Anna's Blog
Life with this Guy
July 27th, 2010
So, I should have added a #11 to my 10-true-things about my husband post last month. But here we go, Number 11: he likes to ‘help’ me write my books.
The other day I was called away from the story I’m working on at the moment by one of the kids, so left my poor characters in mid scene. (My characters are EXTREMELY accustomed to this, so don’t feel too sorry for them or anything). An elderly, battle scarred warrior had just told my narrator, “We can’t go back.”
Now, obviously you’re missing just a bit here in terms of like the entire story, who these characters are, just what was going on in this scene, etc. But trust me, it is a MOMENT, right? A big, dramatic, slightly teary moment.
So, I was called away, and when I came back to my computer, the line read, “We can’t go back. But we could always send the penguins.”
Oh, he is so helpful, that husband of mine!
Though he did make me the utterly gorgeous cover for my coming-soon short story The Witch Queen’s Secret. Isn’t it amazing? I’ve got a description of the story up now, and will have the story itself there very very soon. I’m just waiting on word from my publishers about where exactly it’s going to live on Kindle and other e-reader sites. But it will DEFINITELY be available for free download here.
So yeah, guess I will keep my husband around. He makes really really cute babies, too.
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Notes from the Teething Trenches
July 13th, 2010Eek, has it really been that long since last I blogged? My time has been a bit taken up lately by my poor little teething baby. Who is teething. And also–let’s be honest here–being kind of a baby about it all. Poor love. Although I’m happy to report that she is as sweet and adorable as ever:
But, I have updates! Firstly, my husband has added a–very preliminary–Dark Moon of Avalon page to get ready for the release in September. Isn’t the cover gorgeous? It’s a very different look, obviously, from the Twilight of Avalon cover, but I’m really happy with what my publishers chose.
And I’ll have more new material up very soon. My genius husband is working on an interactive map and genealogy of the Arthurian world to help keep track of the characters and kingdoms in the books. And–I’m SO excited about this one–I’ll be posting a freebie short story here very soon, too. It features a minor character from Twilight of Avalon, and will also be available for free on Kindle.
And today I’m over at the amazing Sarah Woodbury’s blog, talking about why I love the King Arthur legends. Stop by!
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10 True Things About My Father
June 20th, 2010Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful dads out there! Including, of course, my father-in-law and my sweet little girls’ daddy! But since I am a horrible daughter and got completely caught by surprise by Father’s Day being today, of all times (long story involving our thinking Father’s day was last weekend, finding out it was not, and then me kind of going, Oh, okay, scratch that off my list of things to worry about this week) I will devote this blog to telling you 10 true things about my own Dad.
1. When I was really, really small, like two and three years old, we had a nightly ritual called ‘Piggy Back Time’ wherein my dad would carry me piggy-back and dance all around the kitchen with me. We had our own special ‘Piggy Back Time’ song that went along with it, which mostly involved singing ‘Piggy Back Time’ over and over. I thought it was AWESOME.
2. When I was a bit older, like maybe 6, my dad and I had our own club, called the TMC, which was short for the Trick Mommy Club. We had our own theme song for that, too. And our own secret signals that meant we had to have a meeting. As far as I can remember, our club meetings mostly involved jumping out at my mom and shouting ‘Boo!’ and eating a lot of candy. I thought it was AWESOME.
3. He loves Robert Frost poems. I can remember him reciting Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and other Frost poems from memory to me as a bedtime story.
4. But my favorite bedtime stories that he read to me were Life With Father by Clarence Day and Sherlock Holmes stories. We must have read the entire cannon of Sherlock Holmes stories half a dozen times.
5. My dad is also a huge James Bond fan. When I was in grade school, my mother was in a singing group that met every Sunday night. I LOVED this, because it meant that on Sunday nights my dad and I would watch a James Bond movie. These were VHS tapes taped off of television, so edited for the more ‘adult’ content and to fit in the commercials. For YEARS I thought that James Bond movies simply made absolutely no sense because these abridged versions were all I’d ever seen. Anyway, my bedtime was theoretically like 8:30 or so, but I could always talk my dad into letting me stay up to finish the movie. We’d hear the garage door go up at 10:00, signaling that my mother was home, and I’d go streaking up the stairs and dive into bed before she could walk in the door.
