A woman recently told me that she read one of my books, Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure. It was an interesting exchange. We were at a milonga, dancing in the tango embrace, a place where I could easily decipher much more from her expression and body language than if we were conversing otherwise. I do not know what she expected to find by reading my book but I could tell she was a little disappointed. She was tactile in her choice of words, taking great care not to hurt my feelings lest I take offense and never dance with her again.
She needn’t have worried. I am always grateful for any feedback I can get because it is such a valuable tool to becoming a better writer. A face-to-face exchange tells me more than I ever could learn from a thousand online book reviews. That it was done while we were dancing tango, in between songs but still connected, made it that much more useful.
I know my word-craft is not the best but I feel that my book is an honest insight into the life of a man learning how to dance tango. I suspect my honesty was a little too much for her comfort and she learned more about me than she really wanted to know.
This is a curious thing: readers are picky about what they want inside their head.
It is an author’s job to put together sentences in such a way that they flow off the page and into that space between your ears. Once the process has started it is difficult to turn it off and, once inside, it is not easy to get rid of the images they create.
It is much the same way in tango. The leader hears the music and translates it into cues for movement. It is an automatic process that happens without thinking. It is automatic as well for the follower who takes those cues and translates them into motion. She will not be happy if the leader’s cues make her appear awkward.
It was my intent, in writing this book, to say that I was a wounded animal, the broken daddy, and that tango cured me. I guess I succeeded but now my friend can’t help picturing me as a three-legged dog or who-knows-what.
You may think I’m being negative but that is not my aim. What I am pointing out, I believe, is a key ingredient in what makes reading a book so satisfying. Coincidentally, it is also akin to what makes a tango dance register as a fond memory.
My friend helped me greatly in ways of which she was unaware. There are subtleties to the reading experience that are much like those of an enjoyable tango encounter. Maybe even more so, for the writer is in the reader’s mind and that is a much more intimate space to invade.
My books are available on Amazon and Kindle:
River Tango
Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure
A Beginner's Guide to Women
Revelations of Wiccans
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