book you thought was about Star Trek and was grateful when you finally did read it that your mother hadn’t. There was that book about where the small town girl goes running off to Hollywood to find fame but instead finds, bad men, drug addiction, and dies from either drugs or a broken heart. The ending was ambiguous. But you savored all 445 pages of it.

So we read, we read books that were age appropriate when we had to for school, but for pleasure we read books that should have been hidden in the back of our parents’ closets, so we wouldn’t see them, the same way our best friend Rita, and her three sisters, had to hide their Kotex pads way in the back of their closet so their one, and only, brother wouldn’t find them. In those days, boys were kept in the dark about menstruation until they were old enough to understand the meaning of, “I’m late.”

Then an innocent game that you played on a television console was invented and that was the beginning of the age of video-game addiction.

And when your grandmother got up to make dinner, well there was now so much more than just the one After School Special to watch. There was now television programming not just for babies, but for teens, and not just in the afternoon but at night, prime time—let’s not forget, The Not for Ready For Prime Time Players, which our parents let us watch because there was no school the next day and in those days there were no for adult audience warnings posted on the corner of your television. Besides, our parents weren’t watching Saturday Night Live anyway. Saturday nights were date nights. And then there came the mother of all inventions—the one thing that gave ever teen the ultimate reason to never have to read for pleasure again, CABLE. While I was in college trying to get through Freshman Comp, my sister and her teen friends were moon dancing to MTV. Remember? Before the commercials?

How could books stand a chance? I'm not saying kids of the generation(s) that followed soon after mine didn't read. Many did. Many wanted to, but they didn't have to for entertainment. They didn't have to read to get a taste of the forbidden, the stuff that peaked their curiosities and hormone levels, but were never discussed among mixed company, meaning their parents. They now had Pay TV and scrambled porn.

But by the grace of god and authors like Daniel Handler (pen name, Lemony Snicket) and J.K. Rowling who gave kids a lot of credit, who knew that kids wanted fantasy, but they also wanted characters that were real and who would take chances and do stupid things like jump into traffic and sing and who also suffered loss. Finally, there were books that could compete with cable, and Fios, and Nintendo. These books were written for them. And yes, books were again read not because they were assigned, but because they were fun and even sexy. Books are no longer for adults or nerds or that bored kid stuck at home with nothing else to do. Books are written for kids, teens, young adults, whatever the market wants to call them, and they are cool.

Here we are 1400 and something words later and I still never answered the questions I started with-- YA? Why Not? I did say, I had struggled with Freshman Comp. If this weren't a blog, and this was a paper for Freshman Comp, and I wanted at least a B, I would go back to the beginning and revise and do that inverted pyramid thing (am I mixing up composition terminology with cheerleader lingo again?). But, this is a blog, and according to the rule of blogging, as I understand them, I can just hit publish post.

got yoga?

Well, it's been a month and half since I last posted. A lot of my time has been spent trying to get my writing out in the world.

There was a time when writers could write and just write or stress about not writing. Today a writer needs to know how to market and how to sell. And we need to know not only how to network but how to social network.

I started to blog because I was stressed about writing and trying to sell my writing, and now I'm stressing about blogging or not blogging? I think it's time to take a yoga class. Or would I just stress about breathing or not breathing?

"I'm not EMO! I'm Poetic!"

My son, two days into middle school, says to me tonight--"I'm not EMO. I'm poetic."
I know where he gets his dramatics from. Both sides of his family have their many moments. But that confidence in his dramatic flair I only dreamt of when I was his age--hormones raging and every family dinner ending with me shouting, "NO BODY LISTENS TO ME!" Is that why I write?

Why Do You Write? (An invitation to let it spill!)

You may have noticed that my last post was a link to another blog where the writer talks about why she writes and also about food! Writing and food have always been two of my great loves and why I write and why or what I eat and when I eat it have been two of my dreaded obsessions. The ones that on Saturday tickle you from your nose to your toes, just like you're favorite children's book. The same ones that on other days infect you like an investation of bedbugs--you want to stop thinking about it, you would give anything not to think about it, but the itching just won't stop.

(By the way, there are inexpensive ways to rid your place of bedbugs. My dad was an exterminator for years, so bugs may not be a love or an obsession for me, but definitely a hobby. If you want to know how to rid your life of these extrodinary creatures, and they are extraodianry, send me a note. Oh, and remind me one day to share my father's story of how he saved a women's life because of his bedbug extpertise.)

