There are downsides to looking this good: Why men hate me for being handsome.

Some of you may be aware that gender issues in writing, and in general, are a topic near and dear to me. I recently came across this article in which Journalist Samantha Brick describes the challenges of being a beautiful female. Plenty of backlash has ensued and can be found multiple places across the internets.

As an experiment, I rewrote the article, switching the genders of all the people involved. In fact, this may be an experiment I repeat in the future with other articles because the results revealed a great deal about both genders as well as the tone of the original article. Below is the text of the article taken from the daily mail site with only the genders and some gender-colored terms altered. Also, I made my son Charlie the stand-in for the original author:

On a recent flight to New York, I was delighted when a steward came over and gave me a bottle of champagne.
‘This is from the captain — she wants to welcome you on board and hopes you have a great flight today,’ he explained.
You’re probably thinking ‘what a lovely surprise’. But while it was lovely, it wasn’t a surprise. At least, not for me.

'Good looking man': But Charles Lucas says that his pleasing looks have been a mixed blessing, with many of his own sex becoming resentful, and have closed as many doors as they have opened

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout my life, I’ve regularly had bottles of bubbly or wine sent to my restaurant table by women I don’t know. Once, a well-dressed lady bought my train ticket when I was standing behind her in the queue, while there was another occasion when a charming woman paid my fare as I stepped out of a cab in Paris. Another time, as I was walking through London’s Portobello Road market, I was tapped on the shoulder and presented with a beautiful bunch of flowers. Even waitresses frequently shoo my credit card away when I try to settle my bill.

And whenever I’ve asked what I’ve done to deserve such treatment, the donors of these gifts have always said the same thing: my pleasing appearance and handsome smile made their day.

While I’m no Brad Pitt, I’m tall, broad shouldered, blond and, so I’m often told, a good-looking man. I know how lucky I am. But there are downsides to being handsome — the main one being that other men hate me for no other reason than my handsome looks.

If you’re a man reading this, I’d hazard that you’ve already formed your own opinion about me — and it won’t be very flattering. For while many doors have been opened (literally) as a result of my looks, just as many have been metaphorically slammed in my face — and usually by my own sex.

I’m not smug and I’m no flirt, yet over the years I’ve been dropped by countless friends who felt threatened if I was merely in the presence of their other halves. If their partners dared to actually talk to me, a sudden chill would descend on the room.

Taken: Charles with his French wife Paige. Three years his senior, she takes great pride in hearing other women declare that he's a handsome man and always tells him to laugh off asshole comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it is not just jealous husbands who have frozen me out of their lives. Insecure male bosses have also barred me from promotions at work.

And most poignantly of all, not one male friend has ever asked me to be his best man.

You’d think we men would applaud each other for taking pride in our appearances. I work at mine — I don’t drink or smoke, I work out, even when I don’t feel like it, and very rarely succumb to chocolate. Unfortunately men find nothing more annoying than someone else being the most attractive man in a room.
Take last week, out walking the dogs a neighbour passed by in his car. I waved — he blatantly blanked me. Yet this is someone whose daughters have stayed at my house, and who has been welcomed into my home on countless occasions.

I approached a mutual friend and discreetly enquired if I’d made a faux pas. It seems the only crime I’ve committed is not leaving the house with a bag over my head. He doesn’t like me, I discovered, because he views me as a threat. The friend pointed out he is shorter, heavier and older than me.

Handsome groom: Charles on his wedding day. He laments that not one of his friends has ever asked him to be a groomsman - perhaps from fear of being overshadowed by his looks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, according to our mutual friend, he is adamant that something could happen between his wife and me, ‘were the right circumstances in place’. Yet I’m happily married, and have been for the past four years.

This isn’t the first time such paranoia has gripped the men around me. In my early 2s, when I first started in television as a researcher, one male boss in his late 3s would regularly invite me over for dinner after a long day in the office. I always accepted his invitation, as during office hours we got along famously. But one evening his partner was at home. We were all a couple of glasses of wine into the evening. Then she and I said we both liked the song we were listening to.

He laid into his bewildered partner for ‘fancying’ me, then turned on me, calling me unrepeatable names before ridiculing me for dying my hair and wearing cologne. I declined any further invitations.

Therapist Some Guy, author of self-help guide Be Confident, says that men have always measured themselves against each other by their looks rather than achievements — and it can make the lives of the good-looking very difficult. ‘Many of my clients are male models, yet people are always astounded when I explain they don’t have it easy,’ he says. If you are attractive other men think you lead a perfect life — which simply isn’t true.

