The Writer’s Ego

 

Any honest writer will tell you that feedback matters. We crave praise for our work, kind words from readers. We want to know not only that you’ve heard of our books but that you’ve read and enjoyed them. I consider myself a slightly shy and retiring person, but I freely admit to that ego Getting feedback often requires that we put shyness aside and boldly ask readers to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, and I do that, along with other things to stroke my ego

Some of the best compliments I’ve gotten about my mysteries include the reader who swore she saw Kelly O’Connell, the star of her own mystery series, going into a very real restaurant that figures in the Kelly O’Connell books—my fictional character had become that real to her. Or there was the reader who praised my characters as being just like people you’d meet in the grocery store. Both those remarks made me glow for days.

But it’s the unexpected bit of recognition that truly brings delight. Recently I heard from an old friend, someone I worked with at TCU years ago (no, for both our sakes, I won’t say how many years). She and her daughter, on a daytrip to Chicago, visited the American Writers’ Museum on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. It’s a place I wanted to visit on my last trip to Chicago, but then, in 2016, it had not yet formally opened. The museum idea was first considered in 2009, and years of planning, developing support, and fund-raising preceded its 2017 formal opening, as did some trial online exhibits.

Carla Good and her daughter tried an interactive display—the museum required social distancing and masks and gave gloves and a stylus for the interactive displays. The one they tried encouraged visitors to search for their favorite authors and then create a bookmark. It should be noted that Carla is an avid reader and her daughter, Colleen, is reference librarian in a small Indiana town. Carla searched for several authors with no result—until she keyed in Judy Alter. She sent photos, which I’m attaching, along with a note saying she just wanted me to know that I’m remembered in my hometown.

To me, the recognition is more than that. The museum does not celebrate primarily Chicago authors. It celebrates all American authors, presumably living or dead. I have no idea of the number of authors this country has produced, but I bet it’s astounding. To think that I am included in that number and others are not gives me pause—and a needed bit of humility. So I’m grateful to the American Writers Museum for including me and to Carla Good for telling me about. The museum is a definite stop on my next trip to Chicago. Since I seem to be writing fiction set there, a trip is not out of the question.

But for the sake of my ego, should I write and offer them cover art for those they apparently don't have? Surely they too can snatch pictures from Amazon, but who knows. Maybe I'll bring that up on my visit there.

An anecdotal comment on the Alter theme: when my ex and I lived in rural Missouri, he labeled our mailbox with “Alter’s Ego.” One of his professors from medical school, supposedly an educated man, said, “I get the Alter part, but what is the e-g-o?” Today, I use Alter’s Ego as the name of my imprint for my independently published books. So here’s a nod of thanks to that man I married all those years ago.

And here’s another stroke for my ego: I will be on a panel Friday for Bouchercon, the annual and large international mystery con which is going virtual for the first time, due to the pandemic. One of the other panelists sent a graphic about it, and I’m pleased to share it here. (Okay, I admit it's an older picture and belies my age!)

 

On becoming a recluse

          

I went out to dinner with a good friend tonight and enjoyed it thoroughly. We went to the Tavern, had chicken sliders, deviled eggs, and a bottle of wine. It was the first time I’ve poked my nose out of the cottage since last Saturday night. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances, like the extreme cold snap we’ve suffered through the last few days. In the low twenties in the mornings, never higher than the forties. The cottage is not as cozy as I’d wish, but it’s warm if I wear layers. Who wants to go out in that extreme cold?

Still, I’ve been pondering the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a recluse, because much as I enjoy people and being out in the world, I find it increasingly easy to stay home. I don’t have to dress, don’t have to put on a public face, am not obligated to do anything but I want. At home I can lounge in comfortable clothes and do what I want. I have work at my desk, plus reading, recipe reading (a great time suck), the internet—I can easily keep happily busy all day.

As a young child and even a teen, I was almost painfully shy, something I’ve pretty much overcome over the years of a professional career. I made myself be social and learned to enjoy it, so much so that I often say I feed on the company of other people. Still that shy girl emerges every once in a while, and maybe that keeps me home from some occasions. I never was one to go alone to art openings or lectures or receptions. The best receptions,  to me, were the ones my work dictated that I organize. Then I was at work and in charge. Turn me loose in a large crowd, and I tend to be los.

There’s the complication of my walker. Increasingly, I follow Jordan’s dictate and don’t go places by myself where I would have to get out of the car and get the walker out alone, then reverse the process to get back into the car. And, tonight, when Betty asked if I wanted to go to a church supper, I said yes, but it’s a pain to take me to a buffet because I can’t go through the line for myself. I am forever grateful for the mobility that my walker gives me, but I recognize that it is a handicap. I’m grateful for the friends who willingly put up with loading and unloading the walker, letting me out at restaurant doors, etc. But if no one wants to go to a church dinner, for instance, I will choose to stay home.