Along with your bedbug questions, I am inviting you to post on this blog. Let's get a dialog going about why we write and how we manage or don't manage to keep our writing lives alive. This is one of the places you don't need to worry about spelling, unless that's one of your obessions of course. Of course, if you want to revise and revise or just revise, that's great too. The point is, yes, I do get it eventually, I am inviting you to use this as a place where you can share and swear and hopefully find support to keep on going. Let it spill! Words, unlike oil, need some days to pour out.

So, tell us--Why do you write?

Here is a great blog on my two favorite subjects--Writing and Eating: The Whatever Cook: Why I Write

The Whatever Cook: Why I Write: "Friends & I saw Eat, Pray, Love last weekend & bantered while eating Italian food about what was our “Word.” In the movie, an Italian friend..."

Costa Rica and Zombies

Tomorrow I leave for the airport at 4 AM Eastern Standard time. I am about to embark on a ten day adventure in Costa Rica. I'm both thrilled about the idea and sick to my stomach. This feels a lot like I do after I finish a piece of writing. When you write those last words of your story, the words you are positive are perfect and that no other word combination could make your piece any better, nothing short of shooting heroin can give you that same euphoric feeling. Well, I've never shot heroin and given my borderline-addictive personality I don't plan too, but friends who have, describe it as a ride you don't want to get off until you do, and then it's too late.

Too late.

If you're lucky you may get to relish in your sense of accomplishment (from your writing, not your heroin addiction) for a whole ten minutes before that nagging feeling of dread starts to eat at your brain. Yes, every writer has a zombie inside her--ready to pounce, rip open her skull, and eat away at her brain until any sense of joy and confidence she may have about her work is devoured--chewed and spit out. All that's left is this feeling that makes riding a broken merry-go-round, round and round and round, faster and faster, until you're projectile vomiting all over the onlooking parents screaming for someone to get the damn thing to stop. This did happen to me. I was eight.

Hence, my fear of merry-go-rounds.

I never used to think twice about getting on a plane and flying to some unknown place where not only didn't I speak the language but where there was usually some war going on. I never thought about checking a what-to-bring list. I never even made a list. Never worried about having a first aid kit with me or copies of my travel documents or even enough cash. I just got on a plane and let the good or the bad or whatever comes in between happen. It was all about the experience, which sometimes is just code for "How could I have been so stupid!"

But I'm older now. Too old? I hope not. Still, I haven't left this country in almost eight years, and I realize that has much as it almost brings tears of self-pity to my eyes, I have become domesticated. Those of you out there who know how I keep house, you can stop laughing. I'm not saying that I stay home home and cook and clean my days away, but this once world traveler prefers to stay close to her own bathroom. It's not that I'm afraid of taking risks or having adventures, I just don't have all that much interest in them any more--well. Or maybe, it's just that taking risks to me now means giving myself fifteen minutes lead time instead of twenty five minutes to get to the grocery store before it closes. I think you have to be a mom with a hungry kid to appreciate how daring this really is.


So, all this has me thinking, have I started to take less risks in my writing?

I just started a book about Stregas from the Bronx--Italian witches from the Bronx. A subject I'm curious about, but have a lot more to learn and explore if I hope to get the experience on paper close to perfect. And yet, when I was traveling the world without trying to safe guard myself from all that could go wrong, I would have never taken such a risk. I would have never even considered writing about a subject I didn't already feel I knew well.

Maybe as I grow old, I am taking less risks in life and more risks in my writing. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing or that thing that falls somewhere in between. But it is what it is. And tonight, before I lay me down to sleep, I will check my list of things to bring to Costa Rica-- not just once, but three times, and maybe even four.

All this means is that tonight I may sleep a bit easier, but it doesn't guarantee that when I arrive in Costa Rica and open my bags that I won't have forgotten something.

As long as it's not the imodium, and I avoid merry-go-rounds, I will be okay.

Besides, there really is no full-proof protection against the unpredictability in life and our writing, or from zombies eating our brains.


Have a great few weeks everyone!

They Say... I Say...

They say writing a book is like giving birth—excruciating, exhilarating, exhausting, and what the fuck did I get myself into?

They say revising a book is like raising a child--excruciating, exhilarating, exhausting, and why the fuck can’t I get this right?

They say selling a book is like putting a kid through college on the average median salary in the United States-- excruciating, exhilarating, exhausting, and how the fuck will I ever make this happen?

