We’re way past this season, but my favourite Christmas carol is The Little Drummer Boy:
Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,
So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
When we come.
Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum
I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That’s fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,
Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,
On my drum?
Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,
Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum.
And that’s it: we give what we have. What we give makes a difference. And what a gift it is to be able to give.
I’ve been hearing story after story of people who’ve raised $200, $400, $1,000 in just two days – after thinking that they didn’t have much to give.
So they gave a skill or a thing they made. With their own two hands.
Sign up for the Help Haiti Blog Challenge (below). Write about it on your blog and tag it “Help Haiti Blog Challenge”. Ask your people to join you and do the same.
Add the Help Haiti Blog Challenge badge to your blog.
Make your offer: I will donate ________ dollars to _________ on behalf of the next person who buys _________ from me.
Make your donation and tell us how much you donated.
Tweet about it using the hashtag #haitiblogchallenge. Update your facebook status with a request to pass on the message and the call to action. Send e-mails. Everywhere you are, online, talk about the Help Haiti Blog Challenge, tag it, and call your friends, family, colleagues – your people – to action.
Want to know more? Check out the spirited and inspiring discussions taking place in the comments, here and here.
And thank you for rising to the occasion and giving what you have, now.
Yesterday my friend Julie Roads wrote about conquering fears, and jumping and ladders and stairs and elevators:
I wish I could send an ‘elevator’ of help to Haiti. I know times are hard for people all over the world right now, but if you have anything to spare, please text “haiti” to 90999 and make a donation to the Red Cross’s relief efforts. You can also make a donation via their website. May the pain and suffering of these people somehow be eased by the care and support of people everywhere…
Three other charities that are working to help Haiti:
And I thought about that all day. I thought: how can I help? I’ve got next to no cash to spare.
And so I thought: I’ve got something to offer. I’ve got a skill. I can convert that skill to cash to a donation. That’s a contribution. It is not a lot, but it is something.
And then when I was thinking, it is not a lot, I started thinking about how a whole lot of little things add up into something significant.
I know, it is not rocket science.
So that is the impulse behind the Help Haiti Blog Challenge: give of yourself. Find a way to raise a little money. Have a garage sale and donate the proceeds. Donate the next sale. Give whatever you’ve got to share. Encourage others to do the same. Do something.
You could check your bank balance right now. Work out what you need to last until the end of the month, then send whatever is spare to The Red Cross, RIGHT NOW.
And you could do it without publicity or a link to your product, and without posting a badge on your blog to tell the world about it.
It would be giving without receiving, and it will feel good.
I think complaining and venting can be enervating. You’ve got this uncomfortably hot issue simmering and boiling and producing steam…and then you vent. All that energy dissipates into the atmosphere. You’re comfortable again. And so you carry on.
And nothing changes.
So complaining – letting off steam – is an escape valve, and the escape is inertia. Complacency. A democracy of noisy theory and a prison of inaction.
I wore this skeptical hat during the Iran elections. We tinted our avatars green and changed our locations to Tehran while journalists and pundits and the US State Department discovered social media. OH YE GODS OF DEMOCRACY, the revolution will be Twitterized!
And yet. I’m an idealist, a believer in Democracy, and a lover of all things people. Your people are my people. My people are yours.
In this online, virtual world of ours, our people are everywhere. Our people is Haiti. And Haiti – our people – needs and deserves help right now.
I feel pretty helpless about that. What can I do? What can I really do? The magnitude of need is vast and my wallet is small.
So I’ve stewed and brewed and steamed about it – and refrained from saying a word about it, so that the pressure to do something would get so intolerable that I’d get an idea and be driven into action.
Here’s that idea, the action, and call to action.
TheHelp Haiti Now Blog Challenge
In the blog-o-sphere, we talk a lot about making money: how we’re not making money, how we are, how we want to, how to, and please buy this because it will help you make money.