Hard work: Charles takes pride in his appearance. He works out - even when he doesn't feel like it - he doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke... and rarely does he succumb to chocolate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They don’t realise you are just as vulnerable as they are. It’s hard when everyone resents you for your looks. Women think “what’s the point, he’s out of my league” and don’t ask you out. And men don’t want to hang out with someone more attractive than they are.’ I certainly found that out the hard way, particularly in the office. One contract I accepted was blighted by a jealous male boss. It was the height of summer and I’d opted to wear knee length shorts and polo t-shirts. They were modest, yet handsome; more Prince William than Peter Andre.

But my boss pulled me into his office and informed me my dress style was distracting his female employees. I didn’t dare point out that there were other men in the office wearing similar attire.

Rather than argue, I worked out the rest of my contract wearing baggy, sombre-coloured trouser suits. It was clear that when you have a male boss, it’s best to let them shine, but when you have a female boss, it’s a different game: I have written in the Mail on how I have flirted to get ahead at work, something I’m sure many men do.
Men, however, are far more problematic. With one phenomenally tricky boss, I eventually managed to carve out a positive working relationship. But a year in, his attitude towards me changed; the deterioration began when he started to put on weight.

We were both employed by a big broadcasting company. One of our female UK chiefs recommended I take the company’s global leadership course, which meant doors would have opened for me around the world.

All I needed were two personal recommendations to be eligible. As everyone in the office agreed I was good at my job, I didn’t think this would be a problem.
But while the female executive signed the paperwork without hesitation, my immediate boss refused to sign. When I asked his right-hand man why, he pulled me to one side and explained that my boss was jealous of me.

Things between us rapidly deteriorated. Whenever I wore something new he’d sneer at me in front of other colleagues that he was the star, not me.
Six months later I handed in my notice. Privately he begged me to stay, blaming the nasty comments on his prostate. He was in his early 4s and confided he was having marital problems. But by then I’d had enough.

I find that older men are the most hostile to handsome men — perhaps because they feel their own bloom fading. Because my wife is three years older than me, her social circle is that bit older too. As a Frenchwoman, she takes great pride in hearing other women declare that I’m a handsome man and always tells me to laugh off asshole comments from other men. Yet I dread the inevitable sarky comments. ‘Here he comes. We’re in the village hall yet Chuck’s dressed for the Albert Hall,’ was one I recently overheard. As a result I find dinner parties and social gatherings fraught and if I can’t wriggle out of them, then often dress down in jeans and a demure, albeit handsome, top.

But even these ploys don’t always work. Take last summer and a birthday party I attended with my wife. At one point the host, who was celebrating her 5th, decided she wanted a photo with all the men guests. Positioning us, the photographer suggested I stand immediately to her right for the shot. Another man I barely knew pushed me out of the way, shouting it wasn’t fair on all the other men if I was dominating the snap. I was devastated and burst into tears. On my own in the loos one man privately consoled me — well out of ear-shot of his friends.

So now I’m 5 and probably one of very few men entering his sixth year welcoming the decline of my looks. I can’t wait for the wrinkles and the grey hair that will help me blend into the background.

Perhaps then the brotherhood will finally stop judging me so harshly on what I look like, and instead accept me for who I am.

Chapters Shmapters

When writing first drafts (“first drafts” in plural makes it sound like I’ve done this a lot…three times now—three novels. And the first one was an utter piece of crap so I don’t really call it my first one. It shall henceforth be referred to as the zeroth novel) I’ve never bothered to break the narrative up into chapters until revision. And even then, I struggle with where to put the cut-offs. Sometimes it’s obvious—I’ll have a nice complete scene of reasonable length that has a clear beginning and an end and a bit of an arc. Other times it feels nothing short of arbitrary.

In my zeroth novel, I had a bit of a problem—a writing tic, if you will—of always writing the scene transitions out. I would drag my characters kicking and screaming to dinner in the evening, brush their teeth, put them to bed, then wake them up in the morning instead of cutting scene and starting fresh with “The next day…” I don’t know, the gaps bothered me. If my characters hadn’t made a potty stop all day, I’d start to get concerned for them. The bulk of these transitions were clearly unnecessary. No one gives a crap if your characters crap unless it is relevant to the plot in some way. It’s safe to assume that they do, even if it isn’t explicitly pointed out.

