Susan Mihalic's Blog
September 9, 2022
Trigger Warning
Equestrian prodigy Roan Montgomery has been sexually assaulted by her father, Monty, since she was six years old. For ten years, he has subjected her to every physical act of sexual abuse from fondling to violent rape. This brutal fact is the cornerstone of my debut novel, Dark Horses (Scout Press, 2021).
People often ask me, “Where did you get this idea?” What they really want to know is, “Did this happen to you?”
No. No member of my family ever sexually assaulted me in any way. No inappropriate kissing. No fondling. No penetration.
But maybe—in oblique ways—there are autobiographical elements. Writers are often advised to write what you know. That advice has been modified to write what you want to know. I’d modify it further: And even, sometimes, what you don’t want to know.
In dream analysis, there’s a theory that all the characters in your dream represent part of you. Whether they are main or secondary characters or even have a walk-on role, all of them spring from your subconscious.
Similarly, I believe every character I write represents part of me.
Of course, every character includes Monty, a malignant narcissist and sexual predator. The best writing advice I’ve ever read comes from John Dufresne’s book, The Lie That Tells a Truth: Don’t judge your characters. Not judging Monty is one of the hardest tasks I’ve undertaken as a writer. We see for ourselves that he’s clearly guilty. But I was writing a book, not sitting on a jury. A character who’s all bad doesn’t have any depth.
To fight my tendency to judge Monty, I gave him some positive qualities: his mind-melding communication with horses, his professionalism, the consideration he shows his employees, the respect and affection of his competitors—even, as Roan observes, his ability to get parenting right some of the time.
The next morning, there was a pile of presents under the tree. I was afraid Mama
had made an appearance via consumer-excess proxy, but all the tags read Love,
Daddy. He usually bought me one or two nice things, not loads of stuff. He was
compensating for Mama’s absence. It was weirdly touching, something a normal
father would do.
Roan, the story’s protagonist, navigates her family life by developing her empathy, enabling her to anticipate her parents’ moods and walk through the emotional and psychological minefield she lives in. I gave her the latitude to make mistakes and the occasional poor decision. With the balance of power skewed entirely in her father’s favor, she is incapable of doing everything right. She is trying to survive with her professional goals and herself intact. Monty has threatened to sell her horses if she doesn’t obey his rules, but even that isn’t the most powerful threat he holds over her head. Because Roan finds pleasure in sex, he has convinced her she’s complicit. Her shame over this renders her powerless. It limits and controls her—yet as her relationship with a boy her own age develops, she begins to push back against her father’s constraints, as when she cuts her hair immediately before an interview, much to Monty’s consternation.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“It was tangled. I couldn’t get the comb through it.”
“You expect me to believe that? There’s got to be more to it.”
The phantom sensation of his fingers in my hair made my skin ripple, like a
horsefly had landed on me.
I whispered my answer. “Wind your fingers in this.”
He went very still. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Wind your fingers in this.’” This time the words lilted on my tongue.
Incest doesn’t look one particular way, but I knew how it looked between Roan and Monty. Dark Horses had to be gritty and realistic. This is why I chose not to fade to black in writing the sex scenes and also why I chose to write in first person. I wanted readers to identify with Roan as closely as possible—and despite her lack of power in her relationship with her father, I wanted readers to see her strength. My favorite line in Dark Horses comes toward the end.
I tried [. . .] to find peace with the hard truth about myself: I’d rather be complicit
than be a victim.
That line sums up Roan’s character—not only as a character in a book, but also her character—the distinctive qualities that make her who she is. She’s close to my heart. I hope readers find her a worthy protagonist.
People often ask me, “Where did you get this idea?” What they really want to know is, “Did this happen to you?”
No. No member of my family ever sexually assaulted me in any way. No inappropriate kissing. No fondling. No penetration.
But maybe—in oblique ways—there are autobiographical elements. Writers are often advised to write what you know. That advice has been modified to write what you want to know. I’d modify it further: And even, sometimes, what you don’t want to know.
In dream analysis, there’s a theory that all the characters in your dream represent part of you. Whether they are main or secondary characters or even have a walk-on role, all of them spring from your subconscious.
Similarly, I believe every character I write represents part of me.