And we’re talking and blogging and social networking and creating products and selling services and talking and blogging and social networking and creating and you get the idea.
So, even those of us who don’t have a lot of money have something to contribute.
Ideas. Services. Products. A network of people who like you and listen to you. Influence.
That’s smart and heartfelt. There’s a very big truth in that small tweet.
What have you got to give? YOURSELF.
That’s my challenge to myself, and to bloggers and readers and internet marketers and crafters and entrepreneurs and you.
You’ve got something to offer: whether it is an e-book, a course, a consultation, a mowed lawn, knitted booties, a tweet or an e-mailed plea to your closest friends. You have something to contribute.
Do what Danielle did, and offer a trade: your thing for cash, to donate to charity doing relief work in Haiti.
The ability to contribute is power and power is a gift. That’s a gift that you have and one you can share. Please do.
How To Join the Help Haiti Blog Challenge. What You Can DO.
Remember Gwen Bell‘s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge? It brought a LOT (700+) of people together. Which got me thinking…a blog challenge is a way to rally together and have a big impact through a lot of little actions.
Hence: The Help Haiti Blog Challenge. Let’s do it.
Here’s how we can share, together, so we can give, together, to our people who need and deserve help in Haiti.
Sign up for the Help Haiti Blog Challenge (below). Write about it on your blog and tag it “Help Haiti Blog Challenge“. Ask your people to join you and do the same.
Add the Help Haiti Blog Challenge badge to your blog.
Make your offer: I will donate ________ dollars to _________ on behalf of the next person who buys _________ from me.
Make your donation and tell us how much you donated.
Tweet about it using the hashtag #haitiblogchallenge. Update your facebook status with a request to pass on the message and the call to action. Send e-mails. Everywhere you are, online, talk about the Help Haiti Blog Challenge, tag it, and call your friends, family, colleagues – your people – to action.
Let’s gather our online people to help our real-life people.
You can do this. We can do this. And it will be bigger than anything we could have done alone.
Pass it on.
____________
Kelly Diels is a writer and will donate $200 to the Red Cross on behalf of the next person who books and pays for a page of website copy. You can e-mail her at kelly@kellydiels.com.
Amanda Farough designed the badge and the did the code thing and set up the list function. For free. Just because she cares.
Please feel free to copy and share this essay and call-to-action as widely as possible.
To join The Help Haiti Blog Challenge, please sign up on the list below so we can all keep track of the good work we’re going to do. Thank you so much.
____________
Here are a couple of badges for you to wear on your site. And some code to use it. Just copy+paste it. It’s good to go.
Yesterday, I wrote a post at ProBlogger that included advice to guest post.
In the spirit of contrariness (except it isn’t really contrariness, I’ve got actual reasons and I’ll explain them in another post) I’d like to make an announcement: there will be no more guest posts on this blog.
After this one, that is.
Dave Doolin gives grrrrrrreat e-mail and he comments here like it is his job. That’s not how he makes money, though. For that, he has a site called Website in a Weekend, where he teaches you how to yes, start a website in a weekend using WordPress. Then he very helpfully blogs about how to maintain and improve and grow said website.
And you know what I like about Dave’s stuff? It is long. It is useful. It is quality. It is fun.
Kinda like this piece he wrote for me. Here it is.
How to be Needy Without Being Needy
guest post by Dave Doolin
“Don’t be needy.”
That’s like the first thing out of anyone’s mouth when dispensing dating advice.
Well, excuse me, but no man is an island. And no woman is an island either.
Fact: humans are social animals.
We evolved to be around other human animals. This is indisputable. Or rather, dispute it if you like, but it’s still a fact. Might as well dispute gravity.
Consider: each of us depend on an enormous number of other people, all doing their part to ensure food lands on our table, water doesn’t come in when it rains, and we aren’t consumed by predators of two and four legs.
We depend on other people to reciprocate our time and energy with money, or, our money with their time and energy.
We need other people in our lives, whether we know these other people, or not.
