Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

This morning’s air was damp and uncharacteristically heavy, its scent overripe and wormy after last night’s brief summer storm and lingering showers. A Midwestern rain transported somehow out of its rightful time zone, bringing a thunderstorm and lightning that only mutedly lit up the sky, daytime lightning the mild-speaking, apologetic stepsister to her spiteful nighttime brothers. Rain that kept me in my car waiting out the worst of the downpour, since naturally I go about my post-Midwestern life as if storms of this kind don’t occur here. Usually my weather truce holds, but not yesterday.

Forgive me, Dear Reader, for I have just broken a rule. I confess I just learned the rule, yet the space between learning and following rules is not supposed to be spanned with disregard. Earlier this week, I read Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing. He listed ten; number one was don’t open with the weather.

I have never read anything else by Leonard, who died recently at age 87, except these rules, disseminated widely after his death but published first several years ago. He was a career writer, a professional writer, a writing writer, whose books have sold millions of copies and have been turned into many movies. I’ve read almost nothing in the crime fiction/suspense thriller genre. I’ve seen only one of the movies based on his novels, and that was because it starred John Travolta, which was as close an accommodation my husband and I could make to his desire to see something edgy and provocative with the requisite amount of violence and my usual choice of a rom-com, period piece, literary exposé or drama showcasing witty repartee among mature actors whose median age is 70.

Reading Leonard’s rules made me think of all the other lists of rules out there. A quick search revealed more than I’d imagined. We must like rules to come in sets of ten, so easy to set side by side on two tablets. There are, apparently, 10 rules for being human, 10 rules for dealing with the police, 10 rules for dating one’s son or daughter, even 10 rules for writing numbers and numerals. Then there are the “rules of” – 10 rules of gun safety, 10 rules of life, 10 rules of Satanism, 10 rules of dating. I’m not sure which is scarier – that there are 10 rules of dating, or that there are 10 rules of Satanism, or perhaps, the real terror, that there are people assembling and writing up rules for how to date and how to worship Satan, choosing carefully the 10 most pressing rules that will define and direct all who come later. What’s the 11th idea, the one that just didn’t make it into the prized inner ring, yet still guides the actions and practices of the other rule-abiding Satan worshippers?

The original, I mean origin-of-all Original Ten rules are really one declaration, two things you gotta do, and seven shalt not’s. My husband came across a dictum to help young people (men, mostly) understand the difference between good and bad choices: avoid stupid people doing stupid things in stupid places. It’s a post-adolescent reframe of the original shalt not’s, and it’s hard to argue with its wisdom.

There is only one rule, as far as I can tell. If it’s living, it will die. Others will say there are two rules – death and taxes. And then there are the 3 stupids. So perhaps there are as many rules as there are people willing to slap a number on them and start counting.

With the exception of a college-time flirtation with another woman’s man, and the unrestrained capacity to take many, many names in vain, I am predisposed against most of the shalt not’s, even though I seem equally predisposed to hate lists extolling the best ways to do, accomplish, produce anything. I don’t take Cosmopolitan quizzes, don’t like the top 10 countdowns on New Year’s, have never followed beauty/fashion magazine tips (10 minutes to a flatter stomach! 10 exercises to strengthen your quads! 10 ways to heat up your sex life! 10 things your guy wishes you knew about men!). I especially don’t want to know the 10 things celebrities are doing that I can’t afford to do and, that, ultimately, end up meeting all three of the stupids we’re better off avoiding.

Back when I was young and single, I didn’t have the luxury of playing hard-to-get. I played “don’t notice my desperation” and “please, hair, don’t frizz” to anyone willing to speak to an unpopular, cerebral, flat-chested girl. I dated the ones with overbites, red hair, acne, immature social graces and awkward bodies, feet and torsos and arms that swayed unrhythmically and inconsistently during slow songs.

Back when I was pregnant and then mother to a newborn, I was keenly aware of all the rules I had to contend with, which boiled down to these ten: to use my body as if it was nothing more than a 24-hour baby-wearing, baby-feeding, baby-sleeping attachment device while retaining a personal regimen of psychic, spiritual and physical health to remain a sexual vixen to my spouse, raise an academically gifted child, and contribute meaningfully to my profession and financially to my household. Simple and straightforward, these rules; I nailed all 10 of them.

Leonard’s rules were designed to help writers remain invisible when writing. I’m pretty sure Shakespeare didn’t consult a list of the top 10 things to avoid when writing poetry that would last 500 years; nor did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel or carve his David with lists of how to make the art more accessible and how to become invisible as the artist.

It doesn’t occur to me to seek out invisibility when I write. I am guilty of the self-indulgence Leonard eschews: a flair for language and the sound of my own written voice please me. I wish to show up in my writing, rather than blur or fade out. If a first-person narrative loses the first person, I’m in trouble.

So here it is, I guess. I have just created my own list of 10 (or is it ten) reasons why I don’t follow the rules.