When I was finishing my first book, I happened to be at my 50th year grade school reunion and asked a classmate if she would like to pre-read it.
She, being a lifelong teacher, both formally and informally, did more than that.
She caught all my grammar mistakes and made many editing suggestions.
When we spoke afterwards I asked her if she could identify the author who was most influential in my writing.
She ran down a list of the usual suspects, all of whom were men.
I guess men are not the only ones guilty of that paradigm.
When I told her that there were several, but it surprised her that the most influential were:
Jane Austen
-and-
Emily Dickinson
There are also clearly identifiable traces of:
Dickens and Twain
-and-
Not so clearly identifiable traces of Hemingway
An attempt was made to emulate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s outstanding recreation of scenes with words.
And try as much as I could to keep it out, some Vonnegut style snark snuck in.
That seems like a broad range, but life experiences are that way, so more than one style was needed:
- Austen for those times when one word just won’t do. When you need a clear idea of the issue with important details.
- Dickinson for inferences into which one has to dig—for deeper creative understanding.
- Dickens to paint pictures of reality, without subjecting you to the smell.
- Twain to help you snap back to reality—to see the line between fiction and fantasy.
- Hemingway’s icebergs.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s way of putting you in the scene.
- Vonnegut’s use of sarcastic, almost Catch-22 examples of the ridiculousness of some situations.
My idea was to share through anecdotes, some life lessons of someone different, and present them in such a way, that similarly different people might see themselves.
See themselves in a way that allows them to gain some useful information, should they find themselves in a similar or relatable spot someday.
Some one once told me, “Smart people learn from their mistakes; smarter people learn from other’s mistakes.”
Hopefully mine will help someone out there smarter than me.
With that in mind, a chapter from that first book illustrates many of those lessons.
Encounters with that mysterious species we call “normal”:
- Hero worship, (admiring throngs)
- Popularity,
- Peaking,
- Effects of IQ ranges,
- Creativity,
- Posers,
- Gaslighting,
- Peacocking,
- Authenticity,
- Meltdowns, (of normal people created by me)
- Body language,
- Bullying by teachers,
- Feelings,
- Stress resistance,
- Inclusion/Exclusion,
- Those involuntary reactions,
- Processing for better outcomes for me vs. letting them run over me,
- Resisting conditioning meant for normal people,
- Not wasting time on other people’s issues.
This chapter touches on all of these themes.
There are some in each, but this one has many—it’s more representative of reality.
Life contains a lot.
The following chapter is a true account of one of these encounters.
Read it here: https://variationa.com/Mister Meyer/
Written July 31, 2026