And it doesn’t stop there.
We also need to be surrounded by a group of people we know, who are emotionally supportive, and with whom we are intimate. Smaller groups for those preferring more solitude; larger groups for those preferring less solitude. Humans are emotionally flexible, spanning the range between hermits and politicians, but our need for human interaction remains.
This need for social and emotional interaction (is there a difference?) truly is universal.
So, given we need human social interaction, what does it mean, “Don’t be needy.”
That’s a very good question, and I have a very good answer.
(Not saying my answer is correct, for any values of correct, just that it’s a very good answer.)
Here’s what “Don’t be needy” really means…
Don’t construct your emotional identity around the opinion of someone who doesn’t want you.
This means:
1. If you can’t get a date, don’t date. Practice being social instead. That means go hang out with members of the sex you’re attracted to. (I have TONS to say about attraction, now is not the time or place). And I mean practice in the sense of “acquiring mastery.” Where the means are the ends.
2. If you’re in a romantic relationship and have feelings of insecurity and desperation – i.e., neediness, do not vent these feelings on your partner. Ladies, go talk to your girlfriends – or gay friends – when you’re feeling overly needy. Gents, go shoot some pool with the boys or something. At least until…
3. You have a rock-solid relationship, just tell your partner straight up “I’m feeling needy.” How he or she handles this will tell you volumes about them.
4. If your client treats you like a tool, fire that client. It’s not worth it and they will cost you big later.
How to tell if you’re being needy in a bad way.
THE classic indicator: “There’s this one special girl/boy.”
Special. Sure. 6 billion people on the planet, and among your tiny, little social non-circle, you can only achieve happiness as a result of someone else being who you want them to be. Not gonna happen. And you know, you wouldn’t respect them if they did.
Another indicator: “If he/she would only do this/that, then I would be happy.” Ridiculous! The only person responsible for your happiness is you.
And then there’s Kelly.
Let’s talk about Kelly, Miss Needy herself.
Kelly requires large amount of social interaction. She needs it. It’s part of who she is, a fundamental component of her emotional identity. (It might be part of your emotional identity, too.)
But she doesn’t latch on to any one person. Instead, she builds a community of people who can give her emotionally significant interaction, and for whom she can reciprocate.
And that’s the crux of it, because…
…neediness isn’t just about taking… it’s also about giving.
Some of us have an almost pathological requirement to give. We need to give. The problem comes when giving to people who don’t want our gifts.
Our challenge is building a community who will freely – and graciously – accept our gifts.
And this is what Kelly is doing.
I’m doing it too. Wanna learn how to blog? I’d love to give you a little help. You can give me a recommendation, or a testimonial, or even money (my landlord will thank you), but if not, that’s cool, I’ll help you anyway if I have time. Just don’t make the mistake of taking me for granted. Not ever. I have this rule: 1 strike and you’re out.
———————
you can find Dave Doolin at Website In a Weekend. He knows WordPress. If you want to know WordPress and how to blog mo’ better, you want to know him. Also, he’s a mad flirt.
___________________________________
want more Cleavage? Regularly? Subscribe with your e-mail address below and I’m yours (in a virtual and direct-to-your-inbox kind of way):
and just so you know, I like it when you follow me on Twitter. I’m@KellyDiels.
Alexa’s ranking is just a tool for capturing progress and lots of people write about how it is flawed, and easy to game. But more important than the metric, progress – even traction – is what I’m feeling these days.
I’ve been blogging for nine months – sowing seeds – but it is really only in the last two months where I’ve started seeing the seedlings poking through the soil.
Seedlings:
traffic quadrupled. And then some
making money. Daily offers.
other people talk about me and write about me. Be still my heart.
Erin Doland is the founder of Unclutterer and the author of UnClutter Your Life in One Week, which seems an appropriate book to talk about in January especially since we all know that I’m cleaning out my closets.
