I think about the passage of time a lot, and the difference time can make on our perspectives. There are moments when time doesn’t seem to make a difference at all, and there are moments when time changes our perspective completely.
In May 2012, I graduated Sarah Lawrence College on my dad’s fifty-fourth birthday. In 2012, I was bright-eyed, hopeful, and ready to attempt to make my way in a world I was unprepared for. I moved back home to Connecticut after graduation and took a job babysitting, followed by tutoring, two jobs writing, and finally another job babysitting. My goal: pay off my student loans as fast as possible.
Somehow, I managed to cobble all of these jobs together into a cohesive schedule. I was focused on work. I babysat three mornings a week, wrote in the afternoons, tutored twice weekly, and still wrote when I came home.
To decompress, I would lose myself in boxed sets of my favorite TV shows. I liked science fiction at the time. I’d been a big fan of 2003’s Battlestar Galactica and 2009’s Dollhouse; I was disappointed when Syfy cancelled Caprica, and reluctantly gave Warehouse 13 a shot.
I loved the imagination in these shows. I loved the questions they posed, and I liked thinking about where the story was going.
I loved the imagination in these shows. I loved the questions they posed, and I liked thinking about where the story was going. It was also a genre that is the epitome of shows cancelled before their time and so, in the spring of 2013, I reluctantly left my comfort zone for a new show called Defiance.
Defiance premiered on the Syfy Channel in April 2013.
Its premise was that in 2013 a group of different alien races known as the Votanus Collective arrived on Earth. The worlds that each race inhabited were dying, so they built arks that carried their people across the stars.
But this was all backstory. The series picked up thirty years later with Joshua Nolan hunting for “ark tech” with his daughter, an alien girl named Irisa, whom he saved from a cult. They run into trouble and are brought to the former city of St. Louis, which has been renamed Defiance.
As a 2013 viewer, I was drawn into the show by the complex narratives presented. Defiance was a place where both humans and Votans could live in peace, and where the different cultures were respected, but it still had its own social ecosystem which made for good stories.
I found myself coming back to Defiance each week for the complex characters with their own motivations and fallacies. No character in Defiance was just there, they all had a role to play that drove the story forward. Most importantly there was an array of women who weren’t only strong, but complex in their own right.
I found myself coming back to Defiance each week for the complex characters with their own motivations and fallacies…. There was an array of women who weren’t only strong, but complex in their own right.
There was Amanda Rosewater, the newly minted mayor who always had a plan and yet was insecure in times of stress. Then there was her sister Kenya, who ran the bar and brothel called the Need/Want. Irisa, Nolan’s daughter, was just starting to come into her own and push back against her father. Doc Yewll was a serious scientist who let nothing stand in the way of her doing her job, and still had a shady past. Christy McCawley was a young woman in love with an alien boy against her father’s wishes, and while her story was arguably the most like a teen movie, it still sucked me in.
Yet, the character that really drew me in was Stahma Tarr. Stahma’s a Castithan woman who was married to the town loan shark, Datak Tarr. Over Defiance’s three seasons the couple and their son Alak presented a story not unlike many immigrant narratives as Stahma struggled to break the bonds of their old world, while Datak held tight to them.
Looking back, it isn’t surprising that she was one of the first characters I gravitated towards. Stahma and Datak carried themselves in a way that reminded me of the Purebloods in Harry Potter. In 2012, I’d written an op-ed about Bellatrix Lestrange and how her manic tendencies were something I admired because she was unapologetic for who she was. The Black family quickly became my favorite Harry Potter characters because of their history and complexity. Stahma reminded me of Bellatrix’s sister, Narcissa Malfoy, who I was also drawn to because she walked the line of self-preservation. She wasn’t setting out to do the right thing, just to take care of her family.
Stahma had similar motivations. Throughout the first season, Stahma pulled strings and manipulated situations to serve her interests. It was selfish, but it was all for the good of her family, and she wasn’t afraid to do what was needed.
In season two of Defiance, with Datak in prison and her son running the family business, Stahma had to find a way to ensure her survival without breaking the edicts of the Castithan homeworld. On Casti, their home planet, women weren’t allowed to run businesses and they weren’t supposed to have opinions, but Stahma believed in the new world that Earth promised, and she wanted to break the cycle.
Her feminist narrative was one of the strongest of season two and one of the reasons that I kept watching the show. Yet, Stahma’s narrative always felt like she was in danger of being found out.
Defiance was cancelled in 2015 shortly after the Season 3 finale aired, but I hadn’t seen it.
I was neck deep in a redesign work project and cultivating a friendship with my brother’s girlfriend. Since moving back home in 2012, I had put up my own stasis nets. I had lived with a presumption that I could, and possibly would, move at any time, but that hadn’t happened.
I had put up my own stasis nets. I had lived with a presumption that I could, and possibly would, move at any time, but that hadn’t happened.
While I was living at home, Sunday dinners had become a ritual, with my brother and his girlfriend coming over every week—sometimes on short notice—and that meant I was often cooking dinner. Over the course of a year and a half I got to know his girlfriend and we became friends. I taught her to knit and we went to trunk shows in New York City and knitting circles together. I showed my mom and brother the sometimes-complicated world of buying yarn from independent dyers online for Christmas and her birthday, and often served as a fit guide for when my mom decided to buy her clothes.
I wanted to do it, I was happy to do it. I liked my brother’s girlfriend, but a nagging part of me thought to myself: “She’s currently my only friend. What happens if this doesn’t work out?”
Before Christmas 2015, they broke up. She disappeared from my life like a shadow in the corner of my eye. That’s when my mother looked at me and said, “She was your friend. I didn’t even think about that.”
“I did,” I replied.
Since then, the stasis nets went back up. This time, not because I was planning to move, but because I didn’t want to lose another friend that way.
When 2016 rolled around I vowed that I would start doing things for myself again. A big project at work had recently come to an end and suddenly I had free time and didn’t know what to do with myself.
I got back into reading and went to a book group at my local independent bookstore…. Yet, I also felt lonely, in the way that someone describes being alone in a crowd of people.