6. He loves A E Houseman poems, too. When I was a senior in high school he talked me into doing my AP English term Paper on A E Houseman. We have a great picture which I wish I could find now of me at 17 in a ratty old bathrobe sitting with my dad and poring over ‘A Shropshire Lad’ a couple of days before the paper was due when I was in crunch-time mode.
7. I would never have started writing fiction if it hadn’t been for him. I wanted to write. But I was always afraid to, until I had to write a senior thesis during my last year of college and my dad essentially said, ‘You are writing a novel’, drove me to the computer store, bought me a laptop to write on, and then talked me through every step of the outlining process until I was too much in love with my story to do anything but write it.
8. At the book launch when Twilight of Avalon came out last year, I was 6-months-pregnant-and-crying-at-toilet-paper-commercials. I knew I’d never get through reading the prologue to my book out loud to an audience, so my dad stepped in and did it for me. He was amazing, too.
9. Even though I am a horrible daughter as per above and am essentially getting him a blog post today for Father’s Day, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he would rather have this than my other option, which was to tell him that the set of nesting doll measuring cups from Anthropologie I got my mom for Mother’s Day were actually for both of them.
10. I am the luckiest EVER to have had him as a Dad for 31 years, now! Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!!
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10 True Things About Anna
June 10th, 2010
Nathan (a.k.a. Mr. Husband) here. Yesterday Anna told you ten facts about me to celebrate our tenth anniversary. I happen to know the password to her blog, so today I am hijacking it to share with you ten facts about her.
- She works hard to tell stories.
Being an author is a dream come true, but not an easy job. Anna works hard, almost all the time when she is not doing something with our daughters. Seven days per week, her goal is to write a thousand words or more in the morning and then to revise and do research in the afternoon. When not working on her own books, she is reading others’ works trying to figure out what makes them good and how she can learn from them. When she is doing other tasks, her subconscious is constantly working, and she often has to dash to her computer to jot down ideas. She really loves to tell characters’ stories. Deadlines are not necessary to motivate her. She delivered her last book something like a year ahead of schedule.
- She named my car.
I was a somewhat serious person once long ago. Of course I was silly as a kid, but I tried to tone that down in high school and college. All that changed when I met Anna. She mentioned yesterday that I bought a 1973 Dodge Dart before we were married. When I first showed her the car, she asked me what its name was. “Ummm, the Dart?” “No, I mean its *name*.” “Dodge Dart?” Clearly I wasn’t getting it. She informed me that her mother and she had discussed it and thought that Buster was a good name since it was brown in color. (Buster Brown was a comic strip character used in shoe advertisements, get it?) So, I called my car Buster, reluctantly at first, and only around her at first. Now I can discuss “exercising Buster” with my father, with a totally straight face, and we each know what the other means.
Anyway, this sparked a rush to name all of our major belongings, especially when we were setting up house. Most names were alliterative. Dexter the Dehumidifier. Vince the VCR. Preston the Palm Tree. Phil the Philodendron. Lester the Laptop. Visitors to our house must have thought (correctly) that we were nuts. “Have you seen the keys?” “I think I saw them on Vince. No, wait. Look by Lester.”
This was fun until it came time to part with an object that we had been anthropomorphizing for years. I tried to put a stop to it after Anna felt bad sending Dexter to Appliance Heaven. We actually donated him to an appliance repair shop so that his parts and refrigerant might live on. But, it continues. Twilight of Avalon was written on Gus the G3 (a Macintosh that was roughly nine years old at the time). I’m afraid I have to take credit for that one.
- She is not very assertive.
An example of this was her job as an editor/researcher for an amiable nonagenarian who hired her to help with a a screed about what the U.S. is doing wrong with its policies on currency. His confusion due to his advanced age meant that the project went in circles with little real progress made. Feeling increasingly bad about taking his money for this Sisyphean project, Anna resolved to call him up and quit. After the phone conversation, Anna walked into my office and said “I’ve signed on indefinitely.” Apparently immediately upon answering the phone and without waiting to hear why she was calling, the gentleman had launched into a speech about how grateful he was to have her help and how much finishing the project meant to him. She was finally rescued from the project by her pregnancy with our first daughter.
Her lack of assertiveness comes from her placing a higher priority on others’ happiness than on her own. Do something unjust to a third party while she is around, and you’ll find out pretty quickly that she *can* be assertive on others’ behalf.
- She was *this close* to becoming a serial killer.