I don’t think Erin specifically meant to address the issue of “how to unclutter your life of random, toxic men” but I’m sure she would approve of my unique application of her advice, nonetheless. Who wouldn’t?
I digress.
I interviewed Erin for my How To Get a Book Deal series at Write to Done. (Part 1 and 2 have run already; 3 and 4 are forthcoming.)
Erin was so charming and wonderful and witty that I thought I’d publish the interview, in full.
Here it is.
How To Get A Book Deal. Thirteen Questions with Erin Doland.
1. Are you a bookie?
(I’m inventing a new connotation for that word. In my world, “bookie” means someone who loves books so intensely that friends and family suspect that nudity may be involved. I don’t actually mean “do you get naked with books?”. FYI. But feel free to elaborate, if need be.)
Erin Doland: I am a voracious reader. I’m obsessed with reading and writing books the way druggies pursue their next high. I’ll start reading almost anything — but finishing a book is a different story. If a book doesn’t speak to me or make me want to learn, I have no problem walking away from it.
2. Was writing a book a long-held, secret fantasy of yours?
(I suspect that Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch [KD note: the owner and editor of Write to Done] would really appreciate it if you used G-rated words and did not digress into lavish descriptions of any other kinds of fantasies. You have my email address for those. Feel free. Thank you.)
Erin Doland: Before I had a book deal, every night in those moments before sleep, I would stare at the ceiling and feel like I had failed to achieve one of my purposes in life. I wasn’t quiet about this failure, though. Everyone I know was well aware of my feelings of inadequacy over not yet having written a book. In fact, I think my friends are happier than I am now that I have a book under my belt simply because they no longer have to listen to me talk about it.
3. Danielle LaPorte said in a firestarter that her smokin’ hot blog is about finding her people, creating a community, and she hopes that when the time comes, her book will be a best-seller.
Tim Feriss, I’m pretty sure, articulated (and did!) the same thing only with a less poetry and fewer dreadlocks and holy hassenfeffer* has that worked out something fierce for him.
Penelope Trunk, on the other hand, loves her blog because it gets her free fancy laptop bags and oral sex but thinks that writing a book is a time-sink.
Which brings me to my questions: Which came first, the idea for your blog or your book? How did your blog help you get the book deal? Which is your favourite child?
Erin Doland: If it weren’t for my posts on Unclutterer.com there wouldn’t be UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE IN ONE WEEK. My agent and editor both were fans of my writing on the website, and they wouldn’t have had a clue who I was if it weren’t for the site.
4. Did you approach an agent or a publisher with a book idea or did someone approach you?
(I can’t find a way to make that question sassy or entertaining. It’s all on you, now.)
Erin Doland: My agent contacted me. She read the site regularly, believed there was a solid platform for a book, and helped me develop a proposal that we shopped to editors. My editor is also a reader of the site and “got me” from the first line of my proposal. I feel really lucky to have worked with a team of people who have understood the Unclutterer message from the very beginning of the book project. I feel extremely fortunate to have another medium in which to share the Unclutterer philosophy with an expanded audience.
5. Who’s your agent? Are you still on speaking terms? If I call him/her, will she confirm that?
Erin Doland: My agent is a powerhouse and an incredible advisor. Choosing to sign with her is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. She’s phenomenal — Courtney Miller-Callihan at Sanford J. Greenburger. If she doesn’t have fond words for me, I might cry in a corner.
6. Did I tell you why I’m writing this piece? I want to write a book AND get it published AND I know nothing about how to do this. Hence: How To Get a Book Deal. Anyhoo, Josh Hanagarne told me that you don’t actually sell a non-fiction manuscript, you sell a proposal to write a manuscript. Is he lying?
Erin Doland: Josh Hanagarne has it correct. You don’t write a non-fiction book until a publishing house signs off on the proposal.
7. What kind of research – resources read, people talked to – did you do to prepare to write your book proposal?
Erin Doland: I worked with my agent and followed my instincts.