Of course, every character includes Monty, a malignant narcissist and sexual predator. The best writing advice I’ve ever read comes from John Dufresne’s book, The Lie That Tells a Truth: Don’t judge your characters. Not judging Monty is one of the hardest tasks I’ve undertaken as a writer. We see for ourselves that he’s clearly guilty. But I was writing a book, not sitting on a jury. A character who’s all bad doesn’t have any depth.
To fight my tendency to judge Monty, I gave him some positive qualities: his mind-melding communication with horses, his professionalism, the consideration he shows his employees, the respect and affection of his competitors—even, as Roan observes, his ability to get parenting right some of the time.
The next morning, there was a pile of presents under the tree. I was afraid Mama
had made an appearance via consumer-excess proxy, but all the tags read Love,
Daddy. He usually bought me one or two nice things, not loads of stuff. He was
compensating for Mama’s absence. It was weirdly touching, something a normal
father would do.
Roan, the story’s protagonist, navigates her family life by developing her empathy, enabling her to anticipate her parents’ moods and walk through the emotional and psychological minefield she lives in. I gave her the latitude to make mistakes and the occasional poor decision. With the balance of power skewed entirely in her father’s favor, she is incapable of doing everything right. She is trying to survive with her professional goals and herself intact. Monty has threatened to sell her horses if she doesn’t obey his rules, but even that isn’t the most powerful threat he holds over her head. Because Roan finds pleasure in sex, he has convinced her she’s complicit. Her shame over this renders her powerless. It limits and controls her—yet as her relationship with a boy her own age develops, she begins to push back against her father’s constraints, as when she cuts her hair immediately before an interview, much to Monty’s consternation.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“It was tangled. I couldn’t get the comb through it.”
“You expect me to believe that? There’s got to be more to it.”
The phantom sensation of his fingers in my hair made my skin ripple, like a
horsefly had landed on me.
I whispered my answer. “Wind your fingers in this.”
He went very still. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Wind your fingers in this.’” This time the words lilted on my tongue.
Incest doesn’t look one particular way, but I knew how it looked between Roan and Monty. Dark Horses had to be gritty and realistic. This is why I chose not to fade to black in writing the sex scenes and also why I chose to write in first person. I wanted readers to identify with Roan as closely as possible—and despite her lack of power in her relationship with her father, I wanted readers to see her strength. My favorite line in Dark Horses comes toward the end.
I tried [. . .] to find peace with the hard truth about myself: I’d rather be complicit
than be a victim.
That line sums up Roan’s character—not only as a character in a book, but also her character—the distinctive qualities that make her who she is. She’s close to my heart. I hope readers find her a worthy protagonist.
November 25, 2021
Things to Know When You Find Yourself Stranded in a Small, Remote Utopian Community
1. May festivals and fertility festivals are trouble, but worst of all are harvest festivals.
2. Lucky you! You’re just in time for the harvest festival!
3. Although locals will say things like, “We don’t take kindly to strangers ’round these parts” and “We don’t get too many visitors here,” you will soon learn that your arrival has been foretold by the prophecy.
4. The prophecy must have brought you here, because the last thing you remember before waking up on a cot in a thatched-roof hut is a thunderstorm and the road ahead of you washing out.
5. Upon asking about your car, you’re told, “You need to talk to Brother Ezekiel about that,” but you’re not sure which one is Brother Ezekiel, as all the men look like Wilford Brimley.
6. The community is gracious and welcoming, but you’d like to let your family know where you are, or you have no family, friends, or coworkers. Either way, electronic devices don’t work here.
7. Don’t be a virgin. Just don’t.
8. Nothing written in runes bodes well.
9. Congratulations! That wreath of wheat and berries and leaves being placed on your head means you have been crowned Harvest Queen.
10. Don’t drink the mead, even if everyone is toasting you.
11. Hear the flutes, fiddles, and bagpipes tuning up?
12. The circle dance begins. Under the rise of a bright, white full moon, you dance until you’re so thirsty that only mead will quench your thirst.
13. The night is chilly, but avoid bonfires, especially the large pile of kindling and brush with a stake in the middle.
14. Chanting can’t be a good sign.
15. Neither can the slitting of the hart’s throat.
16. Or being bathed in its blood.
17. Blessed be the Harvest Queen, for the harvest is abundant. Let us give thanks.
2. Lucky you! You’re just in time for the harvest festival!
3. Although locals will say things like, “We don’t take kindly to strangers ’round these parts” and “We don’t get too many visitors here,” you will soon learn that your arrival has been foretold by the prophecy.