When she was a child, she saw a raw chicken packed in flexible plastic at a grocery store. She was poking at a pool of its blood and various bits through the plastic and looked up at her mom to ask what it was. Her mother explained that it was a dead chicken. She looked thoughtful a moment, and her mother expected her to get upset about the chicken. Instead she said “Can we buy a chicken and make it dead so I can play with its blood?” She has since grown out of this.
- She thinks for herself.
She may not be assertive, or often think of herself, but she thinks for herself. She was the first (and only) person of my age cohort that I ever heard claim not to like the Simpsons. We all watched it in college. You could literally walk through the dormitory from corner to corner and hear, unbroken, the dialog from the Simpsons because every room that had a TV had it tuned there, just like the Lawrence Welk Show in a nursing home. The Simpsons was hilarious back then. Something in each episode to entertain everyone at every level from a kid to a scientist.
Well, Anna didn’t find it funny. She was looking at it more deeply than most of us and thought that the focus was too much on laughing at and sometimes even celebrating faults in the characters. She likes things that focus on developing character rather than laughing about a lack thereof. It is just a trivial example of the many, many issues where the masses are going one way, but Anna, after careful thought, is going another. She doesn’t often fall for the advertising agencies’ attempts to make her think she needs product X to be happy, or that Photoshopped model Y is the definition of beauty, or that bogus statistics W show Z to be true. She caught one email scam that even I, Mr. Suspicion himself, didn’t. She is usually right. But I still like the early Simpsons.
- She really wants you to say “none is,” not “none are.”
In science and engineering, we usually select singular or plural by asking “Is the quantity exactly equal to one?” If yes, use singular, otherwise use plural. 1 meter. 1.1 meters. -10 meters. 0 meters. My brain works analogously for other things, like number of people. Jim is. Jim and Jill are. Jim and three-quarters of Tom are. None are.
I did this for two decades of my life, and nobody complained. But then I married a writer. Someone who knows that the origin of “none” is “not” + “one.” You wouldn’t say “not one are,” right? I may have the usage note in the dictionary and a thousand years of history on my side, but at our house, it is “none is.” Got that?
- She has my back.
I would compare our marriage to a fortress defended by two soldiers. When we shoot, it is outward at threats, not at each other. Friendly fire incidents are rare. She considers my happiness and hers to be not only of equal importance, but one and the same. We are happy or sad as a unit.
- She has super powers.
As far as I know, she can’t leap over buildings, but she does have a couple uncanny powers. The one I want to share is that, well, she closes things. She is The Closer. Post offices, museums, national monuments, libraries, nothing is safe when she is near. Posted hours make no difference. I first noticed this phenomenon during our first day trip together. We set out with a number of possible tourist destinations, planning to go wherever whim dictated. We first drove to Gillette Castle. It was closed for repairs, but, no worries, we walked around the grounds for a bit and then set off again. We decided to check out the USS Nautilus Museum. We arrived to find it crawling with admirals who were there for a ceremony. It was closed to the public for the day. We set out eastward for Mystic Seaport, RI. We got massively delayed in traffic and arrived just as it was….. closing.
We didn’t immediately realize that this effect emanated from Anna. But careful observation over the years has shown that it is in fact Anna’s mere presence. Even after our recent move to the DC area, she leaves a trail of closed businesses and institutions in her wake. We often drive to neighboring counties to use their libraries, and she actually forced the closure of a particular library (at least 30 minutes away on a good day) three times in a row despite our having carefully researched its alleged hours of operation. In fact President Obama considered using a visit by Anna to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. *That* would have been interesting.
- She’s a trouper.
Anna was once asked by an interviewer what she considers her best personal quality. Being too modest to answer, she asked me to field the question. I immediately answered “patience.” In almost every area of her life, she has had to show what to me is an amazing amount of patience. From dealing with prolonged sicknesses to waiting for her slow poke husband to finally finish his schooling to the odyssey from aspiring to published author, she has waited patiently and day by day worked toward health, success and happiness.
She lived for years on a diet that I could not have stomached for a week. She wrote six novels, each time exhausting the roll of literary agencies in her genre. Each time she had to reluctantly give up on an idea and a cast of characters that had become very dear to her, accept that one to two thousand hours of her work would never earn her anything but experience–and more importantly to her, never be widely shared with other booklovers. And then start over with a blank word processing document and a fresh tower of research books on a different era and locale. She never hesitated to take that first step of each thousand mile journey, even after five destinations in a row were mirages. She lived through a period when even her survival was in question, and now she is the happy mother of two flourishing girls who has a great publishing contract working with people she loves to share stories she loves with readers she loves. She did it step by step, day by day, without shortcuts, without cheating, without losing heart. I am indescribably happy for her.
