Real Writers

In the third grade, I spent my whole allowance on a card game called Authors. It was like Go Fish, if I recall correctly, except that the "books" of cards bore pictures of famous writers. Some names I recognized: Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allen Poe--but some were real puzzlers: Joel Chandler Harris (have mercy, of "Uncle Remus" fame); Nathaniel Hawthorne (I was 8, ok?); Robert Louis Stevenson (my uncle was named after him--but I'd never read him); and Cornelia Meigs(who apparently wrote a bio of Alcott). There must have been others--13 of them, right? Was Shakespeare's face on a card? Shaw? The Brontes did not make the cut, of that I am certain. I would have remembered them.

I've never liked playing cards, honestly. But I loved my Authors.

Since cardplaying was frowned upon in my family, I took the pious view that the game of Authors was educational, not at all like the secret pinochle my parents played when my grandmothers weren't around, or the waxy naked-lady cards my uncles hid. Authors served a higher purpose. The scary, stern pictures of the old people on them were proof--they may as well have been Abraham and Sarah.

My purchase of Authors happened to coincide with my discovery of the Biography. I had already fallen in love with libraries (a complicated story involving my father's Air Force career, family literacy, and much more)--but long story blogged, when I was eight years old, I fell for biographies, HARD. They came in little blue or orange-covered books with drawings inside, and there were lots to choose from.

People's real lives made stories! Some of them were cautionary, some were inspiring, some bored the crap out of me but I finished them anyway: Amelia Earhart, Girl Flyer; Dolly Madison, First Lady; and the best of all---Mark Twain.

He was from Missouri; he had RED HAIR; he collected cats; he loved theatre; he played with words; he scandalized people by telling the truth; he was funny, he had a happy marriage, and he loved his daughters until he died, even though he wrote about boys, mostly.

I was so in love with him I read his life story 13 times. I was a real good reader. I was such a good reader I imagined I might be a Real Good Writer, too.

Mark Twain became my imaginary boyfriend, my imaginary father, and very quickly, he became Me. Or the me I wanted to be. I wanted to be the Girl Mark Twain. (I can't type that phrase without imagining my third grade school picture face superimposed with Mark Twain's hair and moustache--maybe a cigar and a little white suit.) That year I read TOM SAWYER, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, and most of his collected short stories.

Did I understand them? Probably not. But just holding the books! The library trusted ME with Mark Twain! Reading his words, knowing he was a real person who was born in the same state as my mother, had her red hair, whose language was the idiom much of my family still spoke, whose values, intelligence, and humor I recognized and wanted for myself--

I gave up the card game. I cheated at it, anyway. I'd only collect the authors I liked, and you can't win the game if that's how you play.

I started writing. In grade school I tried to write novels about orphaned girls in English boarding schools. (Never mind that I'd never been to boarding school, much less England.) I wrote a three-page Christmas play with my friend Connie Markel, "Sovereigns of the Sky". During a particularly religious phase, I kept a daily diary of my sins but unfortunately destroyed it--Real Writers didn't embarrass themselves and probably weren't Baptist, anyway. In junior high I wrote a whimsical book, summer reading, really, about my adventures with the Beatles. Then I convinced myself that Real Writers were Poets. I filled spirals with painful verses of unrequited high school love, mostly in lower case, read by all my closest friends, some of whom declared me the next Emily Dickinson. I even became editor of the high school literary magazine. But I still wasn't a real writer, an Author. It was clear that my face would never be on a playing card.

The Girl Mark Twain went underground for years. Unemployed and bored in Los Angeles, she joined a writing group, started a reading group, and took classes. She followed Somerset Maugham's advice and copied Real Writers' work in her own handwriting until she felt entitled to write--and sometimes she took his other advice and simply wrote her name over and over again: The Girl Mark Twain, The Girl Mark Twain, The Girl Mark Twain--until something almost Real took shape.