Thoughts on Being Gracious

I did something crazy this last weekend.

I love shoes.

I love dancing.

I LOVE dancing shoes.

So I thought it might be awesome to go to Boogie By the Bay. If you ever have the opportunity, go. Just getting to watch the other dancers is well worth the price of admission, and the pros who compete there make it easily some of the best dancing I've ever seen. EVER. And I've been to a number of impressive ballets live, so that's actually saying something.

I watched competitions, and they were incredible. The dancing, the costumes, the music (though there really was a propensity to dance to Bastille's Pompeii), it was unbelievably good. But when I ran into one of the dancer's after her competition and said "That was great! You danced beautifully!" she blinked at me, tears in her eyes and hugged me.

She said "Thank you so much. I didn't dance as well as I could have."

It shocked me. She'd done things I couldn't even dream of doing. She was magnificent. She was better than I will ever be. Her 'didn't dance as well as I could have' was so many leagues above where I'll ever dance, that it sort of hurt.

Literally, there are not enough years left for me to dedicate to family, job, writing, and dancing to ever get to where she was on a bad day. EVER.

It caught me up a little short. Not because I saw a moment of my mortality in her incredible dance that was "not as well as I could have," but because it was possibly the worst thing to say. Her dance touched me. It gave new meaning to the song she danced it to, and I'll never forget the place she took the dance and the song and me in that moment.

But to hear that it wasn't her best sort of--okay, I'll fess up, it Hurt.

She gave me her art. It had an impact on me. And then--after I screwed up my courage to approach this beautiful, vivacious dancer, a woman put on this Earth to Dance--she told me it wasn't her best.

I understood something else in that moment: just because you are the artist does not mean you have a clue how your art will touch people.

Without a doubt, I could have lived my whole life without knowing that her routine that brought me to tears (yeah, I'm a crier, maybe people shouldn't be proud of the waterworks I give them) wasn't her absolute top performance.

But that was just one more gift she gave me. She showed me how I should always treat people who see something beautiful in the art I create.

Her response should have been: Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I love to dance.

At the end of that exchange, there could be a brief exchange about an upcoming piece. In writing, it would be to direct the reader to the sequel, or other work by the writer (or other work that was similar by another writer).

That wasn't the moment to confess that the performance of something was shaky. She'd already touched my heart. There was no greater place she could have taken me by confessing that it could have been better. In fact, the admission that it wasn't her best cheapened the moment, as if by being touched by the lesser performance, it was some sort of degradation of my ability to discern good dancing from bad.

Yes, this is all in my head. Yes, it is quite possible that she could have danced better. Yes, my dance experience is small enough to be suspicious as a judge. But I know what I like, and I know when something speaks to my soul and not the bean counter that can tell if the steps were all in perfect alignment.

Her performance was more than enough to take me to somewhere else. I didn't need to hear about her insecurities. I understand that she had them. I understand that it was amazingly hard work to put the routine together. Trust me, I get that part.

But what I didn't need to know was that she was dissapointed in the performance that I found so much meaning in.

It's okay to have insecurities. It's okay to talk about how hard you worked on something. It's okay to be disappointed, but it's not okay to greet someone who is praising your words with regret and insecurity.

I get that writing and dancing are different. I understand that on a visceral level. But the thing to do is to swallow your pride and realize that the performance that is given, be it novel or dance or painting or anything where the goal is to touch someone else's heart, is the best that you could make at that moment. Maybe the floor was slippery--we get that. Maybe your editor wasn't what you'd hoped--we get that. What your fans are trying to say was that your work was amazing to them and they don't care how amazing it could have been. The people who come to you after they've experienced your art are saying they loved the art Just The Way It Is.

Accept that.

Own that.

And after they've taken their deep breaths and screwed up their courage to even make eye contact with you (Yes, I mean you, because everyone who reads this blog, whether you mean to or not, intimidates the crap out of someone else), they deserve the respect that you can give to the moment they have had. Once they tell you about how you touched their heart, it's no longer about you the creator: it's about those who have interacted with your art.

Be gracious. Your art has just done the thing you've always hoped it would: you have touched someone's life. Be thankful, not everyone manages to achieve the One Thing they have always tried to do with your art. Be sure to say thank you. 

In the moment

I love dancing (And the shoes!!!)

I haven't been dancing for very long, in fact, I only started this year. Already I'm having way too much fun.

But having fun doesn't mean I'm good at it. In fact, it turns out I'm sort of a terrible follower. I have a hard time being in the moment. I'm always planning for the future. In dance, this means that I get a lot wrong because I'm not waiting to get my directions from the leader.

In writing, this means I'm always looking forward to the big payoff in the novel, the cool moment in the movie where they had to slow everything down so you could see just how awesome it was. Because I'm thinking about what comes next I tend to mess up the now.

Confession: if I'm writing a novel, I'm working my way towards an explosion, and I can hardly wait to get there.

I guess we could all use a little more In The Moment. My writing could (and yeah, my dancing could to). But I feel like I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. Everywhere, the world tells us to plan for the future. Then, while we're planning, we miss the life that's right now.

It's a balance I clearly have to learn. What about you, got it all ironed out, or are you fretting over the future?

(and the key for dancing is to wait. wait. WAIT for the downbeat--yes, this is a music thing, but sometimes it's good to remember that there are other things besides publishing where waiting occurs)

Care to dance? (hint, the answer is always YES!)

 

So I’ve been learning to dance with my Mom (you know the woman who has read every book in the store—okay, not anymore, but for a long time sci fi and fantasy didn’t produce enough books for her reading enjoyment, so she read out the mystery section as well). She’s been dancing for a while and I’m the n00b. And it’s a blast. The first two weeks were pretty nerve wracking, but after I started to know people’s names, and it’s been a blast.

Whenever you first learn something, you’re just in a panic. For me, that panic was trying to decode what the leaders were trying to tell me to do. The biggest problem when you start out is that if you have any sense of rhythm, people assume you know how to dance, so they try their moves on you. For many people, this was a disaster. I just didn’t know the language.

But for some leaders, they could just spin me out and do a whip and—by pure magic—I followed! I mean they were doing things I just didn’t know how to do, but the cues they gave were so perfect that there was nothing other than the right move as an option.

As you can imagine, this was confusing that sometimes dancing was easy (and awesome!), and sometimes I was completely toe tied. After a few more lessons, I was able to figure more of it out and do more with the leads that weren’t as obvious (note, I didn’t say as good, I said not as obvious). That’s when it hit me that dancing is like writing. Ever read that book where you thought you understood it, but there was doubt? Yeah, that was a book that either you didn’t come to it with the right background, or the writer didn’t give you a good enough lead to follow them through the story.

Oh, and the other rule of dancing: It’s the leader’s fault. Something goes wrong? Leader’s fault. Miss a turn? Yeah, the leader didn’t lead it right. (hint, if you’re the writer, you’re the leader: it’s your fault when the reader doesn’t follow you)

In some styles of dance, the lead is in close contact the whole time. The contact is so constant and close, that the follower has no option but to do as directed by the leader (it is a partnership and they wouldn’t want to do anything else anyways). In other dances, the lead is with a couple of fingers, and that’s because everything is so fast that anymore contact would get in the way.

And that’s where the trouble comes. I definitely write like a two fingered lead. I’ve always known this, but there are moments in the dance where I could pause, and my followers (the readers) could catch a breath and know they were on steady ground before spinning off into the action.

What are your thoughts on letting the reader catch their breath?