I started writing television reviews for Tell-Tale TV, and threw myself full-tilt into a blog. I got back into reading and went to a book group at my local independent bookstore, and I kept doing things like the weekly grocery run. Yet, I also felt lonely, in the way that someone describes being alone in a crowd of people.
It’s strange seeing a mirror of yourself when you don’t expect it.
In July 2018, I was working on an article for Tell-Tale TV. I’d been contributing to them regularly for over two years and I often credit the site with giving me an outlet to save my sanity. I had written an essay about the TV show Timeless and its place in the time travel genre, and was working on a list of shows with similarly rich narratives.
I was talking to a friend about the idea, and asking her if she knew about any other shows, when she said, “Defiance.”
I thought about it for a moment. Defiance had slipped away from me so slowly that it hadn’t even occurred to me when I made my list. I thought about it some more and searched for the show online. It had been five years since the premiere but the three seasons were on Amazon Prime.
I began to re-watch the pilot, and I came to the scene where Joshua Nolan walks into Defiance for the first time and sees Amanda Rosewater give a speech at a town celebration. Later, walking through town with the former mayor, Amanda says how she’s “genetically incapable of inspiring people.” Later, when the town is under attack, she’s struggling with how to address the citizens. She’s looking for the right words that will inspire them to take up arms against the Volge.
She compares herself to Mayor Nicky, and when she ultimately takes to the podium in front of a scared and confused town, she ditches her script and says plainly, “We’re all going do die!”
In those two scenes I started to realize that it wasn’t Stahma Tarr I should have been looking at, but Amanda. She was a newly minted mayor who was fighting for a town that she loved. In each season, the writers gave Amanda new challenges and she always approached it rationally. She didn’t have all the answers, but she always attempted to find the best way out of her situation.
In those two scenes I started to realize that it wasn’t Stahma Tarr I should have been looking at, but Amanda…. She didn’t have all the answers, but she always attempted to find the best way out of her situation.
My world is nothing like Amanda Rosewater’s. Her history and mine don’t mirror each other, but as the pilot progressed, I saw more of myself in Amanda. When Amanda is injured during the fight with the Volge she attempts to get up and keep fighting before Doc Yewll pushes her back down and tells her she’s on bed rest.
Around the time I fell behind on Defiance, I was working on an important project for work. The project was taking longer than expected and one day, I suddenly realized I hadn’t showered in three days or changed my clothes, because I was so focused on the task. Had I been Amanda, in her exact same situation, I would have tried to get up too. I would have pressed on and kept working.
Watching Amanda tend to Defiance also brought up a connection I never expected.
I moved back to Connecticut in the summer of 2012, and I was there when the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. I was home and ready to pursue the next stage of my life, but on December 14, 2012, it was like the town halted. There were memorials and services, and I was concerned about two of the kids I babysat.
“Ms. Lauren,” the older one asked me. “Do I have to talk about what happened?”
I was at the stove making macaroni and cheese. I turned and stooped down to his level. “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I know a lot of people are asking you questions. So, when I am here, if you want to talk about it, we can. If you don’t, that’s fine too.”
He smiled and went back to his snack. Going on six years, I remember how internally, I had promised myself that I would be there for these boys and my community. And I was, until the family ultimately moved, but I never did; I stayed in my town and watched the anniversaries pass.
Looking back, in the spring of 2013, Stahma gave me what I needed to survive. She gave me calculated exterior and the hope that I could affect change in some small way. But, in my actions, I was really Amanda. She put her own feelings and ambitions aside for the good of the town. She loved Defiance and the people in it.
In an interview, Julie Benz who played the role of Amanda broke down one of her final scenes in the season three finale, “Upon the March We Fittest Die.”
“For me, Amanda represents the heart of Defiance. She’s the only character who consistently puts aside her own feelings for the good of the town. She sacrificed her whole life for the survival of the town.”
A few weeks ago, I was conducting a phone interview with Jennifer Bartels from American Woman. We were discussing how the characters were each developed differently. Bartels, who plays Diana, said:
“I know, as a viewer and as a woman, I really look to align with different characteristics of different women. I have a little Bonnie in me, and I have a little Kathleen in me, and of course, I have quite a bit of Diana in me, so it’s nice that people can relate to different aspects of the characters.”
I’ve been thinking about both Stahma Tarr and Amanda Rosewater, and the different things I’ve liked about each of them…. Stahma gave me the armor I needed at a time when the community around me was raw and healing, but Amanda was who I was.
This quote stayed with me as I transcribed it, and finished Defiance all the way through for the first time. I’ve been thinking about both Stahma Tarr and Amanda Rosewater, and the different things I’ve liked about each of them, and I realized that I have aspects of both of them. Stahma gave me the armor I needed at a time when the community around me was raw and healing, but Amanda was who I was. I just had to take care not to lose myself in the service of others, and protect myself a little bit, like Stahma Tarr would.
For all her backstabbing, which made her a compelling character, Stahma always looked out for herself, and she valued those closest to her. Stahma might not be the best role model, but she definitely had a few personality traits that I can benefit from.
When I realized I was a lesbian in the summer of 2005, I seriously thought I was one of the only ones in the wide world.
I had never read a book about a lesbian. I had never seen a movie about a lesbian relationship. I had never visited a lesbian bar, or attended a lesbian concert, or gathered in a house with a group of lesbians. I did listen to the Indigo Girls, but they were famous, and the Swamp Ophelia album only reduced me to more weeping. I was twenty-eight, married to a man, and in love with my best friend. No one anywhere had ever had my experience.
I had never read a book about a lesbian. I had never seen a movie about a lesbian relationship. I had never visited a lesbian bar, or attended a lesbian concert, or gathered in a house with a group of lesbians.
The internet told me something different. On Netflix, I found movies, which were delivered to my house in their anonymous red and white sleeves: When Night is Falling (Canada, 1995); Fire (Canada/India, 1997); Aimee and Jaguar (Germany, 2000); Tipping the Velvet (UK, 2002). On Amazon, I searched for “lesbian books,” and found Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body. Somewhere out there, there were other women who loved women. Their stories, often anguished, but almost always fiercely passionate and true, became my community.
Tell me, I pleaded with these other lesbians, who I am. Tell me what to do.