4. The prophecy must have brought you here, because the last thing you remember before waking up on a cot in a thatched-roof hut is a thunderstorm and the road ahead of you washing out.
5. Upon asking about your car, you’re told, “You need to talk to Brother Ezekiel about that,” but you’re not sure which one is Brother Ezekiel, as all the men look like Wilford Brimley.
6. The community is gracious and welcoming, but you’d like to let your family know where you are, or you have no family, friends, or coworkers. Either way, electronic devices don’t work here.
7. Don’t be a virgin. Just don’t.
8. Nothing written in runes bodes well.
9. Congratulations! That wreath of wheat and berries and leaves being placed on your head means you have been crowned Harvest Queen.
10. Don’t drink the mead, even if everyone is toasting you.
11. Hear the flutes, fiddles, and bagpipes tuning up?
12. The circle dance begins. Under the rise of a bright, white full moon, you dance until you’re so thirsty that only mead will quench your thirst.
13. The night is chilly, but avoid bonfires, especially the large pile of kindling and brush with a stake in the middle.
14. Chanting can’t be a good sign.
15. Neither can the slitting of the hart’s throat.
16. Or being bathed in its blood.
17. Blessed be the Harvest Queen, for the harvest is abundant. Let us give thanks.
September 7, 2021
Join Goldmark and Me on the Trail
I love this time of year in Taos, New Mexico. The light is changing, and everything has a beautiful golden cast to it, including my equine soulmate, Goldmark. Today we rode solo on one of the trails near the barn. Click the link below to join us! Goldmark spent the first half of his life in a dressage arena, but he loves the trail. Sound up to hear the clip-clops--and the creak of the saddle.
https://youtu.be/Zjol2qRcveE
https://youtu.be/Zjol2qRcveE
August 30, 2021
Where I Belong
I am the first to arrive.
Wait, no, that’s not right. The barn manager has been here before me. All the horses placidly munch their hay, big flat molars grinding it into pulp, as I walk down the aisle, greeting each horse by name. Skye. Sonni. Shawaff. Questa. Marco. Lady. Lightning. Princess. Yankee. Barney.
While they finish their breakfast, I walk to the covered arena, thinking of the obstacles I’ll need for the morning’s lessons. I drag half a dozen poles through the dirt and line them up two and a half feet apart. I use four more poles to create a square. I roll empty 50-gallon barrels into place and set up skinny vertical poles embedded in big coffee cans filled with concrete. Dressage letters are already affixed to the arena rails. Right now, with no one else here, this is my riding facility. They are my horses. This is my place, and although none of it belongs to me, I belong here, in this space and at precisely this time.
Back at the barn, I check the clock. I have a full hour before the first lesson. I’ve planned it this way, because Skye, my favorite horse, likes me to take my time when I groom him. He stands quietly in the crossties while I curry and brush him. Shortly before I started working here, he slammed another instructor into the cinderblock wall and broke her collarbone. She readily admits it was her fault, but now I’m the only one who uses him.
I saddle him with a small all-purpose English saddle, just the right size for the young boy who will ride him first. Other instructors and volunteers trickle in, unsurprised to see me here and Skye ready. We chat about the cooling weather, the balloons rising over Del Mar this morning. In the quiet, we can hear the voices of the passengers in the gondolas. I wonder if they can hear us. One of the volunteers is reading a sexy bodice-ripper and wishes she’d lived a hundred years ago. We didn’t have antibiotics then, I think.
“Questa’s lying down,” a newish volunteer says urgently.
I look in her stall. “She’s taking a nap. She does it every morning.”
The volunteer looks sheepish.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It scares everyone until they know.”
I like that I know these horses, their quirks and their routines. I like this organization, whose motto is People helping animals, animals helping people. I like this place. And I love the work itself.
My first rider arrives, a slight boy of seven named Karl*. I put his helmet on him and buckle it. His parents follow us as we walk to the arena. Behind them, Louise, one of the volunteers, leads Skye. A second volunteer, Barb, walks on Skye’s right side.
“We’re doing an obstacle course today,” I tell Karl.
“Okay.” He is always agreeable, always sweet.
His parents sit on the bleachers at one end of the arena.