They say waiting for that editor, who you know will treat your book like it’s her own child, to tell you that she wants it is like…. Actually, they don’t say anything. They just hold their breaths and wait until they hear word, or until they turn blue in the face and pass out on the kitchen floor, cracking the ceramic tile, which ever comes first.

To all of you writers with hard heads, who refuse to give up on your lost children, I say to you-- Forget tough love and spoil yourself rotten, at least for today.

Oh, and watch as many hours of TV LAND that you want. You earned it.

Why the heck is she not blogging?

Believe it or not, I haven't been blogging because I've been writing! Well, really I've been revising, but isn't writing rewriting? So, for the past month instead of blogging, and at times breathing, I've been revising--I mean it. Would I lie to you? Okay, I would, but only if I thought it was the best for the both of us. But this time I'm not. Lying that is. Revising, I am. Very close to meeting deadline. Still 100 pages to get through, but "she thinks she can... she thinks she can... she thinks she can...choo choo!

I hope to be back blogging soon, but for now I'd like to share another blog with you. Now, I know I'm taking a chance here because once you start reading this new blog, you may get too spoiled with the wonder of it, to want to read my blog again. But it's too wonderful for me not to share. Enjoy! http://stonetreelane.blogspot.com/

Some Cheese With That Whine?

Last week for three days I lived and breathed among thousands of writers who talked about writing. If you’re thinking, “I would rather have my skull drilled without I understand, completely. After all, I'm a writer.

Writers (me, myself, and I included) are often sullen and moody and off our freakin' rockers. And we have a predisposition to whininess about our writing. We’re always struggling with our characters, our plot, our landlords, late on the rent again. No money. No respect. No 40lk. If we could do anything else we would. Then why don’t we? I know a lot of you have thought this. If you haven’t come right out and said it. Well, the secret is deep down inside we love it! So, why all the complaining? I don’t know.

Maybe the truth is that we don’t know we love it? Or maybe after years of working three jobs and stealing time away from our families and friends with the only thing to show for it are mailboxes and inboxes stuffed with “we regret to inform yous,” we just forgot how happy it makes us. Yes, we married for love with no prenuptial agreement.

Or maybe the reason why writers are always complaining about their writing is the same reason native New Yorkers are always complaining about New York--too crowded, too cold, too hot, too many tourists. If we sing to the world, "there's no place else I'd rather be," everyone would want to move here, and there are already too many damn people crowding the subways.

The Lies Us Writers Tell

I tell myself that honest-gut-wrenching criticism is what I want to hear. This is what will make the work better because the work is what it's all about. It's not about me, Patricia. It's not about me, Pat. It's not about me, Tricia, Trish, Trisher, or any of the other names I'll answer to. It's not personal. It's about the work, the writing. Yes, I want to hear the good, but I want even more to hear the bad and the ugly--the whole truth, nothing but that truth. So, please, reader, go ahead and tear my work apart. Don't worry, I will put it back together and it will be better for it. This is what I say because I am a writer, and I'm full of shit.

When it comes to our writing, the words we drip from our souls, pour from our guts, suck from the right sides and the left sides of our brains, we don't want to hear the truth, at least not the whole truth. We want to hear "I Love it!" "It's perfect!" "Simply brilliant!"

Yes, we want to hear that our work is Brilliant, with a capital B! We don't want to hear the other "B" word. The "but" word or the but-phrase--"There's just one thing..." And we never want to hear the but-question--"What did you mean when you wrote...?"

We tell ourselves, our students, any inspiring writer who will give us the time of day, that criticism of our work put in question form will be easier to take in...Well,it's not.

It may hurt to hear your reader say, "Your dialog sounds wooden." But when your reader asks, "Did you mean for this character to sound wooden?" You're left feeling like an idiot who intended to write bad dialog.

Okay, so it sucks to hear anything about our work that implies that it is anything less than genius. Still, the truth is that after you absorb the good, the bad, and the ugly, after you cry yourself to sleep, after you curse the names of your critics (some of whom are your closest and dearest friends), and after you tire of your voodoo dolls, you can go back to your work and make it better. Or you can go into your kitchen and make a pastrami on rye sandwich.

Did You Call Your Mother Today?

Today I feel like winter. Okay, delete that. Today I feel like crap. Much better.


I tell my students "don't wait for inspiration!" I tell them that Inspiration is like spring. We think it's just around the corner, but it sucks up all our frequent flyer miles before it finally gets here. Well, I’ve never actually used that metaphor, but close enough.

