Dreams do come true
This past week I experienced one of the most gratifying things that can happen to an author, especially a first-timer like me. My good friend, Dee Dee Whitehead, hosted me -- and my book! -- at her book club. It was a delightful evening with a great group of women and pure pleasure for me. (There’s Dee Dee over my left shoulder.)
To talk about The Steps Between Us with an engaged group of readers felt a bit surreal on many levels. It felt like they were conversing directly with my brain – as if the characters and plot points that have lived in my head for so long broke out and interacted with real people. To hear readers ask questions, to see them argue a bit with each other about things – How about that Georgie character?? – made them come alive for me and did make me see things differently. I drove home full of ideas for the book number two in this series. What a gift!! Thank you so much, Dee Dee! Plus, you always host the best events and this one featured a magnum of Veuve Clicquot! Can’t imagine how it could be better.
I hope I will have the opportunity to do more book clubs. If you’re in the Massachusetts/Southern NH area and would like me to come to your book club, drop me a line.
A mixed bag on proficiency
So last week I told you Imi and I were going to try proficiency judging for me at the Yankee Classic this weekend. Proficiency judging means the amateur is judged out of 100 as opposed to competing with others. The advantage is if you go to pieces over the results (as I do), you can avoid the whole lining-up-in-order-of-results/sweating everyone’s medals situation. As an additional plus, we thought it would be true that Imi could essentially drop me into any level at any time. Whereas it would likely be disconcerting to see me on the floor with a Silver group (I am Bronze, after all), it wouldn’t really matter, and I would get to sleep late. The more advanced levels go later.
This time around, there was some confusion on how things should work. So, the organizers put me in the normal Bronze heats, which started at 9AM, meaning I had hair and makeup at 6:30. That did not make me happy. They also did not judge me against 100, I just got 15 firsts as if I was uncontested in those heats (that’s me wearing my new Rhythm dress looking a little confused with the results on the right there). So we can’t say it really was proficiency.
I wasn’t feeling well when I did my Rhythm heats and my condition quickly got worse. I had to go home sick and miss the rest of my dances, including Nightclub and Smooth. I was sad to miss everything – the Queens and Jokers nightclub event was sure to be a blast. And we can’t yet say whether proficiency is the right choice for me since it did not really work this time. Imi did say I seemed a lot calmer this time but that could just have been me concentrating on not getting sick on the dance floor. (That’s definitely something that would happen to my protagonist, Ava, who is the queen of dance disasters. Maybe it will show up in book two!)
I’ve put some more photos and video from Yankee on my Gallery page. So check those out, too.
Challenges yet to face
I’m ransacking my closet and throwing everything in a huge bag – dresses, shoes, fishnets, scads of jewelry. I’m practicing more than ever, trying to polish my routines and make them better. I’m making plans with my ballroom buddies, dinners and logistics.
What time is it? It’s ballroom competition time!
Like a lot of amateur dancers, and very much like my protagonist Ava from the Steps Between Us, I have a love-hate relationship with comps. On one hand, it’s really what we prepare for all year long. Comps are the ultimate progress meter. They are THE see-and-be-seen events. “Anyone who is anyone will be there.” Students who can see steady improvement will naturally be motivated to come back for more. They will win rightful kudos for their discipline. They win the medals, trophies, and scholarship checks. For those whose progress has gone steadily up, comps are validation, along with a lot of fun. Sometimes there’s even a gala.
For those of us who struggle with comps, on the other hand, the picture is mixed. What I love about comps: the excitement of preparation, having hair and makeup done, swishing around the hotel wearing my ballgowns, hanging out with my friends. Especially the last item!
What I hate about comps? The nerves, the egotism. The pointless fights with my teacher. The judges with their clipboards. Not the judges personally. They are always very nice. In fact, they are absolutely serene with nothing to prove and are therefore cheerful and kind, despite presumably sore feet from standing in one spot for hours on end.