We use the mounting ramp, which takes the place of a regular mounting block. Louise leads Skye parallel to the right side of the ramp. Karl and I walk up the ramp together, and I help him gather his reins and swing his right leg over the saddle. Barb, on Skye’s right, makes sure Karl’s foot is in the stirrup. I do the same on my side.
“Ready?” I ask.
Karl nods.
“What do we tell our horse?”
He grins. “Walk on.”
Skye steps out, responding less to Karl’s verbal command than to Louise’s slight pressure on the lead rope. Karl doesn’t ride independently at this facility, which means he has a leader, Louise, as well as two side-walkers, Barb on the right and me on the left. He does ride independently at a different riding program during the week; I’ve seen him do it. The difference is, today is Saturday, and his parents like to give him a break from his ADHD medication on the weekends, which means when I see him at 9:00 every Saturday morning, Karl’s concentration is on a break, too. He can’t stop his horse on his own, and until he can, we can’t take him off the lead rope. It frustrates his parents, but I’m not qualified to offer medical advice; I can’t tell them to give him his meds on Saturdays. They’ll have to figure it out for themselves.
“First,” I say, “let’s just relax and enjoy being on our horse. We’ll make a couple of circuits around the track, okay?”
“Okay,” Karl says.
We follow the twelve-foot-wide track that runs around the outside of the arena. I ask Karl what he did in school this week. Conversation is easy among us, Louise and Barb included. They are my favorite volunteers. Barb, a chic lady in her late 70s, grew up riding on a ranch. Louise is taking dressage lessons.
Next to the arena is a small trail course landscaped with bushes and flowers. It incorporates a few gentle hills and a mailbox. Before we go in the arena, we ride the trail course so Karl can experience the different movements of Skye’s body as he goes up and down the hills.
“The flag is up on the mailbox,” I say. “Maybe you have mail. Should we see?”
“Yeah,” Karl says.
“Okay, pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa,’” I tell Karl.
He tries. Louise stops Skye by the mailbox, and Karl leans down from the saddle to open it. He finds the small plastic horse I left in there earlier and accepts it as rightfully his, which it is.
“Can you put down the flag?” I ask.
He does.
“Do you want to give the horse to me so I can keep it safe for you until after the lesson?”
He hands me the plastic horse. I shove it head-first into the back pocket of my jeans.
“What do we tell Skye now?”
“Walk on,” Karl says.
We ride off the trail course and back into the shade of the covered arena. This time, we enter the ring. We practice walking over the poles, riding around the barrels, weaving in and out of the vertical poles. With every movement, both Skye and Karl use different muscles.
“Can you stop your horse in the box?” I ask when we come to the square I made with poles.
He tries again. Louise subtly tugs on the lead rope, and Skye stops in the box.
“How about,” I say, “we ride to the letter K and stop there?”
Karl’s eyes go to the dressage letter affixed to the rail. “Okay.”
“When we get there, remember to pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa.’”
It’s a repeat of the mailbox, the square on the ground. Louise stops the horse. I want so much for Karl to be able to stop his own horse, but I’m not setting him or any other rider up for failure.
“Good job,” I say. “High five.”
I hold up my hand. Karl smacks it with his own palm.
“Low five.”
I hold my hand by Skye’s shoulder. Karl slaps it.
“Skye five,” I say, and with a broad grin, Karl pats Skye’s shoulder.
With that, the lesson is over. My rider is happy, and he’s happier when I give him the plastic horse, which he’d already forgotten. His parents are happy enough. I’m happy that despite his difficulty focusing on tasks, Karl has a sharp sense of humor. I’ve never asked him for a “Skye five” before.
There are other riders, other horses. Around noon, my boss, Sara, shows up. She has a student with severe disabilities who normally rides during the week, but this week her mother needed to move her lesson to Saturday. They’ll be coming later. Can I stay and help?
Of course.
When all the other riders and volunteers and instructors have left, Sara asks me to groom Barney, our 35-year-old Shetland pony. Shetlands have a reputation, often well-earned, for being nasty, but Barney is a gentleman, and Wendy needs a small horse.
After I groom Barney, I tack him with a bareback pad. It has no stirrups. We won’t be using a bridle, either, Sara tells me. I’ll lead him, and she and Wendy’s mother will side-walk.
