Guest post written by author Amanda Sellet
Amanda Sellet is fond of silly jokes, large bodies of water, dessert at least once a day, and stories of all kinds. A former journalist, Amanda is the author of By the Book: A Novel of Prose and Cons and most recently, Belittled Women, which is out November 29th 2022. She currently lives in Kansas with her family. Find her online at amandasellet.com
Write What You Know. In the pantheon of author advice, that one is right up there with Kill Your Darlings and Show, Don’t Tell.
A less familiar truth is that writing is also a way to Know Yourself. How do I see the world? What fascinates me? Which bits of personal experience am I compelled to translate onto the page?
The bold print details of our lives jut out of the water like the proverbial iceberg. I have a big family, ergo I wrote about a larger-than-average household in BY THE BOOK. Ditto for overthinking, food descriptions, and a preponderance of puns. I yam what I yam, as Popeye would say.
My second book, BELITTLED WOMEN, wears its Little Women affiliation right there in the title. And yes, I have complicated feelings about Louisa May Alcott’s semi-autobiographical tale of four sisters. But you know what also plays a prominent role in my sophomore novel? Theater. The entire plot revolves around a failing tourist attraction where the main characters act out scenes from their mother’s favorite book. In fact, most of the manuscripts I’ve written feature some form of amateur dramatics.
That’s odd, I thought, upon noticing this recurring theme. I’m not a former drama kid. Maybe I’m working through a repressed desire to be on stage?
No sooner had I landed on this snap diagnosis (wannabe thespian, shrug emoji) than it began to unravel, as half-forgotten memories resurfaced.
Ninth-grade English: the inevitable Romeo and Juliet unit. When I am chosen to read the part of Juliet for the big death scene, it feels like a tribute to my as-yet untested dramatic skills. I pretend to be nonchalant; secretly, I’m thrilled.
My Romeo is a popular surfer boy, who hams it up by throwing himself on the floor next to my desk. His arm stretches out like he’s desperately reaching for his true teen love, his fingers brush my bare shin, perhaps expecting something from a Nair commercial. Instead, he pricks himself on a minefield of stubble.
“You need to shave,” he announces, breaking character.
High school. We have recently moved to Florida. Somehow, my mother convinces my best friend and I to volunteer for “clown ministry.” It’s a program for little kids, so in theory our peers won’t see us in full clown make-up, wigs, fake noses, funny shoes, and baggy patchwork jumpsuits. Except that someone has the brilliant idea of giving a preview performance to the full congregation on a Sunday, so instead of hiding in a sewer like normal clowns, my BFF and I act out a sketch involving a plunger which has become stuck to my butt.
While New Age music burbles over the sound system, I hop around holding the red rubber seal to my rear end. Eventually my co-clown illustrates the power of friendship by helping me un-plunger myself.
At Christmas, my mother once again guilts us into participating in a youth group project, this time a living Nativity scene.
“I told your boyfriend about this,” my best friend says, when we are standing outside the church in our father’s bathrobes (green velour in my case).
“You’re hilarious,” I tell her, because a) I have no boyfriend, as evidenced by the fact that I’m spending Friday night in a church parking lot and b) what reasonable person would invite her best friend’s unrequited crush to witness this moment? If we were angels, maybe, but the shepherd costumes are doing neither of us any favors.
The joke’s on me, because she is deadly serious – as I discover when he strolls over to say hello.
I make it to college. My roommate is an aspiring actress. For her senior thesis, she writes a one-woman show about Anais Nin. She is the star, emoting her way through various artistic and psychosexual dramas. I agree to a small role as the therapist.
All I have to do is sit in a chair with my back to the audience, reading from the script hidden on a clipboard. The good news is that no one will see me blush. The bad is that I still manage to deliver two of my lines about sex hang-ups and daddy issues at the wrong time. (Paging Dr. Freud.)
Grad school. I am living in the gritty, pre-gentrified East Village. For Lent, my campus church stages a spoken-word performance about the women of the Bible. I am 22 but look younger, thanks to the cherubic freckled face and unflattering round glasses. I could maybe pull off “young Irish nun, circa 1970” or “archivist who also enjoys needlepoint.”
Naturally I am cast as Mary Magdalene, the embodiment of earthy sensuality.
The next summer, still in New York, I sign up for an intensive course on film production. The class breaks into small groups, taking turns behind the camera. There is no time to recruit actors, so we perform in each other’s movies. My aesthetic as a director is whimsical and comedic; other members of the group favor edgy political cinema – which is how I end up portraying a prison guard in an unnamed totalitarian regime.
If there is a less likely role for me than fallen woman, it is physically aggressive brute. It’s not just the weak wrists and lack of muscle; I am a person who shies away from verbal conflict, much less the kind involving fists. My looming is sub-par, and my walk lacks menace. Worst of all is the scene wherein I am supposed to rough up a prisoner.
Unsurprisingly, my pantomime slaps leave a great deal to be desired.
A few years later, I visit London. The reconstructed Globe Theatre has recently opened, and my sister and I get tickets for a matinee. At intermission, she goes to buy us snacks while I save our spots near the stage.
A troupe of acrobats comes out to entertain the crowd. One of them leaps down into the audience and tries to grab a petite tourist not far from where I’m standing. When she refuses to budge, he spots me. I am at least one-and-a-half times her size, but still fit the general category of being young and female, so he grabs me by the arm and hauls me onto the stage and behind the curtain.
“Are you over 18?” he asks in an urgent whisper, all clowning aside.
This is exactly what you want to hear after being dragged into the dark by a strange man, but I say yes, because I am.
The next few minutes are a blur of rolling onto the stage as though we have been discovered mid-tryst, followed by a prancing sideways promenade that reminds me of a sequence we used to do in aerobics class. The saving grace is that it’s supposed to look comically stiff and self-conscious, so I am right in my wheelhouse, finally nailing a performance.
Now that I have kicked over the rock in my brain under which these precious moments were hiding, I suspect the hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show motif is less an exercise in wish-fulfillment than an exorcism.
The push-pull of wanting to be seen while simultaneously dreading exposure sums up my show biz career. It also captures the concentrated awkwardness of adolescence. Am I doing this right? Will the audience admire me? Why does it feel like there’s a spotlight blazing every time I embarrass myself?
Dancing on the edge of ridiculousness is very much the vibe of BELITTLED WOMEN, a book that explores the absurdity of life, and the likelihood of making a spectacle of ourselves. We don’t always get to choose our stage, or write our own lines, but we do our best to put a brave face on it, strutting and fretting like the foolish mortals we are.
Best-case scenario? You make someone laugh.
