Writing, lion taming
Cindy on June 21st, 2008
Yesterday I drove to a local printing press to speak to a Girl Scout troop on a field trip. I was one of several writers who’d been asked to talk to the girls about the writing life, to help fulfill their writing badge requirement. (I love kids and I’ll talk to them about anything.) I’ve spoken to several grade school classes about writing — often enough to know that at least one kid will wave a hand in the air and ask me to name my favorite assignment. Though I have lots of favorites, the time I interviewed Alan Gold, a premier “lion tamer” who was performing at the Shrine Circus, usually tops the list. This story tends to impress young kids more than, say, the time I interviewed Phil Donahue.
So, before the talk, I pulled out my yellowed copy of Gold’s story (published in 1985) and made 30 copies for the Girl Scouts. Re-reading the piece, which detailed how the animal trainer worked with “the big cats,” it suddenly hit me that there are some keen similarities between learning how to tame lions and learning how to deal with editors, agents, and publishers … and rejection letters.
Gold, who told me he enjoyed living on the edge, had been scratched, scarred, and mauled several times. Early in his career, for instance, he was “taken up in a tiger’s mouth.” The accident resulted in 300 stitches and confined him to a wheelchair for six months — but didn’t discourage his career plan.
“You get into this end of the business [working with lions] knowing that eventually you’re going to get hurt. But you realize what the risks are,” Gold said. “You have to be able to look at each cat and judge what its forte will be. If you try to teach an animal a trick that it’s not prone to do, it will take twice as much time to train it — and the animal won’t enjoy it.” Despite the risks, though, Gold said that his work was “a helluva rush.” Sort of like freelance writing. – Cindy La Ferle