After growing tired of writing such transitions in my zeroth novel and fully appreciating their tediousness, I overcompensated in my first novel by writing it as a series of scenes with jumps in between them. An improvement, for sure, but one of the most common edits my agent has been suggesting is to write the transitions and not jump so much. I’ve been finding middle ground in this when writing novel two.

Now, in that zeroth novel, where everything was long and continuous, figuring out chapter breaks was a pain. I always had to break things up in the middle of a scene. This can work well at times, mind you—ending a chapter at an interesting cliffhanger mid scene, making it difficult for the reader to put down. (I don’t know about you, but when reading, if I need to set the book down, I try to do so at a chapter break. But if there’s a cliffhanger…well, one more chapter then.) But most of the time with this zeroth novel, I didn’t know where to place the cuts.

The first novel, in contrast, being composed of multiple short scenes with breaks in between, could have made for an easily dividable novel of mini chapters. But then I’d end up with chapter numbers in the 100s by the end. I suppose that could be done. After all, what are the rules here exactly? But it seemed like too many. I settled instead for grouping the scenes in such a way that I had a total of 32 chapters. It still felt largely arbitrary. Sure, some of the chapters were perfect little packages, but other times I’d put the break in a spot because, well, there hadn’t been one in a while.

My second novel was likewise not divided into chapters in the first draft. It consisted of a collection of scenes, much like the first novel. On the second draft, however, I outlined what I’d written and rearranged things into chapter groupings and wrote the revision chapter by chapter. In the end, I think this resulted in a more clear demarcation of each chapter, though there is still fudge room. There are some chapters that could be cut into two, and others that might stand to be combined. The reality, in the end, is that about half of my chapters make nice chapters. The other half are parts of the novel that aren’t really chapter-like. I imagine a structure where you’ve got a novel as a whole, and within it, some parts are sectioned off as chapters and other parts remain as the scaffolding holding up the whole. But I’ve not seen anyone do it that way. So I cordon things off as chapters so it looks all normal-like, and then agonize over whether or not I put the cut in the right spot (because what else do you do when you grow tired of editing?)

Break Out The Skates: Writing Amidst Familial Chaos

 

I have fond memories of my father jokingly accusing my mother of attempting to roller skate in a buffalo herd anytime she tried to get anything done in the chaos that was a small house filled with four children. A few decades later, I have three of my own. And while I wouldn’t trade them for anything now that they’re all here, I highly recommend not having more children than you have arms if you ever hope to be productive at anything, or if you’d like to maintain a reasonable level of sanity and sanitation.

On days when I’m home by myself with all three, the thought of doing anything other than tending to their needs might seem laughable, but oh, do I try. It’s frustrating when I’ve got a fully germinated idea in my head—all these great words forming the next chapter of my novel, all barely keeping themselves in order long enough for me to jot them down. But halfway through a sentence, someone craps their pants. If I get absorbed in the prose for more than five minutes straight, I look around to see the one-year-old chewing on a gluestick, and find that the eight-year-old has tied the five-year-old to a bedpost with the belt from a bathrobe.

It becomes a game of tetris—all these blocks are falling at you, and if you sort them and stack them the right way, you can keep the pile from getting too big. Get children dressed, break out the crayons and paper. Keep the document open on the laptop and build the piece a sentence at a time as the gaps permit. Hit that sweet spot where the baby is down for a nap for an hour, and the oldest is reading a book, and the middle kid is happy with his legos, and you can morph those sentences into something coherent. When everyone goes to bed for the night, you’ve got a chance to read through it all and edit and polish. The trick is never to decide that you can’t do it because you have a million other things on your plate.

I am lucky in that, during the week, the children all go to school/preschool and my day job has a light enough work load that I am able to spend some of those hours engaged in uninterrupted writing. It all gets done, in the gaps, amidst the buffalos, somehow.

Now Playing

When learning something new, there’s a point at which your mind switches from having to be aware of each piece as you go, to being able to “feel” the thing you are doing as a whole, and the individual parts blur. The examples are everywhere. Driving your car, you do this. When starting your car and backing out your driveway, you don’t separately focus on key in ignition, parking brake off, shift to reverse, etc. You just do it. You don’t even realize you are doing it. You may not even know you don’t even realize you are doing it. The action of “get car onto road,” is automatically completed. But if you drive someone else’s car, or buy a new car, you may find yourself staring stupefied at the controls at first, wondering how the hell you operate the vehicle because you haven’t had to actually process the steps in some time.

