My Babysitter Hates My Coloring. (And Yours Too.)

I vividly remember the first time someone criticized my imagination and creativity. 

I was five years old and coloring at the babysitter's. I flipped through a Barbie coloring book and chose a page that looked something like this:

I loved the ones where Barbie had that luxuriously thick head of hair, where the strands coiled like a lion's mane. It reminded me of Elizabeth Shue's hair in Karate Kid, and I yearned to have hair so unruly. (Mine was/is pencil straight.) 

Check out that hair. What's not to love?

Once I found the perfect coloring page, I fingered through my vast collection of Burnt Siennas, Hot Magentas, Goldenrods, and Aquamarines, and sipped on Tropical Punch Koolaid as I chose just the right hues for Barbie's hair. There had to be lowlights, highlights, etc., just like Elizabeth Shue's.

When I finished, Barbie's hair looked like this:

Gorgeous, no? I loved how leonine and soft and supple Barbie's hair looked when I used this coloring technique. While every other kid at the table used only one color for hair, bathing the strands in blah, I branched out and tried something new. 

And my babysitter hated it.

She shuffled around the table, praising everyone's artwork, but when she came to mine, she screwed up her nose and said, "Why did you color her hair like that? That's so ugly! That's not what real hair looks like!"

I distinctly remember the look on her face. The expression was one of disgust (that I could produce something so hideous), one of annoyance (why had she agreed to babysit such a strange child?), and one of pity. 

It was the pity that really got me. It said I was eat-the-paste special and deserved to be held back a few years before venturing into kindergarten.

Of course, I knew that wasn't true. I'd seen Barbie's hair depicted like this on many coloring book covers. And I knew I was good at coloring -- great, in fact, for a kid my age. 

But never before had someone sneered at something I'd created. She made me feel so small and worthless in front of the other kids, like I shouldn't be allowed a page to color, or to revel in the waxy scent of Crayolas. 

She made me question myself in a way no one in my family or at school ever had. And it shook my world.

I've been criticized a lot for doing things differently over the years, and I'm sure I'm in for much more in the future. But I learned early on that each sour puss who wagged a judgmental finger at my creativity had something in common. They didn't like anything that strayed from the familiar. They, more often than not, were the color-inside-the-lines types -- those who wanted to see conformity rather than expression. 

I've met a lot of people like that in the writing/literary community. Those who believe there are black and white rules to writing, and when you dare to break one of those rules, they make faces full of disgust, annoyance, and pity. They make you feel small and worthless and eat-the-paste special.

For example, we're told to never switch tenses during a novel. NEVER. Ever. 

"And yet Charlotte Brontë switches from past to present in Jane Eyre!" you say.

"Oh!" says the sour puss finger wagger. "But that is for literary effect, so it's allowed. And besides, Charlotte Brontë was a genius, and you're eat-the-paste special."

Don't get me wrong, I understand there is a difference between knowing literary techniques and using them correctly, and just writing willy-nilly with no regard for technique. But when one knows the techniques and tools, and simply uses them in a new and fresh way (like I did with Barbie's hair), I take issue with people considering that wrong.

I once had someone tell me my novel was bunk because the reader doesn't meet the villain until chapter 5. Sure, the villain is spoken about within the first two paragraphs of the book, but we don't actually meet her, see her face, hear her voice, until chapter 5. For shame!

And yet do we ever get to meet Sauron in Lord of the Rings? 

"Oh!" says sour puss finger wagger. "But that's Tolkien! He can do anything he wants. Besides, Sauron didn't have a body. So how could we physically meet him?"

To that I say, Tolkien was a five-year-old once too. He colored and imagined and dreamed. Here's proof:

Okay, it's not Barbie hair, but you get my point. In creating a villain we never get to physically meet, he colored outside the lines. He did something new and unexpected.

In this early drawing above, Tolkien is said to be evoking a feeling of "walking above the abyss, the passing from one world into another." 

I'm pretty sure my babysitter would have wrinkled her nose at it as well. 

"What is this?" she would've said. "Are you suicidal or something?!"

Here's the bottom line, for all you writers, artists, and creators who feel discouraged: 

Do it your way and don't look back.

Learn the rules so you know how to break them beautifully. Then break and break again. Because the shepherd pays the most attention to the lamb who strays from the flock.

Remember that.