8. Did you consider hiring a proposal coach?
Erin Doland: No. I didn’t even know there were such things as proposal coaches.
9. So. You wrote a book proposal. Now what?
(By this I mean: did your agent shop it around? Did it go to auction? Did you go to New York and schmooze? Tell us a pretty story. Don’t worry, I’m a lazy fact-checker. See, for example, #6.)
Erin Doland: My agent shopped it, I had some meetings with editors, and I got offers. I picked the offer that was best for me and where I am in my writing career.
10. Is Erin Brockovich your hero? That’s not really the question. That is called foreshadowing. Let’s go EB for a minute and talk numbers:
“How ’bout this for a number? Six. That’s how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I’ve been married – and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That’s my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I’m guessing zero is the number of times you’re gonna call it.”
Still with me? Your book deal is signed. Visions of spectacular, over-sized but truly, madly, deeply deserved cheques are dancing in your head. What figure is on that cheque?
(Or, if you can’t tell us because then the IRS and your freeloading relatives will expect to get some, too, then just give us a range, like:
A. I got paid in M&Ms.
B. I got paid in S&M
C. Less than $100K but I’m not quitting my day job
B. $100-200K, I’m taking this interview from my new jacuzzi tub in MY NEW HOUSE SUCKA
D. $200-300K and people say blogging doesn’t make you money but it got me a book deal MUWAHAHAHAHAHA
E. More than $300K. Please don’t hate but I’m now so rich and famous that I had to head-hunt one ofGuy Kawasaki’s interns to take this interview for me. I’m surfing as we speak.)
Erin Doland: Unless you’re Dan Brown, in this economy, the correct answer is C.
11. HOLY HESSENFEFFER*! You got THAT much?! Clearly, it was time for the happy dance. What were your dance moves?
Erin Doland: I did do a happy dance. How did you know? Do you have video cameras in my house??
12. Is there video of this alleged dance and, if so, is anyone currently blackmailing you with the footage?
Erin Doland: I’ll pay whatever it takes for those videos not to be released onto YouTube. Call me. We’ll set a time and place for a drop off.
13. What is your book called, when is it coming out, and how can we get it?
After your book deal was signed and during the book-writing process, did your editor ever force you to sleep in her office for weeks just to get a semi-coherent draft out of you?
Erin Doland: No. I even turned in my manuscript ahead of schedule. My agent and editor assure me that this never happens and I violated some author’s code by not asking for an extension.
Bonus Bonus Question:
Anything I’ve missed that you think is important?
Erin Doland: Writing a book is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to become a published author. Truly, truly grateful.
*gratuitous Laverne and Shirley theme song reference. You know you’ve made it when you can casually work a Laverne and Shirley lyric into your writing. Book deal, schmook deal.
PS Erin, thank you so much for taking this interview. Just ignore my snarky footnotes. We both know I’m jealous.
PPS Everyone else: go now and buy Erin Doland’s book, UNCLUTTER YOUR LIFE IN ONE WEEK. Your closets will thank you. Your skeletons might not.
___________________
Here’s a list of all the pieces in the accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series (with from advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me):
This video is possibly the antidote to (a) ever taking yourself/myself too seriously (b) depression.
Thanks and mad mushy kisses to Julie Roads for sending it my way.
PS Once upon a time, I received this record – yes, record – as a gift for my tenth birthday, along with Michael Jackson‘s Thriller.
(Which I then proceeded to play continuously for the next three years.)
PPS The third addition to my music collection was a Twisted Sister cassette.
PPPS My musical taste and lack thereof – excepting MJ – are explained and encapsulated in this small sample.
PPPPS (and possibly I’m getting carried away with the post-post scripts) “It started out as Hogwarts but now it’s Lord of The Flies. I hated that book.” Sing it, sister.
I think it may be clear that – generally speaking and on a regular basis – I love myself the menfolk.
