Dance as if No One is Watching - by Diane Kelly

Dancing as if no one is watching . . . with a fish bowl on her head!

My daughter is on a competitive dance team and danced in no less than seven numbers this season, including ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical, both as small groups and as a production team of over forty girls all on stage at once. This past weekend, I crawled out of bed at the crack of dawn and spent all day Saturday in a crowded theater watching dress rehearsals and all day Sunday at the two recitals. I sat for so long my legs and butt fell asleep.

And I loved every second of it!

My daughter takes classes four days a week and teaches younger girls on a fifth day. She never tires of dancing. When I’m in the kitchen, I often hear her feet stomping in her bedroom over my head, tapping out a number. Her size nine-and-a-half feet sometimes stomp a bit too hard and break a light bulb in the kitchen below, but it’s a small price for us to pay. I’m thrilled she has found something she is so passionate about.

I recently saw the quote “Dance as if No One is Watching.” I can’t recall whether it was on a refrigerator magnet or a garden stone, but either way the words resonated with me. The words inspire us to indulge our passions without regard to what others might think.

Such wonderful advice.

An age-old piece of advice often given to writers is “Write as if everyone you know were dead.” In a sense, these words are saying something similar to the dance quote. Essentially, both are telling us to do what we would do if we didn’t have to answer to anyone else, if we didn’t have to fear criticism. It’s only by letting loose that we can truly discover all that we are capable of, right?

Yet . . .

Isn’t there some value in criticism, too? After all, if we dance as if someone is watching, might we not strive harder to refine our technique, to put on a crowd-pleasing show, to perfect our skills? If we write as if people we know will read our work, might we not strive to write something impressive, well-crafted, and marketable?

What are your thoughts on this subject? We’d love to hear them!

Diane Kelly's debut romantic mystery - Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure - will be released on November 1st and is available for pre-order now at online booksellers.

Top Ten Signs You're a Writer on a Deadline - by Diane Kelly

I used to wonder why writers seemed to disappear when they were on a deadline. I assumed that if they simply managed their time better a deadline would be no big deal.

Boy was I naïve!

I just faced my first real deadline with book #2 in my Death and Taxes Series. I’m thrilled with my draft for “Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte” and even finished a couple of days early. But I have to admit, I suffered momentary bouts of total panic. Basically, when a writer is on a deadline, everything – AND I DO MEAN EVERYTHING! – goes by the wayside until the project is completed. There’s simply not time to complete your project and live any semblance of a normal life.

Having compared my experience with other authors, I’ve come up with the Top Ten Signs You’re a Writer on a Deadline:

1) Your last three meals consisted of cold cereal, potato chips, and that unidentifiable sludge from the Tupperware in the back of the fridge.

2) Your kids are smiling mischievously because they’ve gotten away with something you didn’t catch them doing.

3) You can’t see the top of your desk, your coffee table, or any of your kitchen countertops because all of them are covered with neglected paperwork, laundry, and dishes.

4) Your toenails now resemble claws.

5) Your eyebrows have merged into one giant unibrow.

6) You’ve been wearing – and sleeping in – the same clothes for the past week.

7) You spray yourself with Lysol because it’s faster than showering.

8) Your legs now resemble a cave woman’s since there’s been no time to shave.

9) Even if you could find time to shower and shave, it wouldn’t matter because you’ve neglected to pay your bills and your water has been shut off.

10) Your husband hasn’t requested that you fulfill certain wifely duties due to #4 – #9 above.

When you get busy, what do you have to let go of? We'd love to hear it!

Diane Kelly is the author of the "Death & Taxes" humorous mystery series from St. Martin's Press. Her debut novel, "Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure", is available for pre-order now at the Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble sites, and will be in bookstores November 1st.

Sometimes It's Hard to be a Woman - by Diane Kelly

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Not that I’d want to be a man. I don’t have penis envy. Frankly, lugging one of those things around seems, I don’t know, cumbersome? The thing I find hard about being a woman is that what it means to be a woman is a very personal thing, a dynamic thing, a concept influenced by societal norms and expectations that are in constant flux.

When I took my first job with an international accounting firm in Houston in the early nineties, policy prohibited women from wearing pants to work. Skirts or dresses only. And this was back in the day where if you were dressed in a skirt, you had to wear panty hose. And, sheez, as long as you were going to wear panty hose, you might as well go all the way and wear heels, right?

So every morning I’d make a clattering dash through my Texas-sized apartment complex, hoping to catch the 8:02 bus into downtown. Not an easy thing to do in the Houston humidity and three-inch stilettos.

Sometimes I’d make it.

Sometimes I didn’t.

Had I been permitted to wear pants (and thus loafers rather than heels), my punctuality would have been better. Also, I would have been more focused on my research into multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions if I hadn’t been distracted by my itchy panty hose or - God forbid! - the threat of a run.

Of course the partners and managers in the firm were, by and large, middle-aged men. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they enacted the policy to ensure the female employees looked well groomed, though it’s entirely possible they simply liked to catch an occasional glimpse of young female leg.

I worked for the same firm two years later in San Diego. Entirely different story there. Pants were allowed. More of the managers were women, too. I’m not sure if the firm as whole had progressed or if it was simply a difference in office culture among the two branches, but I have to admit it was nice to ditch the panty hose.

It’s a difficult dichotomy. We women want to be respected for our capabilities, our skills, and our minds. But I have to admit, it’s fun to occasionally get all dolled up and girlie, too. Who says we can’t be professional, smart, tough, soft, and feminine all at the same time?

When I create the heroines for my stories, I find myself facing difficult choices. Who should this woman be? What are her ideals? What does being a woman mean to her?

In my upcoming “Death and Taxes” series, my heroine, Tara Holloway, is a smart, savvy IRS agent who can handle a Glock as well as a calculator. Yet she’s drawn to Brett Ellington, a landscape architect, in part because he provides a safe, secure refuge from her dangerous job.

What does being a woman mean to you? Was there ever a time when you were forced to conform to someone else’s idea of what a woman should be?