In addition to volunteering at this facility for two years before I was asked to become an instructor, I taught riding therapy for two summers at a camp when I was in college. I’ve worked with children who have profound physical, psychological, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional impairments, and at first I think Wendy is simply one of them. A tall, gangly girl of maybe 13, she is in a wheelchair that looks like an oversized umbrella stroller. She cannot hear, cannot speak, cannot see, cannot walk. Since she is not my student, I know neither the extent of her disabilities nor their cause — nor is that knowledge necessary. I’m not here to attempt any form of instruction. I’m here to lead Barney.
Because Barney is so small, we don’t use the mounting ramp. Sara and Wendy’s mother lift her onto the pony, and the lesson commences.
They don’t interact with Wendy except to hold her on. We don’t lead her over hills so she can feel the change in her horse’s movements and her own. We don’t ask her to stop in the box or at the K. There are no reins, and she wouldn’t hear or comprehend the instructions even if Sara were to give them. As it is, her balance is nonexistent, and Sara and Wendy’s mother have all they can do to hold her on the pony.
This isn’t a lesson.
For the first time in all the years I’ve worked in therapeutic riding, I feel a sense of hopelessness so overwhelming that tears come to my eyes, but I can’t start bawling in the middle of a lesson, even if it isn’t really a lesson. In this moment, my job is to keep going, past the ground poles Karl and Skye walked over, past the vertical poles they wove in and out of. My job this morning was to set up my arena — my space — and to set up my riders for as much success as was possible for each of them to achieve. My job now is to lead this patient, plodding pony around and around an arena that’s no longer mine.
Focusing on my job won’t keep me from breaking down over the futility of what we’re doing. I ask myself what Wendy can possibly be getting from this experience, and I work to find answers. She can smell — I hope — the unmistakable scent of horse. I believe she can feel movement, though there’s little variation in it. If we take her hand and guide it to touch Barney’s shaggy Shetland coat and then his thick, bushy mane, she’ll feel the difference in textures. Her mother has gotten out of the house, and I feel certain that change in routine is a lifeline. So what if this isn’t a lesson? It’s something.
And something, our barn manager always says, is better than nothing.
I hold myself together during and after the pony ride. Sara and Wendy’s mother take her off Barney and settle her again in her big stroller, and I lead Barney back to the barn. He’s an amazing little creature. It doesn’t matter to him whether his rider is oblivious to the world. He has a job to do, and he does it.
After I rub him down, I return to the arena to remove the obstacles. Sara has walked Wendy and her mother to their van, and I am alone again, in my arena, where I belong.
*The names of all people have been changed.
Wait, no, that’s not right. The barn manager has been here before me. All the horses placidly munch their hay, big flat molars grinding it into pulp, as I walk down the aisle, greeting each horse by name. Skye. Sonni. Shawaff. Questa. Marco. Lady. Lightning. Princess. Yankee. Barney.
While they finish their breakfast, I walk to the covered arena, thinking of the obstacles I’ll need for the morning’s lessons. I drag half a dozen poles through the dirt and line them up two and a half feet apart. I use four more poles to create a square. I roll empty 50-gallon barrels into place and set up skinny vertical poles embedded in big coffee cans filled with concrete. Dressage letters are already affixed to the arena rails. Right now, with no one else here, this is my riding facility. They are my horses. This is my place, and although none of it belongs to me, I belong here, in this space and at precisely this time.
Back at the barn, I check the clock. I have a full hour before the first lesson. I’ve planned it this way, because Skye, my favorite horse, likes me to take my time when I groom him. He stands quietly in the crossties while I curry and brush him. Shortly before I started working here, he slammed another instructor into the cinderblock wall and broke her collarbone. She readily admits it was her fault, but now I’m the only one who uses him.
I saddle him with a small all-purpose English saddle, just the right size for the young boy who will ride him first. Other instructors and volunteers trickle in, unsurprised to see me here and Skye ready. We chat about the cooling weather, the balloons rising over Del Mar this morning. In the quiet, we can hear the voices of the passengers in the gondolas. I wonder if they can hear us. One of the volunteers is reading a sexy bodice-ripper and wishes she’d lived a hundred years ago. We didn’t have antibiotics then, I think.
“Questa’s lying down,” a newish volunteer says urgently.