You know how the New Year brings on the urge to rid your home and closets of clutter?
My closets have skeletons. Mostly male. And mostly live. I just like to keep them around.
At any given time, I have new men in line a-waitin’ an audition while the ex’s wait for a call-back.
This isn’t a “ooh I’m so hot, I can get any man I want”, because that is just not true.
Please trust and believe that my ass is way fatter than yours (and I’m wildly okay with that most of the time) and so my admission of more-men-than-I-can handle isn’t a competition or a challenge to be The Hottest of Women Alive because I WILL NEVER EVER WIN at that game.
No, it is way worse than that.
I think I may be a collector. It is a morbid hobby and it consumes most of my available mental closet space.
So my cleaning of closets started last year.
It started in the fall, when That Very Bad Lying Man from the summer came back around and professed to having made mistakes and wanting me back.
There were insincere speeches. There were insincere calls. The last insincere telephone call went like this:
Very Bad Lying Man: Hi. I love you.
moi: Oh Very Bad Lying Man, you do not. Stop this. All of it.
Very Bad Lying Man: Are you sure you want me to do that?
moi: YES.
Very Bad Lying Man: [hangs up. stops calling]
moi: [RELIEF]
And that felt so good. It felt good to just relent and admit to myself that although the words were pretty – of course they were, they were scripted and rehearsed – the person professing them was not.
It felt good to just be calm and decisive and honest and walk away.
When I heard that the Very Bad Lying Man was married, and a fraudster, I was not traumatized. In fact, I was a little relieved. All my suspicions were confirmed, I am not crazy, and what’s more, I called “rain!” long before he was finished the game. I decided this is not good enough and said no more.
That was good. So good that I’m compelled to repeat myself.
Still, I wrote about it and I think it appeared as though I was upset and in a deep, dark place.
I wasn’t.
I marvelled, though, at the chaos the Very Bad Lying Man sowed in so many lives. I even marvelled at how impoverished his own interior and emotional life must be to make him so hungry to rob other people – of their bank and of their butterflies.
But for me: no grief. No anger. Instead, confirmation.
Intuition, standards and judgement: briefly on hiatus, but firmly back in play.
So, with that loop being closed in the most surprisingly unsurprising of ways, other strings started knotting or unravelling, too.
There was a man with whom I had an ongoing, months-long flirtation. He kept asking me out. I kept saying no – but not because of anything to do with him, but because of timing, babysitters, the waiting list, etc. Still, I really was interested. He’s smart, and there was definitely a shiver of electricity between us.
Then, last month, I was excited about a piece I was writing, that really meant something to me. It was about sex. It was wildly enthusiastic.
I told him about it. It went like this:
Mr. Potential: How are you?
moi: I’m in freaking heaven. White wine, chocolate, writing about porn, sex, and love as an ashram. Go ahead. Try and top that.
Mr. Potential: It’s a nice conceit but…[rolls eyes]
moi: Is that at me? What was that about?
Mr. Potential: You’re fooling around with a conceit and academic theory when what you’re really talking about are human emotions and wants and needs.. and it is not just you… a whole body of literature does it.
moi: Sweetie, it is called a metaphor. It is a useful tool for thinking and exploring concepts.
Mr. Potential: I know.
moi: Why is that so exasperating?
Mr. Potential: Because it doesn’t get at the heart of the matter.
moi: You haven’t read the piece. You don’t know if it does or does not. But please, do tell me what is the heart of the matter is, in your opinion.
Mr. Potential: I suspect that you’re not laying out your real emotions and feelings about it. Your conflicts. Your real sense of who you are. Your shame.
(my shame. my shame? MY SHAME?
Please, man-who-wants-to-sex-me-but-has-given-up-and-therefore-no-longer-needs-to-maintain-the-facade-of-friendship – or even RESPECT – feel free to prescribe my sexuality to me.
Go ahead and tell me when and where and of what I should be ashamed. Because I am sadly remiss in that area, that’s for damn sure.)