Finally, there’s the possibility that my lack of ambition to get up and go is simply a symptom of aging—maybe it’s true subconsciously that I simply don’t have the energy that I did fifteen or twenty years ago, but I’d like to reject that as a way of thinking. I truly believe we’re only as old as we think we are—and I sure don’t think of myself in my eighties.

So there are all the excuses for my increasing tendency toward reclusiveness, but that’s just what they are—excuses. And I’m going to reject them all, because I think the life of a recluse is neither happy nor healthy. And I do recognize that is not healthy. Doctors tell us we need the Vitamin D from being out in the sunshine daily, and I know that I don’t get that, even though I spend most of my day by a big window.

There is a caveat to all this, and maybe it’s part of what’s spoils me. I am blessed with family and friends who visit often enough to keep the cottage from being a lonely place of solitude. I have happy hour guests two or three nights a week, and Jordan usually comes out in the morning—I look for her to start my day—and a couple of times during the day. Jacob tells me these days he’s too busy, and Christian is indeed too busy—I often don’t see him during the week. But I know they’re close by.

Here’s my resolve: I’m going to get out and about more—but only if it warms up.

PS: As I often do, I did an internet search for free images to liven this post. When I typed in "recluse," I was rewarded with multiple images of spiders. There's a moral there someplace, but I'm too tired to pursue it.

And so, another year begins….

It was “Back to Church Sunday” at our church today, and at the end of the service, an invasion of young children poured into the sanctuary, each wearing a backpack. They crowded together on the steps of the chancel for the blessings of the backpacks. A truly wonderful sight. If you feel cynical about our old world, the sight of those bright, hopeful faces would soften your heart.

Jacob, going into eighth grade this week, is of course too old and too sophisticated to get his backpack blessed, but we all went to a Sunday-school hour program to hear about the offerings coming up this year for students from middle school through high school—bell choir, missionary trips, Sunday night snacks, day trips. Someone—children’s minister Jamie Plunkett and his assistants—had worked hard on some complicated programing.

The whole thing took me back to my high school days. I think in part the course of my adult life was determined by my close involvement with a church group. The United Church of Hyde Park, and its neighbor, the Hyde Park YMCA, were the center of my social world. We all went to church together and afterward to hang out at Thomas’ Drugstore across the street—the drugstore owners were not always thrilled but we usually had fries and cokes; sometimes we sang in the choir; we met every Sunday night, though now I’m a little vague about what we did. My first boyfriends and all my close girlfriends came from that group. The group was called something that sounded like “Tuxus”—I never saw it written out and am quite sure I have gotten it wrong. An internet search turns up no such word.

When we weren’t at the church, we were, as a group, at someone’s house. There was usually a chess game going on and lots of pizza ordered. To this day, I avoid pizza with the excuse the I overdosed on it in high school—that includes cold, leftover pizza for breakfast.

This was not my family church. That was in another neighborhood, where I knew no one. A close friend introduced me to the United church when we were young enough to be in a Brownie troop. We graduated not into Girl Scouts (though I was a Scout for a while) but into the high-school church group (there was no middle school in Chicago in those days). My parents, familiar with the opportunities for youngsters to go astray on the South side of Chicago, sanctioned my attending another church, though Dad, son of a Methodist preacher, remained loyal to the Methodist Church. I occasionally went to football games or “hung out’ with kids they deemed inappropriate, and I think they saw the church as a safe haven.

Our dances were at the YMCA— those were the days of the jitterbug, but I was too self-conscious to learn to do it –and my high-school “sorority” was a YMCA group called “Calliope,” probably after the Greek goddess who presides over poetry and eloquence. I’m not sure I can see a connection, but I had the sweatshirt to prove it.

I was in the middle of a group of what today we would call nice young people. They were by no means goody-two-shoes, but they knew where and when to draw the line. And at that age, group acceptance is so important—especially for someone with my shy, wallflower tendencies. I was part of the group, though strangely one of the youngest and shortest, and I was happy. I had no need to look beyond my world for thrills or new experiences.

Jacob has his own group, a bunch of good boys from elementary school. In middle school, he’s branched out a bit in friendship but some of those boys are still the core of his social life. He is not as comfortable with the church kids, because he only knows a few of them, and as I looked at a gaggle of girls and boys today, I realized that I didn’t recognize any of them. A few others, like Jacob, sat quietly with their parents.

I wish for Jacob, and for all my grandchildren, as rich a high school experience as I had. It’s served me in good stead over the years. I’ve been saddened as word came of a death here and there of someone who remained forever young in my mind, and I occasionally wonder the familiar, “Whatever happened to….” But I am still in touch with two of the girls and what they say about old friendships is true—they are gold.

I drove by the church a few years ago when my children and I were in Chicago, and I was surprised at how small it looked. I wonder if the Fellowship Hall still has that wavy floor and the balcony around the edge with Sunday school rooms off it. ah, the memories.