No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
One of my earliest memories is my dad holding my coat out for me as a gentleman should, and saying, “I can do it myself!” with all the irritation a three-year-old (or thereabouts) can muster. His feelings were hurt and he got mad and punished me with the silent treatment.1
Then later, maybe I was about ten or so, because reasons, he was calmly discussing my attitude, which concerned him: “Elizabeth,2 no man is an island.”
Oh, I understood what he meant immediately. It wasn’t like he hadn’t hinted at it before, but there were two problems with this advice: 1) the guy giving it thought he was an island, so WTF Dad, and 2) he really didn’t understand that from the very beginning, being offered help was saying I have no faith in you or You’re too stupid to do this yourself.3 I didn’t have words for this when I was three and I had no concept of social niceties because I was three.
Having to ask for help was even more humiliating: You were right to have no faith in me and I am too stupid to do it myself.
I started writing Dunham (that wasn’t its title back then) with a lone female pirate captain who got there on her own, and was the sole authority on her ship. She was a loner. She did everything alone. And she was a virgin because of course she was.
Anyway, life tossed me around somewhat and I started to see something: Those with power, money, or even people who just had their shit together, had support. Sometimes, lots of support. They had help along the way, from generational wealth and grooming to catching a glance of a homeless guy down on the corner that one time who gave you an approving smile and a good piece of advice. Nobody got there alone.
I spent 23 years doodling along on my long female pirate captain who did it all on her own. But every year that passed, problems kept popping up, logical fallacies, plot holes.
How is she supposed to be educated when she just randomly plopped out of some hoo-ha with no guidance? How is she supposed to get a ship when she doesn’t have a pot to piss in and she’s “too moral” to steal?4 And, wait. If she’s too moral to steal, why’s she a pirate? That’s what pirates do, isn’t it? How’m I supposed to square that circle?
Meh, it’s my story, I can do what I want. I am going to shove that very big peg through that very small hole, and I’m going to do it by myself.
However, shit happened and by 1996, I’d stopped doodling on my pirate captain. It was a vestige of my past, my immaturity, my inability to bring my vision to paper because I knew I didn’t have the chops for it and had to keep writing books to acquire them.
In 2002, I got married to a wonderful man who helped me pretty much without me noticing, and by the time I did, I realized he did it out of love, not because he had no faith in my ability, intellect, or general existence. I acquired children. My interactions with other parents were … well, less than effective and pleasant. I learned. Mellowed. Maybe I softened. Learned how to pick my battles. Or maybe I was just tired of everybody’s shit and decided almost none of it was important at all.
In 2007 wrote The Proviso after an epiphany that I was going to have to chuck my idea altogether and rewrite it, which I did to my (mostly) satisfaction. Gutting all that gentleman thief, unworkable premise, stewpot thinking made my world and my writing so much better. So I very carefully opened my pirate captain files to reacquaint myself with the work. I had a vague vision, but I didn’t know how to fulfill it, and what I had already done would not work.
One day, I sat my ass down to read a romantasy wherein the main female character, a warrior commander of some military force was captured, leaving her troops in a complete mess. She had a second-in-command, but he was ineffective. This was addressed sort of, but only tangentially to point out that she was a wartime leader, but not a peacetime one. When I was younger, teens, mid-twenties, I would have felt satisfied, complete, whole. Yes, this is how it’s supposed to be. Yeah, so what if she’s not a peacetime commander? Those guys are pussies anyway.
It got me to thinking: What would happen to my pirate captain’s life’s work if something happened to her that didn’t actually kill her, and she was disabled or had to start over?
Oh, and then came the weevils.5 It was eye-opening. What’s this?! Pirates engage in subterfuge to win? They don’t just slug it out head-on like honorable men?6
My time living life, having a husband, having children got me thinking: We are a product of our time and circumstance. We do what we must. We don’t get anywhere alone.
And fuck me if I was going to allow my pirate captain to have an ineffective pussy as a second-in-command because she can’t stand to rely on someone else and lose everything she’s got if something bad happens to her.
She might be a lot of bad things, but she is not stupid.
______________________________
1. Who gets mad at a three-year-old for wanting to do things for herself? Alas, it wasn’t the first time or the last he used silence as a punishment and not just a temporary boundary to collect himself.
2. Yes, my name is Elizabeth.
3. And forget delegation. No matter how unreasonable the work-to-time ratio was, one person could do it, and I was that person.
4. Always trying to balance church morality with reality. It took me decades and working through another character’s backstory to understand the concept of middle-class morality. “Have you no morals, man?” “No. No, I can’t afford ’em, guvna.”
5. No, Pirates of the Caribbean didn’t figure into my calculus.
6. For some definitions of honor.