Late last night I wrote about my writers’ group’s dinner with Phillip Margolin. I’ve given it much thought since then, and I think I understand why success just seems to rain down on some people, and other people chase it frantically and never catch it, kindof like a dog chasing it’s own tail, or a dog chasing a stuffed rabbit at the dog track, or a dog chasing a squirrel, or a ...well, I’ve run out of examples and if you haven’t gotten the point by now, you must actually be a dog.
Yes, I think I’ve got the answer, and I’ll get to it sooner, or perhaps later, but here’s an example of what I’m talking about. I’m a girl. Like all girls (and I’m talking about gender here, not age because I’d probably have to use the word woman which doesn’t seem to make my point as well, if there is a point – we’ll have to wait and see).
As I was saying, as a girl I watch other girls and the one thing you’ll notice about girls is that the ones who want a boy (now here it seems like it would sound better to say man. Odd.). Anyway, if a girl is craving a guy (that works!), she has it written all over her like a neon sign: I WANT ME A MAN AND I’M NOT TOO PARTICULAR, HELL, EVEN YOU’LL DO!
Guys see her coming and they scatter like cockroaches when they see a can of RAID. I love using cockroaches as an analogy, and it says nothing about my attitude toward men. And I’m not doing product placement either. I hate RAID and killing bugs, but this seemed to work and I’m not changing it now. This is a prime example of over thinking something, which is exactly what girls craving a guy do.
Here’s the catch. The girl doesn’t just want a temporary guy, she wants a permanent one. This is what scares guys to death, but the girl is oblivious to this. She thinks that if she puts on a little more makeup, shows a little more cleavage, and gets a little drunker, she’ll be closer to snagging her prince charming.
But guys see right through this. They want a temporary woman – they’re looking for a good time for a short time. Like from midnight to three. This is the manly guy thing that has been proven in bathrooms all over the country. In women’s bathrooms, you’ll see little hearts drawn in permanent marker with Sally loves Billy or LaKeisha loves Muhammad inside them. In a guy’s bathroom you’ll see: For a good time, call...
What a girl’s gotta do is decide she doesn’t want a guy, then she’ll attract them like maggots. This is because guys love a pursuit, yes, but they’re also hard-wired to see women in terms of their relationship with their mother. There’s even an old song about this by Harry Von Tizer and William Dillon (wonder if he’s related to Bob Dylan?) that has a nice, catchy tune and lyrics and a chorus starting with, “I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad.” This is two guys saying, out loud, that they want to marry someone just like their mother.
Which proves my point. If you want to snag a permanent guy, you have to become his mother. How do you do that? Easy. You ignore him when he talks to you, like that commercial for the TV show “Family Guy” where the mom’s trying to take a nap and the son is standing beside the bed going, “Mom, mom, mom, mummy, mummy, mom, mom, mummy, mummy, mummy, mom…” and she finally shouts, “WHAT!” and he says “Hi.” You have to ignore him for a long time, like a few weeks or at least through a couple of sets the live band does at the bar.
Then when you finally acknowledge that he exists, you have to have a laissez-faire attitude toward him. Laissez-faire is a word I learned tutoring – this was on a high school kid’s spelling list, and he’s from Somalia, so he doesn’t realize that the word is never, ever used in the English language in any way whatsoever except on a vocabulary sheet. Other words on the list were caveat emptor and coup d’état – I had to look them up in the dictionary to explain to him what they meant – and just try using them in a sentence!
What I’m saying is, you can’t just let the guy possess you right away, because these days he can do that with any old girl. You have to be special – he has to work to win you over. Or as one happily married guy I know phrased it, “I chased her until she caught me.”
What’s this got to do with success as a writer? Beats the hell out of me. But I think there must be something to it. Somehow we’ve got to play hard to get with these agents and publishers. (Disclaimer: You should have a respect for the rule of caveat emptor when you read anything I write.) Wouldn’t it be a great coup d’état, though, if I, as a writer, could snag a great publisher by using a laissez-faire attitude? I sure wouldn’t use these words, though, because I’d have to look them up again.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The Long Awaited Dinner with Mr. Margolin
I’ve just returned from a dinner with Phillip Margolin, an international best-selling author of murder mysteries. A couple of the women in my writer’s group bid on him at an auction, and we all gathered to gorge ourselves and pick his brain about writing.
Before I get to him, I must talk about the food. And what a spread it was! I love a potluck better than almost anything because people bring their show-off foods. There were only 13 of us present, including the guest of honor, but there were at least 20 different dishes. At least. People brought two and three things, and huge quantities of everything – like a Thanksgiving platter full of lasagna and fruit salad. After I finished stuffing myself, I found a crock-pot full of chili that no one even knew was there. I love chili but one more smidgen of food and I would have exploded like I’d swallowed a grenade, which might have put a damper on the evening, but you never know.
If the food had been lousy, I would have probably overeaten anyway, but because it was so spectacular, I ATE TOO MUCH AND had three very lovely little red cocktails, which had no effect on me whatsoever except to make me extremely sleepy.