(also, importantly: “Not having sex with you” does not equal “Ashamed”.)
This – unlike the predictable betrayal by Very Bad Lying Man – was a surprise attack and and it wounded me.
What was it all about?
I knew you’d want to know, Dear Reader, so I asked him, directly.
moi: You know what is kind of disconcerting? When we started talking, I was bubbling over with positivity and inspiration. What was so irritating about that, that you needed to rub the shine right off my lamp?
Mr. No-Longer-Has-Any-Potential: You interest me but you won’t even have a drink with me so I’ve given up on that notion. Now when I talk to you, it’s more like a cat batting a toy. If I thought you were genuinely interested in me…… I would take your words more to heart.
I swear that I am not making this up.
I read somewhere – but can’t remember where, so if it was your blog, say hey! – that if you want to see what someone is really like, don’t give them something they want, and see what happens.
Now, normally, I would disagree with that experiment and that approach to interpersonal relationships. I do not explicitly, intentionally test people. I think it is manipulative.
But maybe I should back that thought right up, because that test, even if accidentally implemented, works.
I didn’t go out with this guy on his timetable and he got impatient with me…and then couldn’t be bothered to keep up the nice guy routine.
Telling.
So yeah, I’ve started being even more direct than usual – and asking, be still my heart, for exactly what I want and need – and as a result, I’m purging my life and my closets of extraneous men. I will no longer be the female Bluebeard of suburban Vancouver.
If I keep cleaning the live skeletons from my closets I may even end up with enough storage space for my shoes.
2010 is looking gooooood. And tidy.
___________________ this is a lesson I learned from my brush with the Very Bad Lying Man.
If you want to know more about THAT story, here it is:
This is a piece I wrote months and months ago, but it seems sort of appropriate to this week’s discussion (men, women, porn and romance novels – and you must check out this link that Andrew Raimist sent me to a NY Times Essay on female desire).
And what a discussion! I’m inspired by the e-mails and messages and comments to my Pornification piece. Thank you so much for jumping in and making waves with me.
____________________________
Romance Novels Tell You What (Straight) Women Want. And It Is a Short List.
Romance novels. I love romance novels. In university I wrote cheeky, explicit essays and honours dissertations on the politics of romance in film and novels and argued that in fact my essays were Important and Political because social attitudes and sexual mores are encoded and engendered in chick-lit. True story.
I should probably ask a man if this holds true in reality, but I’m afraid of the answer. Maybe men love and lust for us just the way we are. Maybe women are projecting our own internalized self-hatred and assuming that men hold our bodies to a mythical standard achieved only by winning the genetic lottery or by medicalized mutilation. Or maybe your man has been irreparably scarred by the Playboy he “read” at twelve and pines for a live-action flesh Barbie. I don’t know.
What I do know is that most women have Body Image Issues and so we secretly yearn for our lovers to tell us that all the things we hate about ourselves, and are programmed to hate about ourselves by mainstream media, are in fact beautiful, or endearing, or ordinary, or not a big deal, and please take your clothes off already.
2. To be desired.
In romance novels, men pay attention.
That stoic, seemingly emotionless and inattentive man is actually completely psychically attuned to our heroine and notices every detail of everything she does and memorizes the curve of her nose and the curve of her breasts and the freckles on her shoulders and recites her breakfast menu to himself before he sleeps, if he can sleep, which is unlikely, because he is completely besotted and obsessed and it is borderline stalker-ish except welcome.
Really, really welcome. I’d welcome some of that.
This is miles away from the mundane, overpopulated town called Real Life, where genuinely stoic, emotionless, and inattentive men are studiously ignoring their partners, singing “la la la I can’t hear you” but silently and in their heads, and counting down the minutes until she goes to bed to read romance novels so he can watch YouPorn in peace.
3. To be desired.
In romance novels, men have sex with women, and it is good.
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