I look in her stall. “She’s taking a nap. She does it every morning.”
The volunteer looks sheepish.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It scares everyone until they know.”
I like that I know these horses, their quirks and their routines. I like this organization, whose motto is People helping animals, animals helping people. I like this place. And I love the work itself.
My first rider arrives, a slight boy of seven named Karl*. I put his helmet on him and buckle it. His parents follow us as we walk to the arena. Behind them, Louise, one of the volunteers, leads Skye. A second volunteer, Barb, walks on Skye’s right side.
“We’re doing an obstacle course today,” I tell Karl.
“Okay.” He is always agreeable, always sweet.
His parents sit on the bleachers at one end of the arena.
We use the mounting ramp, which takes the place of a regular mounting block. Louise leads Skye parallel to the right side of the ramp. Karl and I walk up the ramp together, and I help him gather his reins and swing his right leg over the saddle. Barb, on Skye’s right, makes sure Karl’s foot is in the stirrup. I do the same on my side.
“Ready?” I ask.
Karl nods.
“What do we tell our horse?”
He grins. “Walk on.”
Skye steps out, responding less to Karl’s verbal command than to Louise’s slight pressure on the lead rope. Karl doesn’t ride independently at this facility, which means he has a leader, Louise, as well as two side-walkers, Barb on the right and me on the left. He does ride independently at a different riding program during the week; I’ve seen him do it. The difference is, today is Saturday, and his parents like to give him a break from his ADHD medication on the weekends, which means when I see him at 9:00 every Saturday morning, Karl’s concentration is on a break, too. He can’t stop his horse on his own, and until he can, we can’t take him off the lead rope. It frustrates his parents, but I’m not qualified to offer medical advice; I can’t tell them to give him his meds on Saturdays. They’ll have to figure it out for themselves.
“First,” I say, “let’s just relax and enjoy being on our horse. We’ll make a couple of circuits around the track, okay?”
“Okay,” Karl says.
We follow the twelve-foot-wide track that runs around the outside of the arena. I ask Karl what he did in school this week. Conversation is easy among us, Louise and Barb included. They are my favorite volunteers. Barb, a chic lady in her late 70s, grew up riding on a ranch. Louise is taking dressage lessons.
Next to the arena is a small trail course landscaped with bushes and flowers. It incorporates a few gentle hills and a mailbox. Before we go in the arena, we ride the trail course so Karl can experience the different movements of Skye’s body as he goes up and down the hills.
“The flag is up on the mailbox,” I say. “Maybe you have mail. Should we see?”
“Yeah,” Karl says.
“Okay, pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa,’” I tell Karl.
He tries. Louise stops Skye by the mailbox, and Karl leans down from the saddle to open it. He finds the small plastic horse I left in there earlier and accepts it as rightfully his, which it is.
“Can you put down the flag?” I ask.
He does.
“Do you want to give the horse to me so I can keep it safe for you until after the lesson?”
He hands me the plastic horse. I shove it head-first into the back pocket of my jeans.
“What do we tell Skye now?”
“Walk on,” Karl says.
We ride off the trail course and back into the shade of the covered arena. This time, we enter the ring. We practice walking over the poles, riding around the barrels, weaving in and out of the vertical poles. With every movement, both Skye and Karl use different muscles.
“Can you stop your horse in the box?” I ask when we come to the square I made with poles.
He tries again. Louise subtly tugs on the lead rope, and Skye stops in the box.
“How about,” I say, “we ride to the letter K and stop there?”
Karl’s eyes go to the dressage letter affixed to the rail. “Okay.”
“When we get there, remember to pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa.’”
It’s a repeat of the mailbox, the square on the ground. Louise stops the horse. I want so much for Karl to be able to stop his own horse, but I’m not setting him or any other rider up for failure.
“Good job,” I say. “High five.”
I hold up my hand. Karl smacks it with his own palm.
“Low five.”
I hold my hand by Skye’s shoulder. Karl slaps it.
“Skye five,” I say, and with a broad grin, Karl pats Skye’s shoulder.
With that, the lesson is over. My rider is happy, and he’s happier when I give him the plastic horse, which he’d already forgotten. His parents are happy enough. I’m happy that despite his difficulty focusing on tasks, Karl has a sharp sense of humor. I’ve never asked him for a “Skye five” before.