- Her husband is the luckiest guy ever.
I really cannot relate to the punchlines of most “wife jokes.”
Thanks for ten great years, Love. I now return control of your blog to you. 
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10 True Things About My Husband
June 9th, 2010Last year on our anniversary, I posted this story. Hard to top that for sheer toe-curling embarrassment. So this year, I will tell you 10 true things about this man I married.
1. When we were in college, I did a summer study in London and Nathan flew in to visit the last week I was there. We visited Greenwich and took a picture at the Prime Meridian, Nathan in one hemisphere and me in the other. And for my birthday that year he had the picture framed opposite the John Donne poem that reads:
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
I had it on the wall of my dorm room and had serious boyfriend envy from all the girls who visited my room that year, believe me.
2. His first car was a 1973 Dodge Dart, bought from a pair of little old ladies he knew who had only driven it to church and back and now could no longer drive and couldn’t afford to keep it. He bought it while I was away in England and I remember talking to him over a really bad long-distance connection asking him what kind of car it was and him saying, “You’re going to kill me.” I kind of liked it, though. And whenever I drove anywhere after we were married I would be surrounded by older men exclaiming, “Wow, that car is a CLASSIC!”
3. I like his hair a bit longer than he does, and to humor me he didn’t cut it for a few weeks before our wedding. With the result that after the ceremony his aunt came up to congratulate him with the words, “Nathan, you need a haircut. But have a nice life.”
4. When we were picking out (really inexpensive) wedding rings at the jewelry store across from our college dorm, I saw a necklace on display and totally fell in love. Then realized that the stones were, in fact, actual diamonds, and said, Right, not happening. Which was totally okay; there’s a time in life for diamond necklaces and just-married-while-still-in-college is probably not it, I was completely fine with that. But on our one year anniversary I came home to our little 1-bedroom apartment and Nathan gave me a jewelry box with that exact necklace inside.
5. He has no internal clock. None. It was beaten out of him by years as a physics major, and he still has the ability to stay up all night indefinitely and/or crash whenever he has a few minutes break. This makes him very handy to have around when there’s a newborn baby in the house.
6. He really hates anything sticky on his hands. Like, really a lot. All anyone wanting to get information out of him would have to do would be to coat his fingers with jelly and then offer him soap and a wet paper towel in exchange for agreeing to talk.
7. He taught our older girl to recognize every airplane in his ‘Encyclopedia of World Air Power’ book by the time she was two. He also read her books about rockets and space exploration as bedtime stories. When she and I were drawing with chalk on the brand new chalkboard my mum had just gotten her I asked what I should draw and she said, “Draw Sky Lab!” Really.
8. He reads computer books for fun. Novels? Not so much. He always has some really intelligent, interesting feedback to give me about mine, though.
9. I just had a play date with a neighborhood mom who had met Nathan and traded contact information because, as she put told me, “Our kids are the same ages and he looked so steam-rollered that I could relate.” But he was out there, juggling our infant and toddler, getting them out of the house so that I could have some uninterrupted writing time. Bless him.
10. As of tomorrow, we will have been married for TEN YEARS. I sure love him.
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Ch-ch-ch-changes
June 4th, 2010The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked behind the counter of a bagel shop, part of the franchise of . . . well, in the interests of being nice, I won’t say which chain this particular shop was part of. But their motto was “Totally, completely obsessed.” As in, every day I worked there I had to wear a name tag pinned to my apron which read, “Hi, I’m Anna: totally, completely obsessed.”
And I really wish I knew just who the marketing genius was who thought up this particular motto/policy, so that I could thank him or her personally. Because it ensured that every single creepy skanky guy who came into the shop looked me up and down and then said, “Hi, Anna. So, are you totally, completely obsessed?” All summer long.
This company also had the particular gimmick of making small batches of bagels every 30 minutes throughout the day, and never toasting them or reheating them–because they were always fresh. So the store didn’t even own a microwave or toaster. Because they were so totally, completely obsessed and all, you know? Anyway, I would love to personally thank whoever it was who was responsible for that bit of company policy, too. Because let me tell you, there are a LOT of people out there who feel very, very strongly–passionately, even–that bagels should be toasted before they are spread with cream cheese. I might not feel quite that passionately about it, but I would tend to agree. I like a toasted bagel as much as the next girl. That didn’t help, though. I would explain that I was sorry, but the bagels could not be toasted. And these customers would all complain, protest, and argue the point with me. Loudly and angrily. Because you KNOW that the girl who spends her days spreading cream cheese while forced to wear a name tag that reads, Hi, I’m Anna: totally, completely obsessed has ALL the power to change company policy. Yes. Please lodge complaints here.