In November of that year, I flew to New York to stay with a college friend who lived boldly in a civil union with her partner. They took me to The Oscar Wilde Bookshop (now closed, sadly) and to Bluestockings, and I loaded my arms with more stories, as if I could, with reading, ward off my fear and loneliness. Rebecca Brown, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Joan Nestle, Lillian Faderman, Elana Dykewomon. Tell me, I pleaded with these other lesbians, who I am. Tell me what to do.
Meanwhile, I wrote mostly about parenting and adoption, about Alaska (where I lived at the time), about climbing mountains. My own story as a lesbian was fragile, in the way a tinder-dry forest is fragile. I feared that if I wrote about my love for Lia, it would flame to ash. And of course, it did, far more violently than I ever imagined. That’s the story Grief Map tells, but Grief Map also tells the story of the lesbian who emerged from that ash, the living woman, writing now about allof her experience because she had no other choice.
But after Lia died in 2011, I once again felt like I was the only one. I crouched in my grief and wondered what it meant to be a woman who loves women all alone. And again, the community spoke to me: the movies and the books reminded me that I was not the only one to have lost, that I could survive. I wrapped myself in those stories. I breathed there. I kept writing.
And yet I still felt as much awed distance from the lesbian community as I did from the Indigo Girls. I was just an isolated lesbian writer in Colorado. When my wife Meredith and I first met in 2014, I was keeping a sad blog called “The Boulder Lesbian,” as if I was the only one. It still felt that way.
I discovered the Golden Crown Literary Society by chance one early morning, when I was taking a break from a scene I was trying to construct in a short story. I wanted connection. Where were the other lesbian writers in the world? I googled “lesbian writers” and Google offered me “lesbian writers conference.” I clicked—and GCLS was the top post. I found myself on a website offering “the premiere lesbian literary event” each year, and an ongoing mission of dedication to “the promotion and recognition of lesbian literature.” I told Brain Mill Press, Grief Map’s publisher, about it, and they submitted Grief Map for a Goldie Award in the non-fiction category. But I didn’t feel part of it. It was another famous place where lesbians gathered, somewhere else.
I wanted connection. Where were the other lesbian writers in the world? I googled “lesbian writers” and Google offered me “lesbian writers conference.”
Then I found myself at the GCLS Conference this July, listening to Lucy Jane Bledsoe and Rachel Gold and Elana Dykewomon and Dorothy Allison read from their work. I told myself, I am part of this community. And I was! For three days, I attended master classes and presentations and panels, readings and speakers in an all-lesbian space. I exchanged my card with other lesbian writers and readers. I discussed story ideas that revolve around lesbian lives. One woman told me she thinks of this annual conference as a sort of lesbian summer camp, and it did have that otherworldly shimmer. With its diversity of age and race and background and expression, the conference had the open-hearted kindness I’ve always imagined those circles of lesbians had in the 1970s communes. How wonderful, to move among these other lesbians in this lovely safe space, a literal haven from the smoke and crowds and din of Vegas.
Each morning, I walked through the Bally’s casino and breathed in relief to reach the conference rooms, where we lesbians retreated from the world awhile. Each evening, when Meredith returned to our room from her poker tournaments, I told her the stories I had heard people read during the day: a lesbian pirate, a lesbian doctor in a helicopter, a lesbian who disguised herself as a man in the 1890s, a lesbian who discovered her grandmother’s secret love had been a woman. I told her that Elana Dykewomon’s poetry made an entire room weep, and that Dorothy Allison was just as funny and wise in person as she was on the page. I told her that I had never imagined the power of an all-lesbian space, the way I literally felt all of us were embraced and held up there. Meredith smiled at me and kissed me tenderly and, because Vegas is like this, just outside our sixty-sixth floor window, the Eiffel Tower throbbed purple and blue with a party and the giant digital eyes on the Cosmopolitan reflected in the water in front of the Bellagio. We were in our own lesbian romance story.
At the GCLS Goldie awards ceremony on July seventh, I stood at the podium with Grief Map’s award for non-fiction in my hands, and I said to the gathered community of three-hundred and fifty lesbians, “Thirteen years ago, when I realized I was a lesbian, I thought I was the only one,” and a wave of loving, understanding laughter rolled toward me. I had never been alone at all. Later, when Meredith and I danced in each other’s arms on a dance floor full of only other lesbians, some in suits, some in dresses, some in wonderful ambiguous amalgamations of the two, I kissed my wife and I knew we moved, now, in the community, part of it all.
I stood at the podium with Grief Map’s award for non-fiction in my hands, and I said to the gathered community of three-hundred and fifty lesbians, “Thirteen years ago, when I realized I was a lesbian, I thought I was the only one,” and a wave of loving, understanding laughter rolled toward me. I had never been alone at all.
What’s next? At first, when I came home to Denver, the same slump threatened me that used to threaten me after summer camp when I was a kid, as if the world could never be as supportive and vibrant and connected as camp was. It really can’t. But the stories I tell in the next year can reach toward that energy. My new protagonist Sam can long for it. And then next summer, I can return to that all-lesbian space (in Pittsburgh in 2019) for a few days. I’m excited already.
The blue light from my computer screen illuminates my face as I scroll through my friends’ Facebook posts. This friend has just traveled to Hawaii with her husband. That friend has just hand-made clothes for her children. That friend has completed a Tough Mudder with his boyfriend. I click the thumbs-up icon, or I leave little encouraging comments. An hour passes. Two.
Oh, Facebook.
I joined Facebook late, considering that the company began in 2004. In 2007, the summer I decided to adopt my daughter Mitike, I created an account on the blue and white website people were talking about, and shared a photo of me, my mom, and my sister Katie tubing on the Upper Iowa River in Decorah. We are all grinning in the photo. Five people liked it, then ten. People with whom I had lost touch began to request me as their friends. At the time, I lived far away from all of them — all the way in Alaska — and my new cellphone (I was late to that trend, too) allowed me only a limited number of monthly minutes. Facebook was a free way to stay in touch.
