Allow me to introduce myself — The Real Me | Sherrie Lord

Allow me to introduce myself — The Real Me

Jul / 25 / 2009
I am a biker. It’s an attitude. It’s about freedom, being real, and not following trends.
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Not A Poser

I flew to Denver a couple weeks ago to attend a workshop taught by Michael Hauge, a Hollywood screenwriter, story and script consultant, and lecturer. He’s awesome!

(Check him out at http://www.screenplaymastery.com)

His all-day workshop, Story Mastery, was amazing, and I felt blessed to even have the opportunity to sit under his tutelage.

(The bad news: Book #3 needs some restructuring. That means more work, more time.)

One of the concepts Michael stressed is the main character’s need to grow as the story progresses, to arc from their Identity to their Essence. Their Identity is the facade they hide behind, the person they want everyone to believe they are. But their Essence is the person they would be if they had the courage and could be certain they wouldn’t be rejected.

Think the movie Titanic. Think about Rose, who starts out obeying her mother in pursuing the rich and distinguished Cal for husband. But Rose doesn’t subscribe to her mother’s — or Cal’s — social snobbery. She’s about to escape the misery she lives in by jumping off the ship to her death, when she meets Jack, the free-living artist from the lower, lesser decks. They fall in love — it’s a romance — and Rose realizes her Essence is the laughing woman who dances with the social zeroes in steerage. The story ends with her a whole and happier person, her Identity melded with her Essence.

It would seem the Lord had me learning all this not only to improve my books, but for a deeper meaning: my own arc from Identity to Essence. I came to realize I was in Denver in costume, playing the soft-spoken Christian novelist.

I’m a Christian, and I’m a novelist, but I’m anything but soft-spoken.

My love for plantation hats and cute purses, that’s real. But both rise out of a desire to bring some femininity to the noisy, testosterone world I live in — that of motorcycles, motorcyclists, and bikers.

Harry was known as Thor when I met and married him in the ’70s, as he was a patched member of an outlaw motorcycle club. (There’s something kind of sick and wrong about highlighting a name like that in pink, huh.) We left that world to become “Citizens” (what bikers call non-bikers) when we became Christians and started having babies. But the Lord sent us back about a decade ago, when we bought a motorcycle again and joined a Christian motorcycling organization.

Harry never formally left the club; the club just sort of dwindled and disbanded. But he kept his patch. And I kept mine, which declares me “Property of Thor.” You just don’t throw away your patch. You don’t disrespect it like that.

It can’t be described, it can only be felt, but we never lost that love and respect, that brotherhood, we felt for the other men in the club and the women beside them (women are never members of an outlaw motorcycle club). That’s why the Lord sent us back to the biker community. For one thing, bikers don’t scare us like they do you. But it’s also because he knew we would be accepted there — like you wouldn’t be.

That’s why I’ve added pics from the old days to my Bio. So I can meld my Identity as a soft-spoken Christian novelist with my Essence as a biker.

I am a woman of strong opinions, but I guess I really am soft-spoken, in that the Lord has gifted me with compassion and hospitality. I forgive easily, and I look for ways to make others feel comfortable and welcome.

And don’t ever doubt it, I adore my Lord and I am fully committed to serving Him. He, and He alone, sits on the throne in my life. He is my liege lord, the One I have pledged my fealty to.

But I am a biker. It’s an attitude. It’s about freedom, being real, and not following trends. It’s about the road rolling in a blur under your boot heels, your fists in the wind, and that curve up ahead.

Oh, and yes, I have tattoos. Three of them: a memorial portrait of my mother, a likeness of Snoopy writing the Great American Novel, and an ink bottle tipped over and spilling the blood in it. A quill stands in the puddle, with “Love” written in it.

The ink in my bottle is the blood of Christ, and the story I write is Love.

You could say I’m sort of coming out of the closet, so that you can know the whole me, my history as well as my present...because they lean upon each other.

This could be career suicide. You may never again buy my books. But then, maybe you aren’t in my audience anyway. Think I’ll just continue to write the stories the Lord lets me “see,” and let Him sort it out.

Please allow me to introduce myself. They call me P.O.T. — that’s short for Property of Thor.

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