Le maudit Mo D.

insensitivity training

Oh, my mother. My mother managed to royally piss me off this week, something she rarely does. She is usually pretty reasonable to deal with, although she is currently stressed out because her beneath-contempt Cruella de Vil stepmother is taking her to court again. I understand this and can only hope that she pulls through it and once its over, life will be cupcakes once again. However, she really crossed the line with me the other day, and now I don't even want to call her.

My first novel, pretty much done save for a few tweaks and snips, is sort-of-kind-of based on her family. It is a work of fiction, but the evil stepgrandmother character is based on the evil cunt herself, and it takes place in our hometown. The rest of it is fiction, though. I don't thrift shop, I've never slept with a co-worker, I've never stolen a Chanel dress, never kissed a religious Armenian grape-grower from Reedley, and I've never intervened on behalf of anyone when their grandson was torturing them trying to get into the family safe. I've explained the concept of fiction to my mom, an occasional reader of Oprah-prescribed fiction herself, but she thinks, or at least wants to think, that what I've written is pure fact and that my book is going to offend everyone she knows in F-town.

I've used a few Armenian last names, one of which is the last name of some family she knew way back when. Look, if you're Armenian in F-town, you know everyone with every Armenian last name in the book. I pulled one out of my ass and gave it to Zaven, who is the religious Armenian grape-grower and actually a good guy. Zaven is not based on any person, but on every good quality I could attribute to the Armenian community of F-town. Smart, strong, family and church-oriented, he is in his thirties but is very committed to keeping old traditions alive. He's the kind of guy your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents would have adored because he was interested in the ways of their generation.

I have explained this to her, but for some reason, she thinks that my using this last name is going to get her put on their shit list. I don't even know this people, I don't care, it's a work of fiction, and last time I checked, I don't owe them a goddamn thing. But my mother actually said to me, "if I disapprove of your book, are you still going to get it published," and my answer to that was, "fuck yes!" To which she responded that she was appalled. She hasn't read it. I told her I was appalled that, after all my hard work on it, she'd expect me to just stick it in a drawer and forget about it just to protect her.

Now, I don't know about you, but writers who work hard to get published aren't spineless, gutless mushballs who allow other people to dictate what they can and can't write about. Mostly, I am upset that she believes her feelings, however misguided, to be of significantly more importance than my hard work and my realizing my lifelong dream of publishing a novel. I did not set out to upset her and make her look bad in writing this novel. Further, I never granted her creative or editorial control over it, and the fact that she can't trust me, or support me, just makes me sick.

I have poured my heart and soul, crapped up my resume, sat at my computer and cried, and cut out meaningful things like improv in order to complete my novel and for her to claim that the off-chance that some old fart not approving is more important than that is unbelievable to me.

I am so angry and hurt right now I want to scream.

Posted by Zerd at January 25, 2008 01:02 PM