Bumps In The Road
by Carol Roan
March 2010
I first met Dody Williams when I read and admired the craftsmanship in one of her stories. I cried over that story, and laughed over another that I heard her read in a workshop. I wanted to learn more about the woman who could so skillfully combine compassion and humor.
Dody was in her forties before she began to write, but her short stories and essays have already been published both here and abroad and have won a number of contests. Her work has been anthologized twice, most recently in the forthcoming When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50 (Holy Cow! Press, Duluth, MN).
She did not plan to become a writer. "When my daughter left for college, I embarked on my Master’s degree from UNCG. It was one of those life-changing sorts of experiences," she says. "I rediscovered my love of writing after nearly thirty years. I had a horrible experience with a teacher in junior high school, who, after reading my original story, wrote on my paper ‘Did you really write this?’ instead of giving me a grade. It made me gun-shy. Taking writing classes at UNCG changed all of that and set me on my current path."
Dody is also an artist, a costume designer, and a product designer who is in love with Victoriana and what she calls "pretty things." Wander through her Web site, lacegrl130.com, and you will find not only lace but a video that uses antique fashion plates from her collection, a charming slide show honoring Mt. Holyoke women, and her "scrapblogging," collages that combine words and images. She did not intend to become an artist, either.
She graduated from Millikin University with a BFA in Theatre, and began a career as an actor. For more than a year, she played Bobbi in Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers with the Willamette Repertory Theatre in Oregon; she did commercials and voice-overs; she modeled.
"I had to work so many extra jobs to keep all of it going. Then I met my husband and decided to settle down. I applied for a job at a brokerage house, and the hours felt like heaven! … So, after we came to Greensboro, I took the tests to become a licensed registered representative, and I have been working in the financial services field for over twenty years and loved every minute."
So how does she manage all this? A full-time, high-pressure job while raising a daughter, acquiring a graduate degree (magna cum laude) at fifty-one, and establishing herself as a writer and artist? Dody credits the "bumps" she encountered along the way.
The first bump came from that junior high teacher who did not recognize writing talent when she saw it. Dody subsequently chose another dream – the theatre, where she could re-create the words of others. "My personal, secret goal," she says, "was to appear in a … Merchant Ivory costume, big-screen feature film depiction of some obliquely pertinent English novel."
When she married and began to age out of petite ingenue roles, her dream of playing in a Merchant Ivory film changed to one of designing costumes for those films. She was accepted into the MFA program for costume design at UNCG, but then discovered she was pregnant. In between diapers and bottles and the PTA, she developed a passion for interior design. "Not the kind you see in furniture showrooms; my own individual quirky kind. I was an interior decorating version of Emily Dickinson, only my house was my preferred medium."
After her home was fully decorated, she turned to gardening and to creating more lovely little things that she began to sell. Victoria Magazine became interested in Dody and her crafts, but Hearst decided to close the magazine down, and another dream faded away. By the time Victoria was re-launched by another publisher, Dody’s dream of being written about had brought her back full circle to a dream of writing her own work.
Her heart could have created another bump for someone less determined than Dody. "I have an arrhythmia," she remarks offhandedly. "My heart would turn off and then reset, so I would be beatless for eight seconds, which is too long. I had a pacemaker implanted, and the arrhythmia is controlled with drugs."
An unfulfilled dream can stop us in our tracks, or it can be the impetus to dream again. We can see bumps as roadblocks, or we can look for a different path. We tend to think of a creative person as someone who brings something into being – a painting or a new business, a story or a new surgical procedure. Dody Williams is certainly creative in that sense, but she is perhaps even more inspiring for the life that she has created.