What I don’t love is the judging. It’s why they call it a competition, of course, but being judged in this venue sends me to pieces. I’ve struggled with my results, just as Ava does in the book. No amateur performs to their highest ability at a comp – adrenaline poisoning is real. But I’ve struggled particularly to keep my concentration where it should be – in my body as opposed to focusing on the outcome I’m trying desperately to achieve.
Years of ballroom mindset coaching have taught me I am the only person who can make me feel bad about my results, that I alone decide what my results mean. That sounds right intellectually but in practice, I can’t make myself believe the results don’t matter, or don’t matter for me. And that puts into place just the kind of downward spiral that would make someone quit comps if not ballroom altogether. It really is hard to line up in the last-place spot, which is the custom for scholarship events. (Everyone also shakes hands and offers congratulations, which is jarring to say the least if you come in last.) I’ve been in that spot many times. I think you’d have to be a Buddhist not to mind that one. My old dance demons – in this case, identical to Ava’s – rear up and prevent me from doing my best. Comps inevitably make me feel separate and apart from my friends, like winning is a nut I just can’t crack where everyone else can.
But I don’t want to quit. So, Imi and I trying something different this time. I like to think of it as beating the system. I am signed up this time for “proficiency” judging only. That means I really am competing only against myself and will receive marks based on a percentage of how well I executed the step vs. the benchmark. No standing around for the awards ceremony. No lining up in last place. No medals or checks, either. I’m not sure at this point if proficiency judging will make me feel worse or better. Maybe it’s a mistake. My mindset coach feels the universe continues to challenge you until you affirmatively conquer your demons. We’ll see about that.
I’m going to try proficiency. I’ll report back on how it goes. In the meantime, I can’t wait to spend time with my friends.
We live for sparkle
Check out Ms. Kim Mulkey, coach of the LSU Tigers women’s basketball team. Is she great or what? I’ve never been much of a sports fan, and I don’t watch the games, but I love to watch Kim. She is 63, blond, and she is not going gently into that good night of “aging appropriately.” The colorful, sparkly, and often feathered outfits Kim wears are designed to get attention, “appropriateness” be damned. She’s my spirit animal. Whereas others accept the invisibility that comes with age, we double down on glamour. Where the whole world is getting more and more informal, we dress up, because we like to, because it makes us feel good. “Look, we're from Louisiana. We like sparkles, we like diamonds, we like Mardi Gras, we like to eat and we like to party,” Kim was quoted as saying, and that seems just about right to me.
My protagonist in The Steps Between Us, Ava Thompson, is magnetically drawn to ballroom dance by the glamour of the scene — the beautiful dances, the shimmering dresses, the over-the-top makeup, the jewelry that can be seen from outer space, the flirting with handsome instructors. In that sense, Ava and I are the same. We were both fearful of dance, but we are more afraid of being invisible and sidelined as the years go by. Dance — especially competition — is a way of saying, “I deserve to be seen, I belong here.”
I’m not ready to give up my hair dye, my baubles, my high heels, my party outfits. Like Kim, I am going hard in the opposite direction. Every woman calibrates this equation for herself over time, making adjustments as they feel right. It’s possible I might voluntarily dial down the glitz one of these days. But I doubt it. Kim, drop me a line and let me know where you got that awesome suit! I have a feeling it would be great in Ballroom World.
Finding your story
I was one of those little girls who was always writing. When I was about 10, I wrote a series of plays for my neighborhood friends about princesses and their dog. (My sister always played the dog, happily.) We put on these shows for our parents in our backyards, wearing nightgowns and headbands as tiaras. (The royal dog did not wear a tiara or gown.) I believed in my bones I would be a novelist or a playwright.
But life got in the way. I majored in Journalism and English and then went to law school and embarked on a career as a business journalist. I was busy all day writing, but not on particularly creative projects. On weekends and nights, I would work on little bits of writing – a start to a story here, a few character sketches there. But these did not come to much of anything. When journalism in general (and business journalism in particular) failed, I turned to “content marketing,” which was far from creative. The years went by.
