The Things I Don’t Talk About

The more I write, the more people ask if they’re seeing bits of my life in those sentences. It’s bound to happen; it happens to nearly every writer. My writer friends who are women tell me it happens to them more than it does to men, but my writing friends who are men aren’t exempt from it either, so I think it’s this thing where a reader wants to have uncovered the greater truth of the story – and the greatest mystery, the greatest truth, is “What The Author Really Meant”. It’s why we read interviews, isn’t it? This desire to know the author is why we read blogs, and why we authors write blogs. If you want to know us, it stands to reason, you’ll read our work too.

But I don’t talk about myself. I talk about writing. I have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and a Google+ account and I almost entirely talk about writing. This is on purpose, as I think it’s the writing you’re all really interested in, and the writing is all you really deserve to get. If you know me, in person, up close, you know other things about me, because you’ve been there for those events. I don’t hide anything from the people I spend my time with, and I don’t really hide anything from all of you. I just don’t mention it. If you read carefully you will have discovered that I have a child, and you might even know he’s a boy, and that he’s 8, a detail I mentioned I’ve mentioned once, in a tweet. You may know that I was married, and I am not in that relationship anymore, and if you are very astute you may have guessed that I am in a different relationship now. I have a day job, in some kind of office, I don’t work weekends, and I have just acquired a cat. That’s quite a lot of knowledge, really, if you think about it. You know, too, that I am a woman, probably since birth, that I have reddish hair and pale skin and freckles, if you look closely enough. You might know that I am overweight, but have lost weight recently, that I read quite a bit, and write not as much as I’d like, and have published a little, and been published a little more. You might guess that I am in my late 20s, which is what everyone says they guess, or you might know that I am actually 37, which I’ve never been afraid to tell people.

See, you know so much about me already. Is it enough? Will you read this, and feel satisfied, and go on to read my stories as if the words on the page are the only ones you need to know?

Of course not. You want to know everything.

What else could I say that would inform you, as a reader? The truth is, I don’t think I have to say anything. I don’t think the things I’ve already said should change your opinion of my work. I know it will, for some people. For some people, something as basic as my gender will shape their thinking of my writing for the rest of my life. I have avoided joining “women writers” groups simply because I don’t think you should care. (I went ahead and joined Broad Universe a few weeks ago because I realized refusing to do so means I lose out on people who might only pick up my writing because I am a woman but who might stick around because I am a damn good writer.) I don’t think it should matter that I am white, either, though I’ve discovered there are people for whom that matters quite a bit. I don’t think these things should make the tiniest bit of difference in whether you decide to buy my books, or in what you think of my stories. I know a dozen women, about my age, with at least once elementary-school-aged child at home and at least one divorce, and I can guarantee that we all write differently. We are each individuals, with secrets that will never be known, made up of factors that you will never completely understand.

My writing is informed by all of this, and none of it. It’s just as likely that the next story you read of mine will have been inspired by a news article, or a piece of fiction I read as a child, or a story I thought failed (and you’re holding my written attempt to do it right). I don’t make an effort to write about my life, and I doubt very much that there’s an autobiography in my future. I’ve explained this, over and over again, and I know it doesn’t matter. Some of you will still read my writing, and want to know what I’m really trying to say. The question is, if you knew everything about me, what would it change? Would my horror be less frightening? My erotica less sexy? My science fiction less inspired by science fact? Let’s find out.

Here is the quick and dirty story of me:

I was born at the end of 1973 to parents who didn’t want children. My mother was tiny and looked like she was 12, even when she was holding me, and my father, at 6’4″, towered above her, which made it easier to beat her for things like not vacuuming properly. They split up when she was pregnant with my little sister, and my father went on to have 5 more daughters (that I know of) and a son who is my brother but is nearly the same age as my child. I have 4 stepmothers that I know of. My sister is a sociopath, and manic-depressive, and beats her kids. My mother rides a Harley and has three pugs. We were so poor growing up the sight of boxed Mac-N-Cheese actually makes me nauseated. I know what it’s like to get woken up at 2 am to scrub the kitchen floor again because it wasn’t right the first time. My Grandpa Joe was black, my Grandma Helen wasn’t. I didn’t graduate high school. I grew up in a small town in the Central Valley in California before finishing my growing up in a smaller town in the Sierra Nevada mountains (still in California). I lived in San Francisco, in the Tenderloin, when I was at the Academy of Art learning to be a screen writer, and I lived in Richmond and Oakland when I was learning that I had bad taste in men. I learned a couple different styles of sword-fighting, a bit about computer programming, and not to get too attached to objects. I had my first son, who I had to give up, and who was adopted by his father, so I still see pictures sometimes. I moved a lot, got married, got divorced, gained weight, lived with people convinced the world was about to end, dated a man who left me to become a woman, dated a few women, got some tattoos. Ok, a lot of tattoos. I smoked cigarettes for about a month in high school, drank all of one summer, did a few drugs a few times but only had one bad trip worth talking about and that lasted three days (the effects of which lasted nearly a year). I’ve been through all the Bad Things That Happen When You’re A Woman: been raped, hit, cheated on, lied to, left behind, knocked up, and miscarried. I’ve been in love with a friend who wouldn’t date me because he wasn’t ready for what we could be, been in love with someone else who never loved anyone the way he loved himself, and been in love with a married man. I’ve realized I was wrong most of the time I thought I knew what love was, and recently realized it’s still possible after all of that to fall madly in love in a whole new way. I’ve stayed friends with boys I slept with and slept with others I was never friends with at all. I still adore sex, and appreciate a good (charming) flirt, and hate to be propositioned. I read, and I read, and I read, and even so I know that I never ever read enough. I quit my job to be a full-time writer about a decade ago, and failed at it. I started writing again last year and discovered I’d gotten much better. I have one son at home, who is 8, and has autism. He will always have autism, and apraxia, and he may never use words the way that I do and I may never be able to share with him why I so love books, and that kills me every day.

And none of it matters. Or maybe it all does. I have been me, this whole time, and I will finish this blog post and go on to add some new words to one of my works-in-progress and me having said all of this won’t change anything about me.

But now you know.