So, imagine me towards the end of that summer. The air conditioning in the shop had been broken for a week. Which, in August, when company policy dictates that the bagels be baked fresh on the premises every 30 minutes . . . it was hot. Really, really, hot. It was the height of the lunch hour rush. I was dripping with sweat under my uniform and apron. And this middle-aged businessman stepped up to my counter and asked–I would have sworn he asked–for a toasted bagel with cream cheese. I had pretty much had it. I looked him straight in the eye and said, in my most polite-but-firm voice, “I am sorry, sir. But we do not toast bagels. We do not microwave bagels. We do not reheat bagels in ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM.” And the poor guy gave me this totally bemused look and said, “Um, all I wanted was a turkey sandwich.” I had completely misheard him.
Oh, toe-curlingly embarrassing.
Anyway, let me be clear that despite the fact that this was not exactly the best summer of my life, I firmly believe that everyone, for the good of their immortal soul, should have to work a job like this at least once in their lifetime, if for no other reason than that you will never, ever be rude to anyone in the service industry afterwards. Not that I would have been rude before, but even now, 10 years later, I would eat my own shoes before I even hinted to some poor overworked behind-the-counter employee that a company policy was in any way their personal fault.
And looking back now is a really good reminder of just how lucky I am to be able to work my dream job these days: to write full-time, tell myself stories all day long and actually get paid for it. The college-age daughter of my writing partner Sarah (*waves* Hi, Brynne!) is searching for summer work now, which is what prompted this particular trip down memory lane. And it was a really good reminder this week especially, because there are times when even my dream job–the one I would do even if I never got paid another dime–is hard.
I’m going to be losing my beloved editor Danielle at the end of this month. She’s getting married and going to grad school, and I’m so happy for her, because those are great life-changes and she deserves every single happiness that life has to offer. But at the same time, I’m so sad she’s leaving editing, because I have loved, loved, loved putting my stories and my characters into her incredibly insightful, sensitive, and intelligent hands.
When my agent and I were going through submissions to publishing houses, she read my book, loved it, and called me on the phone to talk even before her house made an offer. And we connected right away. I just felt instantly that she was IT, the perfect person to help me tell Trystan and Isolde’s story the absolute best way I could. And she has been. At the back of each of my books I’ve thanked her for having ‘helped me uncover the book I meant to write all along.’ And that’s really what she’s done, every time. I always read her comments and feel as though I’ve been groping in the dark and she’s switched on the light and shown me exactly what direction I need to go. And that without ever giving me a single direct order–not once has she ever said, Do this. or Re-write it this way. She just asks questions, shows me opportunities in the manuscript where things can be improved or heightened.
And now she’s leaving. And it’s hard. She won’t be with me when Dark Moon of Avalon is released in September, or when Sunrise of Avalon comes out a year after that. Whoever buys my next project, it won’t be her. But I’m still so, so lucky to have gotten to finish out the whole of the trilogy under her direction. Even though the final 2 books aren’t published yet, they are edited and done, and Danielle and I both feel great about them, and that is such a good assurance to have. I’m so, so lucky that she picked my manuscript out of the pile of submissions in the first place and has made me stretch and grow as a writer over these last nearly three years.
Thank you, Danielle! And best of luck wherever life takes you. Trystan, Isolde, and I will always, always be grateful to you.
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Writer Unboxed
May 21st, 2010I’m over at Writer Unboxed today, blogging about finding the time to write with two little kids in the house. And sounding waaaay more together about it than I have felt this week! 2 sick kids + 1 sick husband + sleep deprivation + repairmen working on various construction projects around the house = chaos, pretty much. Although I guess in a way I’ve proved the point of my WU post, which is that even when life is craziest, the writing still can get done. My word count for this week isn’t exactly the highest it’s ever been–but it’s higher than zero, so I’ll take it!
