They say that upon finishing a manuscript, writers should do something outside their comfort zone. Learn a foreign language, pick up a musical instrument, take a cooking class. Something that causes a different part of the brain to light up. I chose to learn Silat, an Indonesian fighting style that focuses on blocks, strikes and grappling.
The dude whoโs teaching me is my polar opposite. A 330-pound, former powerlifter, military historian, ex-bouncer, Limbaugh-loving, NRA conservative who is always talking about the liberal media, fake news, and politically correct safe-space snowflakes.
Full disclosure: I think Iโm a snowflake. Especially if that means Iโm into human rights, civil rights, common sense gun legislation, clean water, clean air, and kindness. I even have a letter from President Obama in my photo album. Doesnโt matter. Through Silat, this neo-con behemoth and I seem to have found common ground, and after a little over a month of drilling, training, and sparring, I am excelling at the art.
It feels good to be excelling at something because lately Iโve been questioning my ability as a writer. My Amazon author ranking is hovering around two million (are there even two million authors in the world?). Literati industry snobs ignore my existence and, worst of all, my magnum opus, my Pillars of the Earth, my lifeโs work and beautiful child, On the Shoulders of Giants, has failed to place in a single contest this year. Crushing. I knowโฆ I sound like a whiny snowflake. Whatever.
So it was with a fair amount of hesitance that I passed my novel to this gruff, Fox News defensive tackle. I would have never considered doing so had he not already proven to be extremely intelligent and well readโฆ almost to the point of arrogance. I wanted to earn his respect.
He smirked when he accepted it. โYou wrote this?โ I knew I was setting myself up for failure. On the Shoulders of Giants is a novel about race, addiction, lost love, gun violence, foster care and the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Even the title is a nod to a famous President Obama speech. Not exactly required reading for Republicans. To further lengthen the long odds of his acceptance, dude is a sci-fi fan. I had already spotted Frank Herbertโs Dune series stacked on his bunk. Our literary tastes are as diametrically opposed as our politics. The question was not so much would he like the book? as it was would he finish it? Apparently my sadomasochistic snowflakery knows no bounds.
In the ensuing days, I watched him from across the dorm. Heโs about as rough on a novel as you would expect from a sausage-fingered, powerlifting grizzly bear; dog-earing pages, folding the book back on its spine, setting his morning coffee on the cover. About midway through, we were sparring one day when I asked him how he liked it so far. He rolled his eyes. โLaden with white guilt.โ But he read on.
It took less than a week for him to knock it out. One night he came and sat on my bunk, coffee-stained, dog-eared novel in hand. โYou know,โ he said, โwhat happened to Scarlett wasโฆโ He couldnโt finish his sentence. โDid you like it?โ I asked. Tears streamed down his face. All the answer I needed. I placed a hand on his massive back. Humbled. Honored. Screw the contest snubs and academic cold shoulders. This guyโs emotional response was all the accolade I needed. A supreme compliment from the unlikeliest of readers.
And, by the way, itโs Mister Snowflake to you. Donโt forget, I know Silat.
Great post.
By the way, I’m far to the “left” politically of democrats, believe the GOP to be a criminal organization, don’t eat animals, don’t drive (by choice), want to end Capitalism, believe we need to address systemic racism and patriarchy, think anything but single payer health care is insane and barbaric, would like to criminalize professional lobbying, want to end private campaign finance, etc… and my favorite author is Frank Herbert (the author of The Dune Chronicles). To me, he wasn’t a sci-fi writer, he was a philosopher who happened to write about ecology, political intrigue, human relationships, biology, the potential of the human mind and molded these into science fiction stories. He expressed a couple “conservative” ideas as far as government interference and the need to show strength, but he was big on environmental issues, showed the dangers of belief systems, particularly organized religions and exposed the emptiness of a life of intellect and ambition without love. He trancended the genre. Just saying.
Peace.
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