Got a problem? The Dolly Mama is here for you. You can find her by writing us here.
Dear Dolly,
I like to read books. I think people who write books are really interesting. Do you think I should become a writer? What would I need to do to become a writer? Would I have to be published, or could I just write and get my friends to read my stuff on Facebook? I read the whole NY Times 50th anniversary of the Book Review and I think I’d also like to just review books instead of write them. What do you think my first step would be?
Dear Wannabe a Writer,
You have to decide what kind of writer you really want to be or reader/reviewer you really want to be. Do you have the courage, the wit, the posture, the typing speed? Do you have enough experience to be a writer or are you just someone who borrows other people’s experience? In other words, what would make you happy if you were a writer? What would you get out of it? Be specific.
A. I’d be more interesting.
B. I’d be more interesting to others.
C. I’d make lots of money.
Forget C. Decide between A and B. Writers don’t make money. Instead, answer these questions.
Would you like to be more like Upton Sinclair, a writer with. a funny name who writes biographically and makes a name for himself by being weird? Upton Sinclair (What kind of mother gives a kid the name Upton?) is quoted in that 50th anniversary Times Book Review issue as follows: “He came home from a few days away to find that uninvited picnickers had raided his kitchen, smoked his cigarettes and gone swimming in his pool. I don’t think,” he told the Times, “that they read any of my books.” Why don’t you write something about somebody breaking into your house and try to have as good a sentence as this one? And do you know where to put quotations into long sentences?
Or would you rather be a writer like Toni Morrison who in Song of Solomon names a child Milkman because his mother nursed him well past infancy? What is your position on nursing? Do you find his name amusing or disturbing? How moral or moralistic are you about matters like nursing and motherhood and making fun of people by calling them weird names? Really opinionated people make terrible writers.
Please don’t even try to be like Flannery O’Connor. She wrote stories about people that were so scary that once you read them, you become kind of paralyzed. What if you also were turned into a tragic grotesquerie? “Old Mr. Fortune, in a story called, “View of the Woods,” loves his granddaughter so much that he kills her without meaning to. His fate is much like that of the actor Alec Baldwin, whose life was nearly destroyed (jury is still out) by an accidental firing of a loaded gun which killed the cinematographer of a movie he was acting in and producing. Someone WILL write that story but they are going to have to work really hard on a believable ending.
In another of O’Connor’s stories, the young son of a citified couple in “The River” is taken by his babysitter to see a country baptism. He goes back by himself and drowns trying to find his new friend Jesus in the River.
If you want to be a writer like O’Connor you are going to have to work really hard to keep your dreams from becoming nightmares.
Dolly
Dear Dolly,
How do I make jokes about booze without being really rude to people in AA or recovery of some kind? I laughed and laughed when I read of Mark Twain’s remedy for a cold. “Plain gin was recommended, then gin and molasses, then gin and onions, then gin with gin.” Is this offensive to people in recovery?
Dear Offensive,
Yes, it is offensive to people in recovery. It invisibilizes them. They get colds too. They need a good laugh, too. It’s already almost impossible to socialize without booze. Why make it harder by enjoying a booze joke just a little too much? Ok. I know. Because booze makes you feel sophisticated, like you belong to the cognoscenti. How about laughing at the Mark Twain joke and then a sentence or two later saying how aware you are that this joke might not be for everybody. Don’t be a show off about it. Just say it simply. “I wonder how people in recovery get over colds. Or gin. Or having a cold without gin or jokes about gin?” You’ll be appreciated. Then you move on, without a lot of self-congratulation or self-recrimination. Just notice. That’s all
Dolly
Who is the Dolly Mama?
The Dolly Mama is a spiritual version of Dear Abby. Her intention is to combine the irreverence of Dolly Parton with the surrender and non-attachment beloved by Buddhists. She wants to let go of what can’t be fixed – in either self or others – and fix what can by applying the balm of humor.
She is a spiritual handyperson, a soul mechanic, a repairer of broken appliances. Every now and then the combination of letting go and hanging on achieves sufficient balance for an improvement in spiritual posture, stronger spine, and personal peace. The Dolly Mama is not her day job. By day, she works as an ordained United Church of Christ and American Baptist pastor of a regular, if edgy, congregation.