There are other riders, other horses. Around noon, my boss, Sara, shows up. She has a student with severe disabilities who normally rides during the week, but this week her mother needed to move her lesson to Saturday. They’ll be coming later. Can I stay and help?
Of course.
When all the other riders and volunteers and instructors have left, Sara asks me to groom Barney, our 35-year-old Shetland pony. Shetlands have a reputation, often well-earned, for being nasty, but Barney is a gentleman, and Wendy needs a small horse.
After I groom Barney, I tack him with a bareback pad. It has no stirrups. We won’t be using a bridle, either, Sara tells me. I’ll lead him, and she and Wendy’s mother will side-walk.
In addition to volunteering at this facility for two years before I was asked to become an instructor, I taught riding therapy for two summers at a camp when I was in college. I’ve worked with children who have profound physical, psychological, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional impairments, and at first I think Wendy is simply one of them. A tall, gangly girl of maybe 13, she is in a wheelchair that looks like an oversized umbrella stroller. She cannot hear, cannot speak, cannot see, cannot walk. Since she is not my student, I know neither the extent of her disabilities nor their cause — nor is that knowledge necessary. I’m not here to attempt any form of instruction. I’m here to lead Barney.
Because Barney is so small, we don’t use the mounting ramp. Sara and Wendy’s mother lift her onto the pony, and the lesson commences.
They don’t interact with Wendy except to hold her on. We don’t lead her over hills so she can feel the change in her horse’s movements and her own. We don’t ask her to stop in the box or at the K. There are no reins, and she wouldn’t hear or comprehend the instructions even if Sara were to give them. As it is, her balance is nonexistent, and Sara and Wendy’s mother have all they can do to hold her on the pony.
This isn’t a lesson.
For the first time in all the years I’ve worked in therapeutic riding, I feel a sense of hopelessness so overwhelming that tears come to my eyes, but I can’t start bawling in the middle of a lesson, even if it isn’t really a lesson. In this moment, my job is to keep going, past the ground poles Karl and Skye walked over, past the vertical poles they wove in and out of. My job this morning was to set up my arena — my space — and to set up my riders for as much success as was possible for each of them to achieve. My job now is to lead this patient, plodding pony around and around an arena that’s no longer mine.
Focusing on my job won’t keep me from breaking down over the futility of what we’re doing. I ask myself what Wendy can possibly be getting from this experience, and I work to find answers. She can smell — I hope — the unmistakable scent of horse. I believe she can feel movement, though there’s little variation in it. If we take her hand and guide it to touch Barney’s shaggy Shetland coat and then his thick, bushy mane, she’ll feel the difference in textures. Her mother has gotten out of the house, and I feel certain that change in routine is a lifeline. So what if this isn’t a lesson? It’s something.
And something, our barn manager always says, is better than nothing.
I hold myself together during and after the pony ride. Sara and Wendy’s mother take her off Barney and settle her again in her big stroller, and I lead Barney back to the barn. He’s an amazing little creature. It doesn’t matter to him whether his rider is oblivious to the world. He has a job to do, and he does it.
After I rub him down, I return to the arena to remove the obstacles. Sara has walked Wendy and her mother to their van, and I am alone again, in my arena, where I belong.
*The names of all people have been changed.
May 27, 2021
Five Things I Learned Writing Dark Horses
1. I WILL NEVER BE IN A “30 UNDER 30” ROUNDUP OF IMPRESSIVE YOUNG WRITERS.
Although I showed early promise, I’m a late bloomer. I’m making my debut at age 59. It is the new 39, but even that isn’t under 30. While I’m all for nurturing young talent, I object to the suggestion that talent has an expiration date. Don’t write yourself off—and don’t let anyone else write you off, either—simply because of your age.
2. WE WRITE IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD.
One midwinter day in 2007, I received a rejection letter from Yaddo, where I’d applied for an extended residency. I would have rejected me, too. I’d written only three short chapters—later combined into a single first chapter—of my WIP. Ostensibly, the “P” in “WIP” stands for progress, but I’d made little of that. I began writing Dark Horses in the early 2000s, but for years at a time I didn’t touch the manuscript.
The Yaddo rejection was a dash of ice water on any dreamy notion I’d had of one day finishing my book. If I waited for all those perfect conditions I thought I needed—a stretch of uninterrupted time, a book-lined study (you know the one), no day job, no financial stressors—I would never finish this book or write any other. I would have to write in an imperfect world.