I tell my students writing for just ten minutes a day is all it takes to keep the engine warm. When spring is finally here, and you once again have the desire to write for three or four hours at a stretch (praise the lord), you will be warmed-up and ready for the journey. You won't need to take hours, or days, to reconnect with your characters. It's like if you call your mother every day, even if only for a minute, when you finally see her for those long-hours-at-a-stretch visits, you will be warmed up and ready to thwart every attempt she makes to drill down deep into your gut. She will not drag out of you every gut-wrenching feeling that you have worked so hard to suppress.

Still, I don't call my mother every day. She usually calls me, every other day. When she does call, if things are going less than perfect, I don't tell her this. I try and spare both of us from the ugly stuff, but it never works, and I have yet to learn that when denied what she believes is her mother's right (the right to hear her children bare their souls), my mother will always manage to rip the ugly right out of me, even it means she has to sacrifice a vital organ to do it. You think I'm sounding a bit over dramatic? Have you ever heard one of our conversations? Here's how they usually start:

"Trisher, what's wrong."(No, I didn't make a mistake and put a period instead of a question mark. My mother always sounds like she's making a declarative statement even when she's asking a question.)

"Nothing's wrong.

"Don't lie to me. Now, tell me what's wrong."

"Ma, I'm telling you, there is nothing wrong!"

"I know my daughter, and I can hear it in your voice."

"EVERY THING IS WONDERFUL!"

"Then why don't you sound like your usual bubbly self!"

Well, you get the point. If you don't, let me spell it out for you. My mother is like writing. I love her and I want to call her every day, but she drives me crazy, so I don’t. Also, she does know her daughter. Well, I'm never bubbly... Okay, sometimes I am a little effervescent, but that's only after a night of really great... In the unlikely hood that my mother finds this on the internet, I won't finish this statement, but you get the point. If you don't, call me.

Where was I? Yes, my mother is like writing. They both can be very distracting, and as much as I hate to admit it, like writing, my mother doesn't let me get away with anything. She will emotionally and spiritually kick my freakin' ass to keep me honest. When she fails, we both know it.

(I apologize in advance to all of you self-help writers, whom I greatly admire, for the sentence to follow.) Shouting "EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL" until I'm ready to chomp down on my cell phone, isn't going to make everything wonderful when everything feels like crap.

Or will it?

This is where I try and redeem myself. This is where I have my epiphany and I actually shut-up and listen.

I know that I'm not wrong when I tell my students writing every day, even for ten minutes, will help them stay close to their characters. Just like I know telling my mother what's really going on with me will bring us closer and more connected. So then, Maybe I will practice what I preach. I will write every day for ten minutes. I will be honest with my mother when she states, "Trisher, what's wrong!"

The truth-- I probably won't write every day, and I know I won't call my mother every day, and when she calls me I won’t answer every statement she makes with an open and honest answer. But, maybe, just maybe, if I click my heels and say "everything is wonderful," spring will be here.

Everything Happens for a Reason.... Does it Really?

I’m one of those people who loses most things: keys, credit cards; wallets with and without cash; library books and text books, usually the night before an exam; drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates, pretty much all forms of ID; even my kid, but only for five minutes in Target (and that was just once) but never have I lost a car--until last Sunday night, that is.

My son Ali, my nephew Jack and I spent the unseasonably warm and sunny February day with friends, watching the 11th Annual Chinatown Parade. After we ate dim sum and gelato and shopped for art supplies it was time to go home.

But when we walked to where I parked the car, there was no car. For two hours we searched the streets of Soho, Little Italy and the edges of Chinatown but still no car. Finally, after Ali and Jack sat down on the sidewalk and refused to take another step, I hailed a cab. The driver with the GPS that sang directions in Russian drove around the same territory we had just roamed on foot trying to find my car, but when the meter hit $7.50 I told him to take me to my brother’s place in Pelham.

“Don’t feel bad,” the driver said to my reflection in his rearview mirror. And for the next forty-five minutes, the entire trip back to Westchester, this very sweet man shared all of his lost car stories. I know he was just trying to make me feel better, but I felt worse. All of his stories started with “he was so drunk,” and I was completely sober.