A year later, when Mitike came home from Ethiopia, Facebook was a way I could stay sane, a way I could show everyone the sweet and astonishing little person I had promised to raise. I shared videos and photographs, and more people liked them, and more people requested friendships. I connected with adoptive parents’ groups and with Ethiopian culture groups. Every day at nap time, I checked my Facebook account — and I felt a little more connected in a life that, while beautiful, contained mostly cheese sticks and raisins and discussions about poop.
Facebook was a way I could stay sane, a way I could show everyone the sweet and astonishing little person I had promised to raise.
In 2011, when Ali died, Facebook became a place I haunted in my grief. I studied our old posted photographs for clues, and I left cryptic messages on a Facebook page that had outlived its face. The blue website no longer connected me, but encouraged my drifting, alone. For hours, I zoomed in on photographs to examine a smile, a look in the eyes, the clues I had missed. I ignored all my friends’ happy updates, and I dwelled in the darker places.
And then, still later, there were the years — the recent ones — when Facebook functioned as a joyful declaration: I survived! I have found love again! Hey, everyone, this is Meredith! We’re married! We’re happy! I posted photos and videos, links and updates. Mostly, I checked and checked Facebook. What had people said about my photo? Had people commented on my column? Had others liked my link? Facebook was part virtual scrapbook, part live feed into my life. I engaged with friends’ posts; I found and shared exciting events; I shared pictures of the dozen pink pussy hats I had crocheted; I vented my anger about the Trump administration. Morning after morning, I clicked on the little white “f” in the blue square on my phone, and it was like walking into a crowded room — look at this photo of my quinoa plants, have you seen what Trump’s done now?, can you believe how much my daughter’s grown?, there’s a rally downtown next Saturday and I plan to go.
Morning after morning, I clicked on the little white “f” in the blue square on my phone, and it was like walking into a crowded room — look at this photo of my quinoa plants, have you seen what Trump’s done now?
Oh, Facebook.
This past June, when my family and I traveled west to stay in a rented cabin on the Oregon coast for a week, I decided, on a whim, to take a sabbatical from all technology. For seven days, I did not access the internet in any way; I used my phone only as a camera, on airplane mode. And…I began to take photographs so I could remember the moment, not so I could share it with five hundred strangers. At night, I reflected purely on the conversations I had had with Mitike and Meredith, not on the chatter of that crowded blue room. My mind was clearer, like a desk I had sorted.
For the few months after that, I returned to posting and checking and liking, but my brief sobriety had taught me something essential: I didn’t need Facebook. It distracted me from living my real life. Then the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened, and former Facebook creators and executives began to admit that the site is deliberately designed to addict us to more clicking and to direct certain companies’ ads at us, and, like Montag (Fahrenheit 451 is frighteningly apt here), I shouted, “No more!”
I began to take photographs so I could remember the moment, not so I could share it with five hundred strangers.
I deleted the app. It took seconds. I stopped logging on to Facebook every morning as I ate breakfast. I stopped visiting the page when I needed a break from my writing. I stopped scrolling through the 515 “friends”’ posts at stoplights on my way home in the afternoons. I just stopped, cold turkey.
And — I missed it not at all. For the months of September and October, as I moved through my life without Facebook, I did not once wonder what all the posters were posting, or what the likers were liking. When a November New York Review of Books article revealed some of the darker, far more serious reasons we should all free ourselves from social media like Facebook, I happily breathed my free air.
Then, in mid-November, I needed a few photos so I could craft our Christmas card. Like many people, I have not printed photos to store in shoe boxes or leather albums for years; instead, I have stored them on Facebook. Until I spend hours one day downloading all those photos (and Mitike’s baby and toddler videos) and burning the files to a CD, I cannot actually delete my Facebook account. That day, when I logged on to grab the photos I needed, the 6 messages, 68 new notifications, and 2 friend requests nearly seduced me to start scrolling.
But I held to my resolve. Facebook does not improve my life. It does not connect me more deeply to anyone. It does not inform me better than my daily reading of The Guardian and The New Yorker. It may announce events, but mostly, it pulls me away from real engagement in my community. Again, I say: no more.
I held to my resolve. Facebook does not improve my life. It does not connect me more deeply to anyone.
I have been accused at several junctures of my life of Luddism, mostly because I resist texting everyone constantly, because I watch little TV, and because I have seriously restricted Mitike’s screen time (at age eleven, she still only gets three hours a week; we bought her a flip-phone for emergencies when she started middle school, but her iPhone is years away). Now I am deleting Facebook. However, like the original Luddites, I do not oppose the technology itself, but its threat to genuine human skill and human interaction. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter claim to better connect us, and yet the hallways of the high school where I teach are crowded not with boisterous teenagers but with solitary figures hunched over their iPhone screens, shuffling forward as they scroll through friends’ Snapchats. When I pass these zoned-out kids, I call out “Look up!” to startle them back into their real lives.
Now I am deleting Facebook. However, like the original Luddites, I do not oppose the technology itself, but its threat to genuine human skill and human interaction.
The original Luddite movement began in Nottingham, England, in 1811, when a group of angry factory workers smashed textile machinery in protest against low wages and too little work. In the months that followed, the British government deployed soldiers; the Luddites set fire to factories and broke more machinery; the soldiers fired into mobs; people died. Mostly, the Luddites feared, in the words of the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle in 1829, a world in which “Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”
In 1996-97, I lived in the Luddites’ Nottingham, in a second-story flat with eleven other American college students. There I knew a far better balance between my humanity and technology. Our flat possessed a single Apple computer that was good only for slow word-processing, a single land-line telephone, and a single television set. Sometimes, I took the bus early to the university so I could send electronic mail to my mom with my new Yahoo account, but that was it. My flatmates and I spent most of our time hanging out, attending plays, frequenting pubs, venturing into the green countryside. I wrote more, sketched a little, took photographs of crumbling walls and pubs on a film camera. When we couldn’t think of an answer or a definition, we engaged in fierce debate, because Google was still an idea in a Stanford dorm room. Except for the parents we called periodically, no one received daily or hourly updates about the pints we drank or the castles we visited.
And yes, I am saying that Luddite life was a better, healthier existence than this one.
