Why I want to wear the turquoise dress

Went to see my therapist this morning and spent the session talking about what I'll need to do to get emotionally ready for when the book comes out in January. She sent me away with two tasks - one, to describe why I want to be an author and two, to list the things that are going well about the process. My struggles to accentuate the positive are well-documented in this blog so I've decided in this entry to discuss the first task.

So why do I want to be an author? The thing is, being an author is very different that being a writer. I always think of writer as being present tense verb-driven, i.e., someone is a writer because they write. You are an author because you have written. The word implies a finished product, probably in the form of a published book. It's more about the role you play in the world after the book is written. It's about being seen, reviewed, critiqued, idolized or rejected. It's struck me lately that the world "publication" means just what it sounds like it means - you're moving a book (and its author) from the private realm to the public realm.

And that's what I'm struggling with, this upcoming move from the world of the writer, which is private, to the world of the author, which is public. As I've said before I see my experience as a dancer as a chance to practice being more public. You can certainly dance just for the fun of dancing, with your friends or in a studio with an instructor and many good dancers never take it further. They opt not to compete - just as many good writers never seek publication. It's not like it's absolutely mandatory for any creative person to ever go public with their art. In fact, you could argue that there's a deeper beauty in not going public because you're left with the sheer joy of the activity. I know the joy of writing. I know all about that faint tingling feeling you get across the top of the skull when the work in possessing you - when it feels like you're falling. You don't have to publish to you get that feeling. In fact, publishing carries you farther away from that feeling.

So.....why be an author?

When I was getting ready to take the stage in the dance competition last weekend I saw a woman I sort-of know waiting to take her own turn on the stage and she looked terrified. She glanced at me and muttered "I don't know why I do this to myself" and indeed you can make a good argument never to do this sort of thing to yourself. Why expose yourself to the pain of being ridiculed or judged? The performance aspect of my work, whether it's dancing or writing, is never going to be as emotionally rewarding as the creative aspect...it's probably going to be a best a mixed experience and possibly a downright humiliating one.

So....why I doI want to be an author?

Here are some of my reasons:

Money ( a puny reason)
Fame (ditto - not because money or fame are puny, but because novel writing is an unlikely path to either)
I'll feel important
People will listen to me
At long last I'll be sitting at the cool kids table
I will be participating in the global exchange of ideas.

Because it's the only item on the list that doesn't make me sound like a total fool, let's ponder the last point. I was envious when I saw my friend Alison's bookshelf with the foreign editions of her novel and each time I to into a bookstore in Europe I am struck with a similar envy for the American authors whose books are on sale there. I've always wanted to be able to call myself a citizen of the world and what better way to earn that title than with international publication, the dizzying idea that someone will be sitting in a coffeeshop in Siena or Munich or Rotterdam reading my book? It's my small chance to participate in the global exchange of ideas. Just thinking of it makes me so happy I want to weep.

And then there's another point, also a little grandiose, but here goes. Once I was sitting at a sushi restaurant working on a manuscript and the waitress asked me if I was a writer, as waitresses often do. I said yes and she said "I love to read" and for a moment her face was flooded with happiness and hope. She was a dark, nearly goth looking little girl, with bitten down fingernails with green polish, someone who was trying really hard to be tough and cool but when she said "I love to read" everything in her turned porous and I could see the real person inside and she looked me right in the face, in the way few people look at each other, and she whispered "Reading sustains me."

That's it. That was all. She turned away, shut back down. But I've never forgotten her. She was right. Reading sustains people and thus writing sustains people. It's important work.

And this would be a nice way to end my list of "reasons I want to be an author," with the ideas of sustaining young gothic waitresses and participating in the international commerce of thought. A smart person would stop typing right here. But I think I'm doing an injustice to myself if I don't consider the reasons at the top of the list equally valid. The ones that sound shallow like fame and money and being important and having people listen to me. Because I want those things too. Of course, of course....I write because I love to write just like I dance because I love to dance. But there is also a time when you step forward onto the lighted stage and show yourself. When you admit how much you want it and you risk being judged. Not everyone has to go public, but I have to do it because if I'm drop-dead honest with myself it's part of the reason that I write. It's time for me to put on the turquoise dress and get comfortable with the fact that people are going to see me. I think I can get used to it. I don't think I have any choice.