As the driver swiped my credit card to cover the $68 fare that would put my bank account once again in overdraft, again he said, “don’t feel bad,” only this time adding, “remember, everything happens for a reason.” I wanted to tell this very sweet man to “f**k off, but I thanked him instead. I understood he was only trying to make me feel better, but as I shuffled my blister-footed son and my yawning nephew into my brother’s house, I couldn’t help wonder if anyone is ever comforted by those words: “everything happens for a reason?”

Not only does this statement imply that randomness doesn’t exist in the universe and that there is a reason for every event that occurs, but there’s an implication that these reasons are all for the best. Yes, all of the trials and tribulations in your life happen just so something meaningful and life-changing will result from them. On my better days, I believe this. And I can tell you that some really shitty stuff did lead to some pretty amazing stuff, like my marriage. It may have ended in divorce, but because of that relationship I have this incredible kid. And a speeding ticket I got for doing 25 mph in a 20 mph zone did save my life.

The night I got that speeding ticket I was driving under the speed limit when the largest deer I had ever seen (a humongous-antler type) jumped in front of my car. If I had been driving just five miles per hour faster, my car (and most probably my body) would have been crushed.

So I want to believe that every shitty thing that has ever happened to me has led to some unexpected but wondrous end result, but I can’t say I know this to be true. What I can say I know to be true is that in the moment when I’m in the middle of that shitty thing happening, the last thing I want to hear is that “everything happens for a reason.”

While my sister-in-law fed the kids who were now starving (the dim sum and gelato had long ago been digested) my brother checked online to see if my car had been towed. I couldn’t imagine how this was possible; I had no outstanding parking tickets, and I had parked legally, I was sure of it. I had even checked the sign twice—no parking from 7 to 7 weekdays. And it was Sunday. So, there was no way my car should have been towed. But if not towed, then what? Stolen?

My brother made a call to a cop friend who said that stolen was a possibility, but doubtful. When I was my son’s age, a missing car in NYC was assumed stolen. Today in that area of New York cars are rarely stolen anymore.

But if not stolen or towed, then where the hell was my car?

I called my dad for advice. He’s lived and worked in the City for most of his life; few people know New York better. He suggested that he and I return to the scene of the crime and search the area one more time. I insisted there was no way the car was there. After all, didn’t the three of us walk up and down those streets ?

Dad reminded me of all his missing car stories.

The first time he had reported his car stolen, he found it a week later in the corner supermarket’s parking lot. Apparently, after buying corn for dinner, dad had left the supermarket and walked back home, totally forgetting that he had driven there in the first place.

The second time he reported his car stolen, he came out of work and his car wasn’t where he thought he had parked it. A month later, the police called to say that they had found his car in a bus zone and with 15 parking tickets on the windshield. Apparently, my dad had parked his car on a parallel street--an honest mistake. When I asked why in the world it hadn’t been towed, my dad said, "The City was different then. Cops had better things to do or just didn’t give a f**k."

Because my dad’s stories didn’t start with, “I was so drunk,” and because it is true that I am my father’s daughter, and because Ali chimed in and reminded me how most things I had lost were found exactly where I had left them. I figured it couldn’t hurt to look one more time, but I was still positive the car wouldn’t be found.

Of course, I was wrong, and of course, my Dad and my ten-year-old were right. My car was exactly where I had left it. In my defense, it was parked on a street the boys and I hadn’t looked. We’d walked past this street about a dozen times, but in my memory, I had parked on a narrow street. So when Jack had suggested we look on Broadway, a wide avenue, I (in my best know-it-all-adult tone) said, “that would be a waste of our time.”

Mark the words of an arrogant parent.

Just to add one more shitty-thing to the list, I had parked my car illegally, too. I’d been so busy looking up at the sign with the parking rules and regulations that I’d missed the fire hydrant down on the street, which was right in front of my face. Between the ticket, the cab ride, and the toys I bought the boys to keep them motivated and walking (this was before they dropped down on the sidewalk in protest) the day cost me $280 dollars (not including the dim sum and gelato).

I unlocked my car and turned to my dad, but before I could thank him for driving me to the City (and for understanding who I come from), he said, “You know, Tricia…” Oh, my God, he was going to say those words that right then wouldn’t (or couldn’t) make me feel better.

“Dad, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say it.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“Just like you knew the car wouldn’t be here?”

“FINE, if you’re going to say it, then just say it already."

“Tricia, you’re a writer, make something of it.”

I don't know if those words made me feel better or worse, but they did get me to write this blog entry. So after all, maybe everything does happen for a reason. Then again, maybe not.