And yes, I am saying that Luddite life was a better, healthier existence than this one. This fall, when my Nottingham roommate, Sarah, and I decided to move our friendship back into handwritten letters, I was astonished. Sarah and I have remained close for the entire twenty years since Nottingham, but these letters! In our rushed handwriting — while her kids slept, while Mitike did her homework, with early-morning coffee — we dove more deeply into reflections about our lives than we have in years on email and on Facebook. Paper and pen, actual envelope, the imprint of one page’s writing on the next: I read and re-read her letters like I have never done with her digital communication. True, I caught myself wondering why she hadn’t responded yet just an hour after I tucked my letter to her into the mailbox, but these habits are difficult to smash immediately. True, I considered posting a photo of my steaming cup of coffee next to Sarah’s letter with a caption like “Old friends, and a return to real communication,” but I resisted.
Oh, Facebook. I will not grow mechanical in head and in heart. I will not “take things at second or third hand.” I will see this world with my own eyes, experience it as it is, read more actual books of paper, connect with real friends face-to-face. I will look up.
When scientists offer the flatworm Planaria a choice of going left or right, shock it on one side and give it whatever a Planarian desires on the other (this is an example of why scientists should never be put in charge of social programs), the flatworm learns to avoid the shock.
One can almost see it cringing and oozing off fast in the other direction. It fears. We humans may pride ourselves on the complex, Latin-named fears we collect, but basic oh-my-god-run-for-it terror far predates the ability to dance the tango or part our hair behind and eat peaches.
Fear comes standard with the model, built into the nerves and glands. It’s not a Freudian add-on reserved for humans. It’s basic as breathing, older than joy, envy, compassion, hate, or love. The flatworm is our brother under the skin.
This relates to writing — I’m getting to this — because writing is about the whole human. Story happens in the gut, heart, and groin as much as in the head. Our characters don’t just analyze and pontificate. Primal emotions suck their feet into the quagmire, batter and tumble them like an avalanche, smash a fist to the face, sting like tarantulas.
Writing is about the whole human. Story happens in the gut, heart, and groin as much as in the head.
Talking off my philosopher hat and putting on my practical writer bonnet, I like to sort fear into three useful types.
First off, there’s fear that reaches from out of the character’s past, being poisonous and subtle about it. This is fear not happening in the story now. It enters the narrative as backstory or as an old trauma that shapes our character. This is indirect, fear-at-one-remove, but it makes up for that distance in story muscle. When genre Romance is about healing wounds of the spirit, about overcoming old angers and doubts, it’s often fear that’s done the damage. Conflict can boil down to a face-off between the power of love and the power of fear. Long-ago fear can be the mainspring of the plot.
Heady stuff, that.
When genre Romance is about healing wounds of the spirit, about overcoming old angers and doubts, it’s often fear that’s done the damage.
My two other sorts of fear enter the narrative directly. They happen up close and personal. They’re in the reader’s face.
On the one hand, there’s the sudden stab of terror, maybe accompanied by a gurgling shriek. This is our old friend, icy shock. Very Hitchcockian.
Step down in the dark and find nothing underfoot. The airplane drops six feet, thumps, shudders, and tilts. You jam on the brake and skid toward the cliff. Turn in the shopping mall and the five-year-old isn’t there.
Or there’s the long, slow kind of fear if you prefer that. The hour before battle. Being wheeled down the long corridor into the operating room. Going downstairs to investigate the footsteps that shouldn’t be in an empty house. Or when the spider . . . actually the spider doesn’t have to do anything. The spider can just sit there.
This is the “ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night” fear.
That line above, generally called an ‘an old Scottish prayer’, is almost certainly a Victorian invention. I was disappointed about that, till I realized this shows the universality of human terror. Lying in bed, listening to the wind, I fear things that go bump in the night with the clammy and chill sincerity of my cavewoman ancestors. Whatever it is out in the dark, it’s still waiting for us after all these centuries.
Writers have uses for all three kinds of fear: trauma from the past; sudden, acute shock; and slow, creeping, inescapable dread.
When past fear shapes the characters, we see echoes of old fear in their actions. The romance plot bends to heal and reconcile.
Fear as the sudden bolt of terror makes the characters explode into immediate action or freezes them in place. It punctuates, and then the story continues in the aftermath in what may be a wholly different mood. In fact, the change of mood from terror to some resolution may be the most important emotional step of the scene.
When fear is an extended space of trapped terror, the story goes on inside it. Action, reaction, dialog, complex thought, a hundred indecisions and decisions and revisions take place against a background of fear. This is not a transformative moment or a spur to action. It’s terrain the character must navigate.
When fear is an extended space of trapped terror, the story goes on inside it.
Taking an example of this …
In one of my books a man stands with his back to the wall of a Revolutionary prison in France. It’s 1792. The Terror. The guillotine. He sinks to the ground and sits there, facing the certainty of his own death. No knives slash. No one flees across the heath one snap ahead of the slavering hounds. There’s no outward action at all. The enemy my William Doyle faces is his own fear.
This defines him.
So where do the words come from?
When writers put fear on the page, it’s their own fear. We spin words out of ourselves. It’s as if we had a loom and alpaca in the back yard, except that it’s from us.
So let’s say I’ve swerved to miss some dolt of a pedestrian dressed in ninja black. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill him. I keep saying that.
I pull over to the side of the road and whimper mindlessly for a minute because that’s a very fine and useful reaction, of course. But sitting there with my forehead against the steering wheel, I think, “This is what terror feels like. Nice little nervous tic in my eye — check. Muscles turned to water — check. Dry mouth? — Maybe not so much dry. It’s like cotton. I’m a cottonmouth. That’s funny. What would I call this thing my heart’s doing? Not just thumping. It’s squirming around in there.”
Touching matters of particular interest to the writer of genre Romance, I ask myself if I feel the least desire to grab a handsome hero, tear his clothes off, and pull him down to the floor so we can couple like rabid mink.
Not so much. I think that’s a literary invention, mostly.
This is all very writerly. In moments of stark terror writers are all sitting there taking mental notes while we’re shaking because we are going to use this little incident in our work.
Some people find writers a little odd.
Let me end with some lines from Alexi Panshin’s Star Well that sum up adventure stories and Romance genre pretty much.