I made a deal with myself that day. Each evening when I got home from the day job, I would eat a quick dinner of cereal (perfect writer kibble) and then write. At the end of five days, I’d made more progress on the manuscript than I’d made in years. It felt good—so I decided to do it the following week, and at the end of two weeks, a habit was formed. That’s how I finished the book, writing for two or three hours every evening and indulging in write-a-thons on the weekends. I turned down invitations for drinks after work, dinner, coffee, and other social activities. No one else will make your writing a priority. Only you can do this.
3. IN WHICH I FIND AN AGENT.
I finished the manuscript in August 2009 and spent the next year self-editing, a process during which I wasn’t nearly as hard on myself as I should have been, because all of us think, “This will be the cleanest, most perfect manuscript ever submitted to an agent.” HAAAAhahahahahaha. Clearly I hadn’t left all my delusions behind me. Have you seen the dragon in the kitchen?
I contacted an old publishing acquaintance who was now an agent. Of course I could send the manuscript to her. She read it and told me to cut 100 pages and send it back to her. I did. And—oooooooooo, children—she was never heard from again. There was only a hook dangling from my car door. A year passed, during which there were a couple of life-giving, hope-raising messages in which she promised my revised manuscript was next in her TBR pile, but in fact I’d been given the hook.
Slightly daunted, I regrouped and sent it to a friend’s agent, and exactly the same thing happened. After another solid year, another hook dangled from my car door.
Now deeply daunted and in possession of two useless hooks, I put the manuscript away for a year. At the end of that year, four years had passed since I’d completed the first draft. What was I doing with my life? Did I or didn’t I want to be published?
Welcome to the sim-sub (simultaneous-submission) route. I took a week off from my day job and created a spreadsheet with nearly 100 agents on it, most of them gleaned from the pages of Poets & Writers. I visited the website of each agency, where agents specified what they wanted in the way of a query, and contacted the ones I thought were the best fit for my manuscript.
By the end of the week, I’d found my agent. When we spoke on the phone, she asked if I were willing to revise. My reply: “Absolutely, but if I do . . . will I ever hear from you again?”
Her reply: “Yes, because I’ve already invested more time and energy in this than I would if I didn’t intend to represent you.”
4. DON’T BE DISCOURAGED TO DISCOVER YOU AREN’T EVEN CLOSE TO BEING FINISHED.
I love revising and editing, which is good, because my agent and I went through round after round of revisions. I was trying my best, but something wasn’t clicking. To my everlasting gratitude, she hung in there with me. Finally, when I thought I’d produced the best possible manuscript, she said, “Cut it by a third, and then I’ll read it.”
Part of me thought I couldn’t do it. The rest of me made a sign that read ENDURANCE, tacked it above my desk, and got to work. I brought Dark Horses in at a sleek 98,000 words and delivered a manuscript my agent could sell—and sell it she did, approaching exactly the right editor at exactly the right publisher. My editor requested further edits, which added slightly to the word count (I got to put back some material I’d deleted), but my agent had been so rigorous that at this point, editing felt like play.
5. YOUR PATH IS YOURS, NOT ANYONE ELSE’S.
In the critique group I’ve run for 20 years, I advocate heeding feedback that resonates and disregarding feedback that doesn’t—but this works only if you’re honest with yourself. My agent had a keen editorial sense, and I’d have been foolish not to listen to her.
“With your next book, you won’t have to listen to your agent and your editor,” one person said.
“Do you even feel like it’s your book anymore?” said another.
First, why wouldn’t I listen to an agent and an editor I trust? They want a book that will sell, and so do I. Second, it’s more my book than ever, forged by criticism and revision that burned away everything that wasn’t the story.
Only you can write your story, but regardless of whether you take the traditional route to publication, you’ll need to discern between advice that rings true and advice that’s off the mark. Know what to let go of, even if you’re attached to it. My words aren’t gold. Neither are yours. Be professional, listen to your team, and honestly assess their feedback.
Also, know what to hold on to. Tip: It won’t be as much as you think. Good editors, agents, and critique partners don’t want to make your story theirs. They want to help you make your story the best it can be.
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This post first appeared as a guest post on Chuck Wendig's blog, TerribleMinds.