Ode to Self-Help Books

I’m burnt right now. I really can’t seem to put words together today. Maybe it’s this blogging thing. And when I’m not blogging I’m writing emails to people who I want to love me-- love my work--buy my work. Yes, buy my work.

I have been in love with the idea of being a writer since I was a very young girl. All it took was my third grade teacher putting my four, or maybe it was three, line poem, “Why I love Christmas” in the P.S 71-Rose E Scala year book to sucker me into a life of wanting an audience. Yes, I wanted fame. I dreamed of fame, yearned for it. Stayed up nights tossing and turning for it, but fortune was never on my radar. Hence, a checking account that is in overdraft most months.

Thirty-Seven years later and I still want the fame. Yes, I want people to hear my name and say, “Patricia Dunn! Your work, your words, changed my life. I can’t look into a mirror without thinking of you. [Reference to my YA novel] Your words got me off antidepressants. Your words helped me to open my heart. I have found the love of my life because of you. Your words made all of my dreams come true.” Delusional? Oh, I don’t think so.

Why can’t I have what I want? If I’m going to want, I’m going to want BIG and NOW!

Only now I don’t just want the fame. I want the fortune too.

This is where the self-help books tell me to envision what I want—
I see myself in a beautiful and big house on the beach where all of my friends, and on occasional holidays my family, come and visit me, and the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks bring us peace, and, love, and fill us with joy. “Happy and peppy and bursting with love, ” I sing the words of Felix Unger. Yes, I can feel it. I can feel the peppy popping out of my pores, and I can see the unlimited amount of cash filling my pockets. I can see myself sending FedEx envelopes filled with cash to strangers whose names I picked out of a phone book. Yes, I can be a patron of the arts, a patron saint, my own patron. And all this will be possible because of those words. Those words that my third grade teacher loved enough to publish—“Why I love Christmas”… I don’t remember the rest of that poem, but if I were to write it now, it would go something like this—

“Why I love Christmas?
I love Christmas because it’s a day
when I can give it all away,
and know that the next day there still will be plenty in reserve.”

Those Who Can't Do Teach

The first time I heard this cliché' was in my tenth grade journalism class. I can't even remember the teacher's name. She was sweet, but she was also a self-identified woman who couldn't write, and so she taught. So she said.

On any given day, if you were to look around her classroom, you’d see students (those who bothered to show up) sitting on desks, their backs facing Ms… what was her name?, talking to each other, or singing “I Will Survive,” or dancing the YMCA dance in the aisles (1979 was the most popular year for disco.) These kids were doing anything but paying attention. The only students who seemed to ever be listening were the inseparable threesome: my best friend Maria who was only taking the class because I begged her, and that's what best friends did they backed you up; our guy-friend Jimmy who wasn't even enrolled in the class, but preferred hanging out with us to geometry; and there was me. I was the girl with the dream of being a famous investigative reporter for the NY Times. (That dream was crushed after a summer in post-revolutionary Nicaragua when I saw how mainstream media was more about seeking profit than truth.)

Still, all I remember about that class were the words, “those who can’t do teach.”

In fairness to the one whose name can’t be remembered, my high school wasn't the most inspiring environment for teacher or student. We had a principal who stayed in his office and watched cartoons. Occasionally, he’d come out into the hallway shouting, "why aren’t these students in class,” until his assistant shuffled him back to his office explaining, once again, that the bell had just rung. It was rumored that he had had a nervous breakdown, which was pretty obvious, but no one cared enough to even bother to gossip about why or how it happened.

Apathy was strong in the days when Disco reigned and school administrations where on planet Looney-Tunes, and my high school’s dropout rate was probably higher than its graduation-rate. At least it felt that way. But in a first-generation-Italian-immigrant community education wasn’t always a high priority. Not as high as keeping your kids virgins (the girls anyway), off drugs, and working above-minimum-wage jobs. And if you could get a job, why bother to graduate from high school, never mind college?

So when you walked into the-sky-is-falling college guidance counselor’s office, you didn’t question why she spent more time talking you out of going to college than giving you any real advice on how to get into college. Yes, my high school was a tough place to teach and to learn, but things got better when a new principal made a lot of positive changes and students got the support they needed to get their diplomas, and many went on to college and graduate school.

As for me, I graduated from high school and after spending more time in the streets protesting than I had in the college classrooms, I got my BA and eventually my MFA. Along the way I met amazing teachers: teachers who not only taught, but did.