If the truth be known, Alice’s life thus far had left her unprepared for the realities of romance. There is a sine qua non of romance that she did not know: no weeping over corpses without true pain felt; no embrace by a lover without trials endured; no final rainbow without rain.
Ruthie Knox
When writers put fear on the page, it’s their own fear. We spin words out of ourselves.
On January 1, 2016, I started writing again.
Between October 2010 and February 2014, when I finished revisions on a novel called Harder, I had written more than a dozen works of fiction. Then, in late February 2014, I told my husband I wanted a divorce.
After that, I wrote almost nothing for two years.
Writers write.
It’s something writers hear a lot. The romance writers’ organization I belong to publishes articles on how to keep churning out love stories in the midst of your divorce. A writer friend welcomes pregnancy and keeps meeting her word-count goals day after day–even after the baby comes. Even as her life changes. Writers write.
But I didn’t.
Divorce is exhausting — divorce with children still more so. When you’ve fallen in love with a new partner and are trying to nurture that relationship and solve intractable logistical problems of dissolving two marriages across a distance so you can come together in a new household — when you move twice inside of a year — when you’re learning to cohabit with a new love and coparent with a new partner — when you’re nurturing your kids — well. It’s a lot.
I had a lot on my mind. That’s what I told my agent, my editor. And it was true, but it felt more like I had too much grief and change seated in my body to make my mind available for writing fiction. I spent my days having novel experiences, crying until my stomach hurt, ranting through three-hour drives, talking and laughing on the phone until late, trying scary new things, risking myself, dreaming up a new business, falling asleep exhausted every night. I was changing, and experiencing the full charge of terror that accompanies change.
I could do that, or I could write books.
We spin words out of ourselves — but we have to be careful, every day, not to use ourselves up.
I got divorced because I fell in love, but I fell in love because I needed to get divorced.
Which is flippant, and women aren’t supposed to be flippant about divorce. Not when they initiate it, anyway. It makes people terribly uncomfortable.
I’ve learned a lot in two years about making people terribly uncomfortable.
We don’t fall in love unless there’s room — room in our hearts, our heads, our bodies, for someone else. The room I found for love was room my marriage no longer occupied, if it ever had.
I didn’t take that room from my husband to give to my new partner. The space for love was already there.
But where does that space come from?
I have two brothers, one four years older, one fifteen months. I watched ET with my partner last year, and she pointed out how much I must have been like the kid sister, played by Drew Barrymore, who wants nothing more than to know what her brothers are doing now? And what are they doing now? And now would they like to see what she can do? And how about now? Are they interested in hearing about her thing she did?
The love of a younger sister for her older brothers is intense as a crush, directed with the focus and intensity of a laser beam, and just as one-directional. My brothers loved me, too, of course, but they loved as big brothers do: distractedly, randomly, and with prejudice.
I watched them. I watched their friends. I wanted their attention. I wanted the attention of their friends. I wanted approval. I wanted boys to look at me. I wanted to be cool like them. I wanted them to look at me and see what I was doing and approve. I wanted them to be as interested in me as they were in each other. They never were.
In college and grad school, I dated a string of men who didn’t like me very much.
At twenty-five, I got married.
If our romantic ideal is love that heals wounds of the spirit, how do we understand love and marriage borne of unmet needs, insecurity, and loneliness? I went to college at sixteen, started grad school at twenty. I think about the ten years between leaving my parents and becoming a wife, and mostly I remember an overwhelming feeling of not-knowing.
Not knowing how I felt, or how to feel, or what I wanted, or how to get my needs met, or if I was okay.
Against this backdrop, I followed rules, made friends, held down jobs, earned good grades, researched and wrote a dissertation, pleased everyone I knew, and joined my life to another person’s. At the time, it looked and felt enough like love. But if I were writing my story now, fear would be the mainspring of the plot.
Until two years ago, when love moved into room I’d made ready for it and handed me a weapon against fear.
When fear is an extended space of trapped terror, the story goes on inside it.
I’ve lived a life of extraordinary privilege, and for most of it I avoided both confrontation and fear. Like the planera, I turned away. When we can’t turn away, however–or when a prize so big and important comes along that we decide not to–then we begin to live inside a space of fear.
Living in fear means living in the body, with the body. Crying suddenly and often. Crying daily. It means stomachaches, headaches, cancer scares. Living in fear requires getting comfortable with the idea of death, or at least trying to. Also, your poverty. The heavy love of motherhood.
Sexism. Racism. The impossibility of communication.
When we live inside the extended space of trapped terror, we face things every day that we would have looked away from before. We have no choice. We’re trapped with our terror, stuck in the same locked room with it, and it isn’t any help. It just flails and faffs, hides and cries, and we understand that if we continue listening to fear, we’re sunk. So we learn that though we’re afraid, we aren’t dead. Death is right there. We can see it.
We go ahead and squish the spider with the bare pad of our finger.
When we live with fear, our stories go on. It is our selves that are remade.
Writing is about the whole human. Story happens in the gut, heart, and groin as much as in the head.
I returned to writing two weeks ago, two years after I stopped, not because I feel ready but because my partner tells me it’s time, and I find that I can.
I can, even though I don’t want to.
Writing is the same. I like all the things I liked about it before. I hate all the things I hated about it. It’s just as frustrating, just as annoying, just as impossible, just as exhilarating. I become the tiny god of my book, and I enjoy that, because I have control issues and an ego. I make tiny god decisions and brandish my tiny god fists, and my partner laughs at me, makes me lunch, tells me to sit down and do more writing.
Writers write. I don’t know if I write now because I’m a writer, or if I’m a writer because I’m writing again. If there was some period of time when I wasn’t a writer — if we phase in and out of being writers, as we phase in and out of being truly awake, truly human, truly here.
I don’t know if I’m doing it because I was always meant to, or if I’m only doing it because she said to.
Writing is the same. But I see more clearly now than I did before how much of myself I draw on to write. My wounds, my memories, my guts, my groin, my flaws, my fear.
My love. My heart.
My story.