Soon after I turned 50, I went to a Friday night dance party at my local ballroom studio. That night played out just about exactly as did The Steps Between Us protagonist Ava’s introduction to ballroom. Like Ava, I was scarred by traumatic early dance experiences (I, too, was fired from ballet.) But I was utterly transfixed by the dance scene I saw at the studio that night. So many people who knew how to dance, so many different dances. It was a revelation, a shimmering realm I wanted to join more than I have wanted just about anything.
But I might have left that evening with nothing more than a feeling of longing except for the fact that Hungarian dance pro Imre Gombkötő – Imi – seized upon me (as he did all potential new clients) and insisted I dance with him and then take a free lesson the next week. It was terrifying but exhilarating. And that’s how it has been, ever since. Fear plus excitement. Frustration and suffering, embarrassment and shame, always. But so much joy. I fell deeply in love with everything ballroom. I made the most magnificent friends in this community, and we have had the best times. My attention to the lessons has always taken a backseat to me observing the environment.
That’s because, almost immediately after starting my lessons, I realized I wanted to write about Ballroom World. I wasn’t sure then what form it would take – maybe non-fiction, maybe a screenplay, maybe a novel. I took notes, did interviews with clients and pros, tried out different things. I wrote the pilot episode of a TV series called Swirl I still hope to come back to. (I didn’t pick a great time to try to break into Hollywood! A young producer told me I would never make it because “you live in Boston, you’re a nobody, and you’re old.”) I decided to recast the material as a novel, The Steps Between Us.
As a first-time novelist of a certain age, I guess I’d have to call myself a late bloomer. I don’t know why for all those decades I still believed I would write a novel, but I did. At this point, I’m just delighted to have found my subject, an absorbing world I hope to keep writing about. It has glamour on a scale I could only have dreamt about in my backyard-princess days. And so many compelling human stories.
Before that first night at the studio, I could not dance a step. And I had no story to tell. Imi gave me both. I am forever grateful. Thank you, Imi, for introducing me to dance, for bringing me your world. I owe you so much. As you like to tease, I will still need lessons from you when I’m 90 and you are merely 70. I hope so.
Imre Gombkötő
Taking a chance in mid-life
I’m a lot like Ava Thompson, the protagonist of my forthcoming book, The Steps Between Us, now in pre-order on Amazon. After her sons leave for college, Ava is at a loose end. Casting about for something to do, she discovers a secret world full of people who love ballroom dance – and who show off their skills at Friday night social dance parties. Ava is entranced and desperately wants to be a member of this club.
But she’s torn. Bad experiences with dance as a child left her nervous, even phobic, about trying to learn dance. And that’s how it was with me, too. The book is fiction, but the anecdote about Ava being fired from ballet lessons as a young girl comes straight out of my experience. We both started ballroom with scars. But we both had (still have!) a burning desire to learn and take their place among the elite: People Who Can Dance.
Unfortunately, those scars interfered with our ability to learn dance. Once a panicked, fight-or-flight response takes hold, the brain is focused only on survival. That situation does not lend itself well to learning anything, especially something as difficult as ballroom! Thinking back, now in my eighth year as a ballroom student, I can say I spent years in fight-or-flight mode – during my lessons, at showcases, at competitions, even at social dance parties (I don’t think I will ever be able to do waltz at a social dance – amateur leaders with a modicum of skill simply refuse to stick to the basics.)
The Steps Between Us is, on one level, the story of one dancer’s journey – the self-doubt, embarrassment, and false starts. Ava learns how to make her way in Ballroom World. So have I. And we both still love it.
One thing I have learned in my time here: Everyone wants to dance, and everyone is terrified at the beginning.
Are you contemplating taking a chance of your own? Drop me a line and let me know your plans.
