I know why I've always liked this old poster of Garfield and why I've kept it safely rolled up and tucked away. It reminds me of how my father raised me.
My sister died of Juvenile Diabetes at one and as I understand it, Daddy didn't want to go through that again but gave in to my mother's pleas to have another child and voila - me. As much as Daddy loved sports and the outdoors, I know he secretly prayed for a boy. But it didn't stop him from taking me to the Redskins games, to see the Senators and and the Terps of the University of Maryland. Nor did it sway him from teaching me to golf, bowl, play softball and basketball, drive a standard shift at 12 years old, fish (you don't hunt living 8 miles from D.C.) and anything else he could think of. (No matter their talent the men in my life couldn't teach me to throw a softball; it goes straight up or straight into the ground, but I can drive the hell out of a car. Even won a racing competition once in Houston.)
But it wasn't so much what he taught me to do as how he taught me to think.
Being a girl shouldn't limit me from believing I could do anything my heart desires. And it didn't. I never gave my wide array of jobs any second glance. If there was a job opening, I went for it.
I started out as a waitress at the Big Boys and Marriott restaurants around the D.C. area, went into kitchen and dining room supervision, ended up in Mississippi where I worked for an oral surgeon and an insurance company. Then to Natchez, where I ran a restaurant with DH until we divorced. Then out of sheer relief, I picked up my guitar and started singing and ended up singing professionally by night for about ten years while I did VARIOUS jobs during the day. (I even got to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during a very special rehearsal after the Columbia disaster.)
I worked for an architect, sold mobile homes, long distance service, cars, trucks, cosmetics, sold burglar bars, pools, fences, placed students from a business school, taught computer at the trade school, owned a tailor shop where I did manual monogramming, made mens shirts, and sold workwear. I've managed a manufacturing plant and worked for a disaster assistance organization and sold insurance. And now, I deliver mail. I can't remember anything else.
The point is - yes, I know you were thinking, get to the point, Marley - that nothing ever had me doubting I could do something until I started writing. The author's internal critic is a monster.
If we were to listen to everything he says (I contend that our internal critic has to be our opposite gender, doesn't it make sense?) and then everything we read about rules and the preferences of our critique partners and contest judges, we'd never get a paragraph of our bio written, much less a fiction piece.
The romance genre has got to be one of the most difficult with all the unofficial and offical rules in place. When I read about another author who has broken one of them, well, why don't we call it awakening the publisher to the possibilities, I cheer and take another look at my latest wip. I ask myself once again, am I stuck in a box? How can I make sure my writing is a unique, creative reflection of my voice?
I'll bet my poet friend,
Michael Malone, struggles less with it. It takes great originality to create poetry like his which is romantic and "Raw". And poets seem to already have this sense of rebellion. At least that's how it seems to me.
I wonder if that the struggle ever ends once you start writing.