I’ve been noticing this cognitive transition most recently while learning to play the drums. I can read a sheet of music and correctly interpret what actions the notes correspond to. I can count it out and play it. I can do it faster and faster. Then suddenly there is this place where you don’t see the music as the notes and the timing, it becomes its own thing. You aren’t running the individual notes through your mind. You are moving through the whole. You just play.

So it is with fiction writing as well. You study the basics—the grammar and rules, showing versus telling, realistic dialogue, point of view, story arc, etc. If you write while trying to hold each of these things individually in your head, it impedes your writing, just as reading sheet music and playing it like a robot stunts your music. You have to practice this stuff enough that it becomes something you don’t even think about. You can see your narrative as a whole—as a thing that just feels right.

Well into the second draft of my second novel, I’m noticing this process also takes place rather profoundly from draft to draft. It seems impossible to make a first draft not suck (for me, anyway.) Perhaps this is me getting the notes down on the page, or identifying where all the controls are on my new car. But in the second draft, I’m inside my narrator’s head and the whole picture is before me. It feels right. It sounds right. I just play.

Art From Ash

In the course of writing a novel, one is often faced with the need to do research—whether that involves scouring the internet or library for factual details, finding people to interview, or just plain trying things out. The protagonist in my current novel-in-progress has a penchant for burning things, making ink out of the ash, and drawing with it using quill pens he makes out of found feathers. I talked through the details of this with an artist friend of mine (in fact, I should credit this particular friend as being the sounding board off of whom much of the ideas associated with this character’s artistic exploits were generated). And I researched online how to fashion a quill out of a feather.

The first draft is written, and in the process of working through the second draft, I’m taking my time to do some fact checking and make sure I’ve been accurately describing the process, and also to see if there is further nuance I can add for the sake of authenticity. So now is the time for experimentation.

I’ve purchased gum arabic, some drawing paper, and feathers from a craft store (my character finds his on his own and actually detests craft store variety, but he’s a listless 18 year old with too much time on his hands, and I have a full time job and a family on top of trying to write) and am ready to go.

Step one: burn something. My character burns all sorts of things, from paper, sticks, to clothing. I’m going to start with paper. A crumpled piece of junk mail and a crumpled piece of notebook paper together in a bowl. Add flame from a lighter. Get lots of smoke. Take bowl outside. Apparently when burning paper, you don’t get any sort of large sustained flames, it just smolders excessively. So, yeah, do that outside.

Step two: grind up the ash. In the story, my character has a mortar and pestle. I do not. So I use the back of a spoon to crush the ash into a fine powder. One problem, though—not all of the remaining material is ash. There are a few fragments of not-quite-burned paper in the mix, and some stuff just doesn’t want to crush into a powder.

Step two-and-a-half: filter. Since part of the process of making it into ink involves adding water, I mix water with the ash and filter it through a paper towel so that all of the large, undissolvable pieces are removed. This is not something my character ever had to do, though perhaps that will change.

Step three: add water and gum arabic. Water was already added in step two and a half, so I add some gum arabic—a thick, syrupy liquid (though I understand it can also be obtained in powder form) which is supposed to help bind the ink and keep it from drying into an ash powder that flakes off the page after drawing.

Step four: make the quill. The process my character goes through in the book is a little more involved—he tempers the feather and shapes it carefully with a sharp pocket knife. But I’ve got a craft store feather that looks to be some sort of real feather/fake feather hybrid, and I don’t have a good pocket knife to make it all pretty. So I hack at it with scissors and a kitchen knife and make a rough approximation of a useable nib.

Step five: draw. Dip quill in ink and sketch. I start with writing letters and then try to do a simple sketch of a face. (Disclaimer: I am not artistically trained. I did take a drawing class in college once, but that was over a decade ago.)

Conclusions: This sort of felt like a cross between painting and drawing, because the ink was runny like paint and often came off the pen thicker than it should have, and while sometimes I was able to sustain a fine line for a while, often I was brushing around a glob. The ink was also more grey than black. This was likely the result of both the shade of ash and how much it was diluted. In general, however, the basic process seemed to work. In future attempts I will try to have thicker ink, see if I can’t grind the ash better (might try to procure a mortar and pestle), and get a better shape on the quill nib, among other things.

Also, I smell like fire.

And So It Begins

This is my first blog post, in case that wasn’t obvious. More to come–perhaps even some of it interesting. Stay tuned…