Dancing comes in quite a few dimensions. When the publisher of this web delight came up with the theme, "Let's Dance," he probably didn't calculate that one of his staff writers would compose a column concerning A. Manette Ansay, a relatively new but accomplished writer. Why shouldn't she qualify, at least under the normal definition of dancing? Simple. She turned to writing when a rare muscular disorder demanded that she find an occupation she could perform while sitting. No dancing, at least in the obvious definition, lay in her future.
But Ansay does dance, quite well, thank you, in her own way. She has achieved a remarkable amount of recognition over the past decade since learning of her diagnosis. "On January 1, 1988, I started writing because I had to find something I could do sitting down," she told me during of a recent interview.
Ansay, 33, now lives with her husband, Jake Smith, a web developer who works in Nashville for Broadcast Music Corp. (BMI), one of the two companies that licenses music.
"From the beginning I worked for two hours, three times a week," she said. "I began with poetry, which I felt I could do, and it was interesting and didn't require a lot of physical activity. I lived in Maine at the time and heard about a writer's conference, called Stone Coast. A woman secretly paid my tuition, although I was told that I had received a scholarship. There weren't any. Actually, she worked overtime at J.C. Penney's to get the money. Now I teach at Stone Coast in the summers."
Ansay admits she had never been much of a reader and certainly never previously entertained thoughts of writing as a vocation. But during that important first writer's conference, she read aloud the first story she'd ever written.
"Afterwards, this man approached me and introduced himself as Madison Smartt Bell. I had never heard of him, had no clue about who he was. But he gave me his card and said that if I ever needed help, to call him." Bell is one of the leading fiction writers in America, his reputation soaring because of a steady string of successful and critically praised books. "And I didn,t even know who he was," Ansay said with a chuckle.
She was born in Michigan, in a small town about 40 miles from Detroit. The "A" in her name stands for Ann. Born into a Roman Catholic family, she said her mother wanted to pay tribute to Mary the mother of Jesus. "The Ann comes from Mary's mother," she explained. "My mom didn't particularly like the name Mary, so she went to the baby names book and chose Manette, which was defined as another word for Mary. Later she found out that it meant `handcuff'."
Ansay doesn't like to discuss her physical problems. "I try not to talk about my muscle disorder out of context," she explained. "I developed health problems in my early 20s, but when people find out about it, they focus on my disability and then I become a `crippled writer,'" she said.
Ansay didn't explain why the publist for her publisher, William Morrow & Co., mentions her disability in press releases concerning her books and suggested that I ask Ansay about it. The same is true of Ansay's paperback publisher Avon, which brought out reprints of her first three books, the novels "Vinegar Hill" and "Sister," and the recently released collection of short stories, "Read This and Tell Me What It Says."
Today Ansay regrets coming late into the glories of reading. "I was never a reader, never particularly interested in books, and really can't explain why I chose writing, other than needing something to do," she said. "I wish I had gotten hooked earlier, and I would have had a far less lonely childhood if I had gotten involved with books."
But she has found that many writers she has encountered weren't readers before they turned to wielding their pens. "In my workshops, I discovered that many students wrote before they began to read for pleasure. Workshops often create readers, who otherwise would not have come to it."
How does she feel about her own writing? "I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it."
She maintains no particular writing schedule, observing that "Something is always happening. I prefer to write mornings, and I write as much as I can whenever I can. I try not to get too spoiled in aiming at a certain time of day or quality of light."
Unlike many fellow scribes, Ansay eschews working from an outline. "I dislike reading a book where the author seems to be standing alongside and commanding the action. My ideas could be out of experience, out of life, out of conversations with other people, and the things I'm concerned about as I go about day to day."
Her new project will be another novel, "which may be about a wedding, although I never know until I finish. I have a contract with Morrow for a second book, and it should be published around Valentine's Day of the year 2000."
Ansay revises as she writes and usually doesn't show her work until she reaches the end, when "I always show my mother, and we talk about it. She's very honest about my writing. When I first started, I did more drafts. My first novel, `Vinegar Hill' required several drafts. Now since I revise as I go, I generally know what's wrong, and when I'm patient, I'm usually able to fix it."
On the tenure track at Vanderbilt University in Nashville for four years, she decided the academic life wasn't for her. "I didn't like it. There was a lot of politics and lots of bullshit. Now I'm glad to be out and hopefully can continue to earn enough money to stay out." Plans call for her to teach a class in writing at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C., during the January semester. She also is scheduled to teach at the University of Sewannie in Tennessee during the fall.
She describes her marriage with Smith as "supportive. For my career, he moved six times. He went to school to get his computer science degree and now he supports me quite a bit. Although I travel a lot, we are committed to each other and it's a good marriage."
Ansay's latest novel, easily her best, is "River Angel" (Morrow, $24). Set in the Midwest, it details the kidnapping of a child by a group of high school students. The prank sets off a series of events that leads townspeople to wonder if the miraculous has occurred. Although Ansay has been quoted that she doesn't believe in angels, she says that she "understands the desire to believe. How wonderful to imagine these kind, gentle creatures watching over us, keeping us company, bearing witness to what we're going through."
"River Angel" is one of those rare novels that compels the reader to keep turning its pages. The story is told with skill, warmth and genuine feeling. Ansay writes in a deceptively readable but ultimately complex manner that leaves one feeling satisfied and enriched for having gone through the experience. She is definitely well along the road to becoming a major author.
And she dances quite well, without question.
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LONDON CALLING!: FLISS USSHER on the transcendence of the dance.
TRIO: THOMAS HART's take on "The Invisible Dance."
PLANETARY MADNESS: JENNIFER BLUE's weekly forecast on your sign.
ON DRUGS: ADAM J. SMITH looks at "Bad Raids" in good neighborhoods.
POWERSBOOKS: BOB POWERS interviews "River Angel" author A. Manette Ansay, who seems to be "Dancing Toward Stardom."
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