New York Times bestselling author Ruthie Knox has published over a dozen titles in adult contemporary romance and New Adult romance (writing as Robin York). Nominated for four RITA awards in her first two years as a published author, Ruthie has been translated into German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Her New Adult novels Deeper and Harder made Library Journal’s best-of list for 2014, and Deeper was recognized by RT Book Reviews as the best New Adult title of last year.
On the evening of Mother’s Day, I stood gazing proudly at my sixty-four square feet of raised garden.
I love each plant: the green leafy broccolini, the heart-leafed French radishes, the purple-veined Russian kale, the climbing sweet peas, the glossy spinach and butterhead lettuce, the flowering yellow blossoms of the slender mustard greens, the clustered tender beet shoots, the open palms of the purple cabbage. Every afternoon, after I battle teenagers and bureaucracy all day, I greet my wife and my daughter and then slip out into the backyard to tend these vegetables, some of which I planted in mid-March. Every afternoon, I water each square by hand; I examine each leaf. Meredith teases me that most of the time, when she glances out the window, I’m just standing back there and staring at the garden, not doing anything. It’s true. I’m successful here, in this perfect 4 x 16 rectangle of sixty-four squares. I plant seeds in perfect soil (one-third peat moss, one-third compost, one-third vermiculite); I water; I watch the plants emerge and grow. It’s quite different from teaching, where I have no control over the soil and cannot always provide the right kind of water or sunlight. In the garden, my labor has direct, predictable results. Not so in my classroom. All day at work, I clench my teeth, but in the afternoon, I begin to relax. I touch the sun-warmed soil, and I breathe.
I watch the plants emerge and grow. It’s quite different from teaching, where I have no control over the soil and cannot always provide the right kind of water or sunlight. In the garden, my labor has direct, predictable results. Not so in my classroom.
But then, at noon on the day after Mother’s Day, I half-listened to student presentations in my classroom as thunder boomed in a black sky. The students, trying to remain polite, looked nervously out the windows, probably thinking of their exposed cars in the parking lot. This time of year, Colorado thunderstorms usually bring hail, and sometimes that hail is frighteningly destructive. At the front of the room, Stephanie was talking about advances in medical technology, and we all nodded encouragingly, but the students thought about their cars—and I worried about my beloved plants.
The weather person had warned me on the radio that morning when I was halfway to school: thunderstorms this afternoon, with possible hail. I considered turning around. In ten minutes, I could have rushed to the garden shed, grabbed the PVC pipe and the floating covers, protected those tender shoots. Or I could have grabbed mixing bowls and large plastic pots and set them upside down over as many plants as possible. I considered, nearly veering onto the next exit off of I-25, but the twenty-four papers waiting on my desk to be graded pulled me north. My plants would be fine. The chances that they would be hurt by hail were slim. After all, they had survived a few heavy snows, many nights of frost, a hungry baby rabbit, seed-searching Northern Flickers, and spring winds. A little hail couldn’t defeat them now.
I didn’t even think to worry again until Meredith texted me about the “crazy” hailstorm that day that had backed up traffic and caused accidents and actually forced the city to pull the snowplows out of the garages. She was glad to be home, she said. I couldn’t ask about the plants. Instead, I endured my seventh-period class, twenty-nine seniors as burned out with school as eighteen-year-olds can be, irritated that I am still making them do work this close to graduation day.
The hail that day came unannounced, in a wild rush of freezing wind and black sky, while the two of us ate dinner at our little table. “Oh, no, Mommy! The little plants!” Mitike cried.
On the drive home, I remembered my first spring in Colorado, when Mitike was four. It was the first week of June, we had just fled Alaska, and I was desperate to find some tangible joy. I loaded Mitike into our new used Subaru, and we drove to the nearest greenhouse, where we bought the sweetest profusion of pansies and herbs and vegetables. All afternoon, we worked with our spades (Mitike’s was purple) to turn and amend and plant the raised boxes and the large garden in our new Fort Collins backyard. Finished, we stood back and admired the little green leaves waving in the breeze, transplanted like the two of us, ready to thrive.
The hail that day came unannounced, in a wild rush of freezing wind and black sky, while the two of us ate dinner at our little table. “Oh, no, Mommy! The little plants!” Mitike cried, and we ran to the back door just in time to watch marble-sized ice balls rip our transplants to tiny shreds and then flatten the pieces cruelly into the cultivated soil. Both of us stood and sobbed, our noses pressed against the back door’s cold glass window.
That was almost exactly seven years ago. Now, driving home in sunshine (Colorado’s weather changes that quickly) after the booming noontime storm, I told myself such hail destruction couldn’t possibly happen twice to the same gardener.
Meredith met me on the porch of our house and gestured toward the irises and black-eyed susans and coneflowers in the front bed. “They’re fine, aren’t they? They’ll bounce back.” I kissed her and surveyed the torn leaves, the battered look of the plants as if some large creature had laid down on them. These were plants native to Colorado, hardy enough to survive hail. They would be fine.
That evening seven years ago, I said we were both sobbing, but that’s not true. I was sobbing about what (and whom) we’d left behind in Alaska, and she, only four, burst into tears because her mommy did not know what to do with all the grief.
Together, Meredith and I walked through the house to the backyard, to the vegetable garden, Mitike and Fable close behind.
At the edge of the box, we stopped and gaped.
The damage was horrific, far worse than the hailstorm seven years ago. The plants I had been nurturing for two months had been flattened, beaten, stripped, broken—decimated. The hail, apparently the size of the peas I had so lovingly planted two months before, had pounded most of the leaf and stem fragments into the soil. A pea vine clung to its orange twine lead like some gruesome execution. The bared broccolini stalks pointed accusingly at the sky. No plant had escaped damage. The feathery tendrils of the asparagus lay listless beside a flattened and uprooted tomato plant. The sunflower shoots were ripped and torn, pieces hanging like severed limbs.
Meredith and Mitike watched me warily. The source of my calm destroyed, I could dissolve, or panic, or rage. They had seen all three. Mitike leaned toward the nearest broken, teetering red cabbage plant and murmured, “You’re okay. You’ll be okay! Just be strong.” Of course she was actually talking to me. That evening seven years ago, I said we were both sobbing, but that’s not true. I was sobbing about what (and whom) we’d left behind in Alaska, and she, only four, burst into tears because her mommy did not know what to do with all the grief. I’ve tried to be strong for her most of the time, but sometimes the hail damage has just been too egregious.