Still, the words “those who can’t do teach” banged up against the walls of my brain for years, and until I was thirty-four I swore I would never teach, never ever.

Well, be careful what you don’t wish for. Over the past eleven years I’ve been teaching creative writing to motivated students who want to learn, want to write, and, like me, need to write, and over the past several years I’ve co-taught with a woman who continues to inspire me as a writer, teacher, and friend. Finally, I’ve come to realize that I CAN write, and I can teach too.

Teaching forces me to sit down to write even on those days when just looking at my computer makes me cry. If I tell my students they can do it, then don’t I have to tell myself I can do it? And then, don’t I have to do it too? I don’t teach because I can’t write. I teach because teaching makes me makes me a better writer.

“Those who can’t do teach” may have been my tenth grade journalism teacher’s truth, but it’s not mine. Mrs. Roberts! That’s her name… wait a minute that was the name of the Phys. Ed teacher who hated my guts. Or was it? Well, that’s a topic for another day. Keep writing. Keep teaching. Never stop learning.

Writing about Love

Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day...It's a hard one for a writer. I mean, how do you write about love without sounding sentimental or cliché'? Still, we are all writing about love in some ways. So I'm told. Don't "they" say we are all writing the same story? Stories about love. Stories about death. Stories about love and death.

So, I'm celebrating V-day for the first time in years with my BF. At 45 I just can't bring myself to use the label "boy friend." But what are the alternatives? Lover? Partner? Fuck-buddy? So, I use BF. Okay, it makes me sound like a teenager. But, then again, who knows more about love than a teenager? Don't you remember those days when that's what it was all about? Falling in love. That's what mattered. All that mattered, all you wanted. Oh, and when you did, WOW! What a feeling! How many records, tapes, CDs, did you wear out? Can you wear out an Ipod?

Love was all consuming and you weren't called obsessive or accused of being a stalker if you tracked every breathing movement the object of your desire made. You were just called a teenager, a normal teenager.

Yes, teenage love. First loves, even second loves, the reasons gothic romances and romcoms even exist. Without love we wouldn't, couldn't, be a nation obsessed with vampires. The creature that wants nothing more than to take his or her love drain him or her of their life force and make them live eternal. I mean, you really have to love someone to want to live out eternity with them. Right?

When you were a teenager you knew that loving someone and having that someone love you back was all that mattered. Mattered more than a perfect SAT score or an A in physics. You were willing to risk the F on your trig exam to talk to your sweetie for hours on the phone, now it would be chat or Skype, instead of studying.

How old were we when that day came and we decided that college or career or whatever else was more important than being in love? Was it after the first, second, third heart break?

By the way, I never had my heart broken. When I've been crushed by the person of my desire it was never my heart that broke. It was always my stomach. I love to eat. And can usually eat under any and all circumstance. After all, I am the daughter of a former exterminator who talked shop at the dinner table. Nothing stopped me from getting my daily bread down, not rat nor roach talk. Nothing but the love of my life telling me, "It's quits." That's when the sight, the thought, of any food, even chocolate ice cream, made me nauseous.

So, there I went ahead and did it. I got all-sentimental on my ass....I guess, I just couldn't figure out any other way on the day that florists and chocolate manufacturers make their fortunes-- Happy Valentine's Day.

To Blog or not to Blog

So, I never thought in a million years, well, at least in the last ten or so years, that I would blog. How could I? I'm a writer, right? And if you are a writer, well you know and respect the revision process. You just don't throw your words out there in the world. You work them over and over and over. And then you have trusted readers tell you what you still need to work over and over...and then, only then, do you maybe put your words out there. Okay, so this process is not very conducive to blogging. But in the past few months the question, "Why I still Write?" has been plaguing me. It took me 3 years of an MFA program and a novel in the drawer, several published essays and stories, on line and in print, and a group of women who write by my side and commiserate about writing at my side . I teach writing classes and I know teaching craft is important, helping a writer find her voice is crucial, but sharing heart is essential. Without the heart, the belief we can do it, if only half the time, we won't do it.

The big T for writers has to be Tenancity, not Talent. Talent is subjective and can be used by those with power to keep those without it in their places.

But after so many years of feeling like I write because I have no other choice, I'm realizing I have a choice. We always have a choice. So, why do I choose to do this? To take time away from the rest of my life, my family, my son, my friends...love, to pursue this THING, we call writing? Maybe this blogging thing will help me answer this question. Or, at the very least, come up with other questions.