And in other news, Vivi has her first tooth and is working on a second. And hasn’t even been cranky about it, which is great. Although I’m realizing that she is now just 3 months away from turning ONE YEAR OLD. Aaahhh, stop growing, I can’t stand it! Not really, of course. But I feel like that’s the eternal Catch-22 of motherhood–you long for your kids to be older, more self-sufficient, less prone to turning your house into a play-dough covered disaster zone and trying to teethe on the electrical cords. Then you look at their little chubby legs and toothless grins and curly pigtails–and you’d give anything to freeze them just the way they are.
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Happy Mother’s Day
May 9th, 2010Happy Mother’s Day! Both to my amazing mother and mother-in-law, of course, and to all the other wonderful mums out there, too. This was the first year Bella (now 3) was really old enough to understand the concept and make a gift–so she made me a beaded necklace, and picked out some flowers, too. So sweet. And then we had the following conversation:
Bella: I love you a hundred and fifty.
Me: I love you up to the moon and back again.
Bella: *rolls eyes* That’s not a number, Mom.
I’ve said it before, but I really am pretty sure that she’s the cutest thing ever.
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conversations with my girls
April 27th, 2010Conversation #1
Bella: I’m always Daddy’s best friend.
Me: You sure are, sweetie. Will you be my best friend, too?
Bella: Yes. But you don’t have fur on your skin.
Me: Um, no, very true. No fur here.
After some discussion, we clarified that what she meant was that my arms are less hairy than Nathan’s. Which, although a good thing in my book, is evidently a strike against me in the plus/minus tally of parental qualities.
Conversation #2
Vivi: Dadadadada
Me: Very good! Now can you say Mamamamama?
Vivi: *Big Grin* Dadadadada
Me: Mamamamama
Vivi: *sound of very wet baby raspberry*
She has a very well-developed sense of humor for 7 months old.
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(No More) Mr. Nice Guy
April 20th, 2010On the (rare, lately) occasions when my children take long enough naps for me to post on this blog, I try to keep it controversy- and negativity-free. Plenty of both in the world already, that’s how I look at it. But today–today I’m going to step outside that. Because it happened again the other day.
I was in the library, browsing through the “romance” section, because I like a good guaranteed happily-ever-after kind of story now and again. And in flipping through the first pages of one of the books on the shelf, I found a story whose first chapter consisted of the male protagonist taking the female protagonist’s virginity with absolutely no thought of commitment, love, or even birth control–then calling her various vicious names afterwords and making her cry. Because, you know, he is such a hard-edged alpha-male type.
Nor is this an isolated occurrence. I’ve read books in the “romance” genre that include–as part of the courtship between the hero and heroine–emotional abuse, physical violence, and situations that border on rape.
Now, since these are guaranteed happily-ever-after romance novels, I have no doubt that if I picked them up from where they land after I hurl them across the room, I would find the same hero and heroine falling into each others’ arms in the final pages. But for me, that just makes it worse. Abusive behavior does not deserve to be glamorized as some sort of romantic ideal.
I mean, if, God forbid, twenty years down the road, one of my daughters came home with a story like the one I just repeated, would I tell her, ‘Oh, sweetie, he must be The One’? No. I am, in general, a peace loving, violence-is-not-the-answer kind of a girl. But if (God forbid) one of my girls came home with a story like that, I would be sending my husband out for a SHOTGUN.
But they’re just stories, you may say. Fiction. Just don’t read them if they offend you. And you’d be right. Absolutely, you’d be right. Except–
Except that the other day my husband was reading an on-line news site and chanced to click on an advice column article. A man had written in with a problem: he couldn’t seem to sustain a long-term relationship. Women were always breaking up with him. Ah, the advice columnist said. You’re treating the women you date too nicely. Women don’t like nice guys. You need to be more of a jerk.
Now, beyond agreeing with my husband that this advice columnist was a *word he would never have used had either of our girls been in earshot*, I didn’t really think too much of it. Just an isolated occurrence, right?
Not two days later, one of the lead stories in a major newspaper was an interview with a guy who runs a dating service for men that centers around teaching them to be less nice to the women they date. Because, he explained, women don’t like nice guys.
Now, let me be clear. Am I suggesting that this advice columnist, dating service, or romance novels are cause-and-effect directly responsible for each other–or for that matter for domestic violence and abuse?
No. I’m not. All I am saying is that words have power. Stories have power. Let’s–please–be mindful of the stories we read, write, and believe in. Please? These two precious girls of mine need to grow up in a world where they can find men who are as nice as their Daddy is.
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