On this day, though, in the sunshine, a wiser Sarah than the one seven years ago, I felt not grief but acceptance. This happens. Hail. Wind. Death. Heartbreak.
On this day, though, in the sunshine, a wiser Sarah than the one seven years ago, I felt not grief but acceptance. This happens. Hail. Wind. Death. Heartbreak. In the garden, the fragments of lettuce leaf and broccolini bud become compost for the next seeds. Maybe the beets will revive themselves from this flattened state, and maybe the pea shoots will climb out of this, or maybe not. In a week, I’ll pull out browning stems and replant. In three weeks, I’ll have a lush garden again, just in time for another hailstorm. And then I’ll replant again. I can be as stubborn as I am tender.
Later that night, I retrieved my scissors from the garden shed and began to chop away at the battered lettuce heads, the torn spinach, the shredded kale. They might grow new leaves, and pruning gives them the energy to try.
If only I could learn to approach a failed lesson plan or a rejected manuscript in the same way. Start over, start over. There are many more days of sun than hail.
The other day, as my wife and I drove north on Interstate 25 in our Mazda CX5 with our eleven-year-old daughter, Mitike, and our dog, Fable, in the backseat, I thought, “Why not get rid of all these safety features in our car?”
I mean, really, our car would have been so much cheaper without all these gratuitous extras—without the blindspot monitoring, without the brake assist or the traction control, without the air bags or the rearview mirrors or the windshield wipers or the daytime running lights. And if Mazda hadn’t been mandated to install seatbelts or spend its resources on IIHS or NHTSA safety tests, this car would be far more fun to drive.
I glanced in the unnecessary rearview mirror at Mitike, who bent over a book. What kind of world are we promising future drivers like her? All these regulations! These superfluous rules, like properly registering a vehicle, or paying for insurance on it, or passing vision and knowledge tests to get a license to drive. Fettered by decades of rules, we cannot enjoy driving. Someday, the government will probably just take away this right all together, and we will all be forced to take the public bus system.
“Um, Mom?”
“Yes, Mitike?”
“What are you writing?”
“I’m tired. Another school shooting, and no one’s going to do anything. I’m resorting to sarcasm.”
“But you’re not writing about guns.”
“Yes, I am. If guns could be regulated like cars are, we’d have far fewer deaths. Did you know that when states started requiring people to get driver’s licenses in the 1930s, they dramatically reduced accidents on the roads? And that after most states started requiring seatbelts in the 1990s, people’s injuries in car accidents decreased by half? And that when car companies started putting in air bags in the late 1990s, they reduced the mortality rate by 63 percent? A few rules, and we’re safer. I’m trying to argue that—”
“Mom, let me try.”
“What?”
“Let me write your column this month.”
“Would you mind?”
Stop This NOW! A Guest Column by Mitike Iris Campbell, Age Eleven
Why do you keep letting this happen? You grown-ups are exasperating sometimes. You would not hesitate to protect your children and your family, but you hesitate at this, at choosing the safety of your family over your precious guns? The Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This does not mean that everyone just has the right to bear arms. It means we have the right to bear them in a well-regulated way. Technology like guns is always advancing, so laws must always be made and changed to protect us. Children are losing lives they have only just begun. Our future is being destroyed by your inaction here and now. Decide. Unregulated guns or continued tragedy? Danger or safety? Violence or peace? Injustice or justice? Death or life? Hatred or love? Please remember that the choices you make will affect the future as well as the present.
—MIC
A question-and-answer session with the guest columnist, Mitike, who is in fifth grade and loves reading fantasy novels, considering fashion styles, playing volleyball, and relaxing with her family.
SHC: So, Mitike, why do you think school shootings are happening?
MIC: Because of guns.
SHC: Does hearing about a tragedy like the one in Florida make you feel afraid?
MIC: Yes, it does when I think about it, but most of the time I’m so focused on my work, I don’t think about it.
SHC: What does your school do to prepare for emergencies?
MIC: We do lock-downs, lock-outs. In art class, we do a lock-down drill in the kiln room. And we do have talks about this kind of thing a lot. They talk about what is appropriate and what is inappropriate to bring to school, and how you should report it if you see anyone with anything unsafe.
SHC: What’s an example of something that is inappropriate to bring to school?
MIC: Guns, knives, swords. I don’t know if swords really exist, but, you know. Daggers, bombs, but they don’t really talk about those. That’s mostly it.
SHC: What would you say to someone who says that if we allow the government to regulate guns more, the government will take them all away?
MIC: Well, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if they do. If that’s the only way they see fit to keep us safe, then it’s probably a good choice.
SHC: Like what Australia did?
MIC: Yes, I think that’s great. They’re having a fine time down there—except they do have lots of poisonous animals threatening their population, instead.
SHC: What do you think of the idea of requiring licenses for everyone who owns a gun, as a place to start?
MIC: I think that is a good idea because if we had that, then we’d be able to trust that we lived in a little bit safer country, and a little bit safer schools. Kids should not have to worry that we’re going to die.
SHC: What are some other things you worry about?
MIC: Well … I hate snakes, komodo dragons, snakes in a pit, snakes chasing me on top of a cart that wants to run me over, finding out my house is on fire in the middle of the night and not being able to run away, losing my dog. I’m worried my cousins will get me in trouble. I worry that my cousin Ryland will break his head open because he’s not being careful. I worry about doing terribly on tests. I worry that I’m not getting enough information from the books my teacher wants me to read. I worry about forgetting my homework.
SHC: Wow, that’s a lot of worries. What would a peaceful life look like for you, then?
MIC: It would be a life where I would only worry about little things I have no control over, not about my life being threatened. Not in school, anyway, where I’m trying to learn.
NOTE: Call your senators now. Tell them to support the assault weapon ban and to push legislation that requires strict licensing and regulation of guns. Donate to and join Moms Demand Action. Please. Let’s allow our kids to worry about poisonous snakes, instead.
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