Okay, okay, I’m getting to Margolin. I ended up sitting close to him, so I’d ask him a question and he’d say, “I’ll answer that a little later when I give my spiel.” I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting next to a perfect stranger, I either have to talk about my boring life or ask him questions. I wasn’t going to sit there like a chipmunk with my jaws puffed out from food and not talk, so I asked him something else and he smiled with infinite patience and said, “That’s one of the questions I’ll answer a little later.” Ooookay. Actually it made sense to wait because of the seating arrangement. We weren’t all gathered around the same table, so the people at the card table would have missed out, or we at the big table would have had to hear his answers again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Margolin settled back to tell us how he got his books published, and I started feeling my eyelids coming down like someone was tugging on a window shade. I jerked my lids back up and forced myself to look bug-eyed for a little bit, but then the old shades started sliding down again. I figured, what the heck, I’ll just have myself a short little nap and be good as new in a few. I’d wake up when the group would laugh. Finally I opened my eyes and saw the lady across from me dozing. It’s really hard to stay awake when you’ve eaten so much. Mr. Margolin’s stories were interesting as he took us down these winding paths, back alleys, and over hills and dells describing his experiences as a published writer. He’s also involved in a program that teaches grade school kids how to sit still for an hour and play chess that he’s very passionate about, and that has enjoyed many successes. I probably should have asked him if he could teach overeating grownups how to sit for an hour and stay awake. He’s an extremely nice guy who was a lawyer and must have worked very hard to do that and write at the same time, but he made it all sound like a piece of cake, which is what I got up to get because I could smell that chocolate from the kitchen and it was calling me like a siren song (whatever that is and I’m not looking it up right now).
If you want the summary of what he said, read on. Basically, he started writing because he wondered what it would be like to write a whole book, and about that time an old college friend he hadn’t seen in years called him up wanting to come visit. This guy turned out to be a bigwig in the publishing world. One lucky break after another effortlessly fell into his lap, and lots of very nice people helped in many, many ways. He just writes and lets the rest take care of itself.
His is a great success story, and one that, I think it’s safe to say for the whole group, none of us wanted to hear. We wanted him to write for many years and suffer rejection after rejection but keep going and one day, finally, someone recognized his talent. This is what we’ve all been going through, except we haven’t reached the one day, finally, part yet.
But all in all it was a successful evening. He gave us insights into what it’s like to be a famous writer flying all over the world with escorts in all the cities who take him to all the bookstores and speaking engagements. It sounds like great fun. Hope to be there soon.
The other place I hope to be even sooner is in my snuggly warm bed. Yawn, stretch, snore, dreaming of Margolin and success, and stuffed mushroom caps and chocolate cake. See ya!
Before I get to him, I must talk about the food. And what a spread it was! I love a potluck better than almost anything because people bring their show-off foods. There were only 13 of us present, including the guest of honor, but there were at least 20 different dishes. At least. People brought two and three things, and huge quantities of everything – like a Thanksgiving platter full of lasagna and fruit salad. After I finished stuffing myself, I found a crock-pot full of chili that no one even knew was there. I love chili but one more smidgen of food and I would have exploded like I’d swallowed a grenade, which might have put a damper on the evening, but you never know.
If the food had been lousy, I would have probably overeaten anyway, but because it was so spectacular, I ATE TOO MUCH AND had three very lovely little red cocktails, which had no effect on me whatsoever except to make me extremely sleepy.
Okay, okay, I’m getting to Margolin. I ended up sitting close to him, so I’d ask him a question and he’d say, “I’ll answer that a little later when I give my spiel.” I don’t know about you, but when I’m sitting next to a perfect stranger, I either have to talk about my boring life or ask him questions. I wasn’t going to sit there like a chipmunk with my jaws puffed out from food and not talk, so I asked him something else and he smiled with infinite patience and said, “That’s one of the questions I’ll answer a little later.” Ooookay. Actually it made sense to wait because of the seating arrangement. We weren’t all gathered around the same table, so the people at the card table would have missed out, or we at the big table would have had to hear his answers again.
When dinner was over, Mr. Margolin settled back to tell us how he got his books published, and I started feeling my eyelids coming down like someone was tugging on a window shade. I jerked my lids back up and forced myself to look bug-eyed for a little bit, but then the old shades started sliding down again. I figured, what the heck, I’ll just have myself a short little nap and be good as new in a few. I’d wake up when the group would laugh. Finally I opened my eyes and saw the lady across from me dozing. It’s really hard to stay awake when you’ve eaten so much. Mr. Margolin’s stories were interesting as he took us down these winding paths, back alleys, and over hills and dells describing his experiences as a published writer. He’s also involved in a program that teaches grade school kids how to sit still for an hour and play chess that he’s very passionate about, and that has enjoyed many successes. I probably should have asked him if he could teach overeating grownups how to sit for an hour and stay awake. He’s an extremely nice guy who was a lawyer and must have worked very hard to do that and write at the same time, but he made it all sound like a piece of cake, which is what I got up to get because I could smell that chocolate from the kitchen and it was calling me like a siren song (whatever that is and I’m not looking it up right now).
If you want the summary of what he said, read on. Basically, he started writing because he wondered what it would be like to write a whole book, and about that time an old college friend he hadn’t seen in years called him up wanting to come visit. This guy turned out to be a bigwig in the publishing world. One lucky break after another effortlessly fell into his lap, and lots of very nice people helped in many, many ways. He just writes and lets the rest take care of itself.
His is a great success story, and one that, I think it’s safe to say for the whole group, none of us wanted to hear. We wanted him to write for many years and suffer rejection after rejection but keep going and one day, finally, someone recognized his talent. This is what we’ve all been going through, except we haven’t reached the one day, finally, part yet.
But all in all it was a successful evening. He gave us insights into what it’s like to be a famous writer flying all over the world with escorts in all the cities who take him to all the bookstores and speaking engagements. It sounds like great fun. Hope to be there soon.
The other place I hope to be even sooner is in my snuggly warm bed. Yawn, stretch, snore, dreaming of Margolin and success, and stuffed mushroom caps and chocolate cake. See ya!
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