Last night I had the strangest dream.
I dreamt I was speaking at a national writer's conference, talking about how I had written my book, at long last. I spoke to the entire membership from a booth in the middle of the conference and spoke eloquently how much debt I owed to Linda for all her help in mentoring me through the process of self-doubt, indecision and lack of confidence about my material. I remember saying "Had I met Linda when I was in high school, I would have a Pulitzer (Prize) by now." Everyone cheered. It was a good dream. I mean, who doesn't want to have a Pulitzer?
I woke up feeling hopeful and happy, but wondered, who the hell is Linda? Linda seemed to be a someone that had mentored me in some capacity, shown great patience with the insecurities of a writer brow-beaten by life. I couldn't help but feel a warmth around the idea of meeting with some woman who was so intensely interested in my material that she made it her duty to push me out of my comfort zone, shredding away my shit and pulling the work out. I wondered in the wee hours of the morning, have I had a Linda in my life? If so, who were my Lindas?
There's Linda Schilling, the first girl I ever kissed. We were both four and were outside her large Addam's Family style house in rural Wisconsin, the one where all the kids in the neighborhood played because they had the biggest yard and the most toys (Linda was the youngest of 10 kids).
Linda had buck teeth and stringy brown hair, parted in the middle. I still can see her eyes sort of bugging out as we just sort of innocently touched lips. I'm not even sure one could call it a kiss. More like my first peck.
It didn't do much for my self esteem that the moment it happened, Linda spun around and went screaming to my brother (who was around in back of the house) yelling "Andrew kissed me! Andrew kissed me!" I always figured that I must be a great kisser if she was that happy/excited by it and needed to go running spreading the good news. Linda should have been a publicist. Given that my brother and I didn't have the best relationship in the world (read: combative) I wasn't wild about Linda sharing such intimate detail with him. At least, not so fast. But I also had a thing for her older brother Wally (who was my brothers best friend) who, I realized sometime later, I had a crush on. So I guess it all sort of evened out (even if it was unrequited) in some weird way. And you thought the Jackson's had complicated family dynamics.
But maybe I'm being too literal. Maybe rather than Linda, my dream was trying for "Linda".
My first "Linda" was Bob Hansen, who I previously wrote about here on Extra Criticum. Bob certainly encouraged my acting throughout high school and routinely gave me interesting character roles - roles I didn't appreciate at the time but now see were much more interesting than the leads. When it came time to leave for college, Bob discouraged me from leaving my home town because he thought I "lived in a fantasy world". Gee, thanks Bob for reminding me exactly why I had to get out of Marathon County.
Later, in college in Minneapolis, maybe my Linda was Miss Cole, my college theatre teacher. She was very encouraging while I was a student and I learned a lot about interpretive reading from her. She would say, "It's like being a bad driver, you go fast and then you go slow." At the time I thought it was very deep.
But Miss Cole's final words to me at the end of my college career were, as she stood facing me in the lobby of the main building on graduation day, that one of my chief talents was the ability to "look up something that I didn't know". I had expected something a little more.. meaningful after knowing her for five years. But then I realized that I just needed to take the comment like a bad driver would - hitting the gas with a lead foot.
I think as we go through our 20s and 30s we look for our Linda, someone we see as a mentor. But if you get to your 40s and you haven't found your Linda, is it reasonable to expect to find her? By ones 40s, aren't you supposed to already be a Linda? And do writers need a Linda more than others? The torture that writers go through wondering, writhing, worrying that their work isn't good enough. Can we ever get through without having a Linda?
But I have faith. Perhaps Linda isn't a person but a state of mind. I ultimately gave my Lindas too much power over me and sought their approval so, when they inevitably didn't measure up to what I needed (how could they?), their comments rang cruel and I would leave upset. Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, the Lindas that I've come up with were all theatre people, not writers. I realize as I write this that when I wrote my one man show I needed a director to help shape it, but no Linda to approve it. When I wrote the libretto for the adaptation of The Big Orange Splot I simply wrote it without any Linda over my shoulder to correct it. And, as I've been compiling my book, one of the things that's been crippling me is the worry and fear that I "should" have a Linda to tell me how to write it. (Thanks, though, to Ro for being an incredibly encouraging partner).
I think it's necessary to foster a belief in one's own abilities to the point where Linda-ing no longer matters. Or at least, perhaps if you haven't found a Linda by some point, you'd better become your own Linda. And quick. It's sort of like a modern take on Cinderella - if your Prince hasn't shown up to save you, guess what Cinderellas and Cinderfellas, it's time to save yourself.
And that is a dream come true for any writer. Pulitzer winner or not.