I Want to Be in Their Club!

Well, it finally happened.
Two of my favorite authors got together and interviewed each other. It was all I could do to keep from yelling "I WANT TO BE IN YOUR CLUB!"
And I am in a writing club. (I am not in any other clubs. Clubs don't want me. I was briefly in a sorority in college, and one time somebody mentioned I might want to join a book club, but they did not offer theirs. I am in Bunco, which is kind of like a club, but it's mostly for drinking, and that I can do alone.) The writing club let me in because they had to. I paid the money, and now they send me e-mails. I get together twice a month with folks who critique my work, but most of them are either (a) memoirists, or (b) traditional fiction folks, and I am YA.

(YA, for the uninitiated, stands for "Young Adult." It comes in many forms--supernatural, James Bond-y, chick lit for teens, or angst-ridden prose. I don't write any of those. I write weird stuff about kids who are a little different.)

YA doesn't have a club here.
YA has a very cool club somewhere else, too inconvenient for me to join. Like Pheonix, where Stephanie Meyer lives, or Northern New York (Laurie Halse Anderson), or Vermont (Karen Hesse), or 'islands up and down the east coast' (Judy Blume). Hell to the yes (!) for Judy Blume! Islands up and down the east coast?? How much money did a book about a girl who wants her period MAKE you, Judy Blume?? I can write a book about a period--I had thirty-nine years of those mothereffers!

So, because I can't join a YA club (is it because I'm too snarky?), I'd like to join the "funny girls who drink too many Flirtinis and do a little facebooking under the influence" club.

Do they have one of those??

Okay....apparently I am no longer an asset, but a liability.

I have never been one to believe I was anything other than average. (My parents made sure of that!) But there's one thing I always knew, whether anyone wanted me to know or not--I could write.
In kindergarten, Helen Countryman told me I was a good writer. (She might have meant my printing, but who knows? Let's pretend she believed I was Pulitzer-caliber.) In fourth grade, Mrs. Russell told me I was a good writer. This was after I'd written a story based on a magazine photo. Mine was about a birthday party. In high school, Norma Gunkler encouraged my writing, and Betty Coman (despite the fact that she initially believed I was an idiot) finally came around and admitted I was the best writer in my class. (Sorry, Stuart.) Years later, she said she was sorry for both giving me a lousy grade the first semester of my Junior year with her, making me forever ineligible for National Honor Society, and for not giving me the English prize at graduation. I figure she paid for those grievous errors by having to drag around an oxygen tank like a dachschund with no legs, but I digress.

(Those of you who know me can skip the next part, because you've heard it all.)
So when I turned forty-nine, I decided I was done caring what other people thought...I would do and say exactly as I pleased and blame it on old age. So I "cut off my hair and grew a pair." And ignoring everyone who ever said I would never write...I wrote. First I wrote "Kirb Appeal"--both the videos and the blog--and I now have 41 subscribers--six of whom read regularly! Now, it's "New Thirteen" which is basically my journey through (old) age. Then, I joined a writers group, and I learned something about myself: compared to other folks? My writing is GOOD. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the serial romance the group is writing. Some of it is--well--pitiful.) Then, I went to programs that were led by writers and asked questions. Do you know what I heard?
That I am too old.
Too old to write.
Too old to have anyone interested in publishing anything I have to say.
Publishers are looking for hot young women who can write, not old farts who can write. They want either Sex in the City or Mommy Bloggers. Better yet...Sex WITH a Mommy Blogger.
Believe me, back in the day when I was a mommy, I would have been a Mommy Blogger. But there wasn't any such thing back then, and so I wasn't.

So I am planning something new: Post-Mommy Blogging. For Moms who used to be mommys but are now way cooler. Won't you join me?
You don't have to have sex in the city or anywhere else. Old age has it's privileges.