Writing Now After All These Years

What Took So Long?

Going through my Mother’s papers and keepsakes after she’d passed away, I ran across a story: “Should We go Over Independence Pass?” It was my first story. I was 3rd grade? Maybe 2nd grade?

My Mother had carefully saved it all those years in an envelope marked “MaryJo’s First Story.” Even more surprising than my Mother saving the story is that I remember writing it.

The family was planning our every-other-year Colorado vacation. My parents, my Grandmother, and I were sitting at the dining room table.(On off years, we traveled to Yellowstone National Park, Boston, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Montreal. My Father adored road trips!)

“Raymond,” my Grandmother asked my Father, “Do you think we should try going over Independence Pass this early in June?”

He wasn’t sure. My Mother thought it might not be open yet. (I don’t know why someone didn’t check with the the Colorado Department of Transportation?) The pass, 12, 095 feet at its summit, is closed in the winter. The amount of snow fall left in June determines the date of the opening.

I remember nothing of the trip. I have no idea whether we went over Independence Pass or took Loveland Pass to cross the Continental Divide. Loveland would have been open. Unfortunately my story didn’t provide the answer.

But I remember sitting at my Grandmother’s little phone table in the front hall, writing my story in pencil on a Big Chief tablet.

I’ve always been writing but oddly rarely with the thought of writing on a platform where many would read, like or not like, comment, and otherwise engage. Once in awhile, someone might comment on a blog post, but I never had enough traffic that such made a difference.

Kind of, in a haphazard way, with no plan, no calendar, no outline, I thought vaguely about writing a book. In my heart, I knew I wanted to do this . . . but something stopped me.

So I amused myself with casual writing instead: blog posts, Christmas letters, and chatty, long emails.

Christmas Letters

Some have said I should publish my Christmas letters, and I do have them all. I may be the only person alive who writes Christmas letters that others appreciate.

The year one of our sons died I didn’t write a letter. I got notes and emails. “Dear MaryJo, What happened to your Christmas letter this year? Did it get lost in the mail? I’ve saved all your old ones. I look forward to your letter every year.”

Perhaps that should have been a wake up call to take writing seriously?

Caleb’s emails

One year we had our 14-year-old grandson with us. I wrote at least a dozen overly-long emails about that adventure.

A friend emailed back after one of them. “MaryJo, I hope you’re saving all those emails about Caleb. They’re terrific. You could publish a small book.” I never saved the emails. Just one story remains.

Master’s Thesis I burned it after a fuss about a footnote in the final draft.

PhD Dissertation: I was accused of making my dissertation too readable. It wasn’t formal and boring enough for serious academic writing. I made a few revisions and received the degree.

Later the Illinois University Press accepted “Farms, Families, and Reform: Women in the Farmers’ Alliance and Populist Party” for publication. I never followed through. Now this 300-page dissertation is buried in the bottom of an old file cabinet. (There is no link here for you to read it.)

It is listed in the Library of Congress but so is every other unpublished dissertation.

I’m still passionately interested in the general topic of my dissertation and have the beginnings of a book about women homesteaders in Colorado and Nebraska.

This book would focus on the stories of a great-grandmother, two grandmothers, and a star of my dissertation. I interviewed several living relatives of the star, Luna Kellie, and cajoled them out of family papers. Her stuff is buried in the bottom of the file cabinet next to the dissertation.

Every once in awhile, somebody will ask, “MaryJo, you still working on that book “The Four Grandmothers: Women Homesteaders in Colorado and Nebrska”?

Editing Instead of writing for myself, I spent several years editing other people’s work for academic journals. I managed to crank out one measly article from my dissertation. Got it published in some little known journal, the name of which I’ve long forgotten.

And I spent hours helping graduate students with their dissertations. An English professor friend of mine, who had given up hope, asked me to help one of her students who was struggling. That I was an historian and not in the English Department didn’t matter.

I helped her. The student had her dissertation accepted and ultimately published. Accepted a teaching position at the University of Houston, received tenure, and became head of the English Department. She thanked me in the acknowledgments of her first book.

Ghost Writing Eventually became a “professional” ghost writer including writing a novel for a client. Wrote a newspaper column, blog posts, a newsletter, sales copy, website pages, and ebooks. Edited (and sometimes rewrote) the books my clients published.

Why Didn’t I Write for Myself?

I’m now so old I have great-grandchildren, gray hair, and walk with a cane, writing for myself, and LOVING IT!

Why did I wait so long? I’m not sure. The usual stuff comes up: fear, doubts that my writing is beyond dreadful. That it’s arrogant to put one’s self out in public.

Maybe because I was raised to help other people and was told often that I was spoiled when I wanted to do “my own thing”? I was an only child so by my family’s definition “spoiled.” To this day, I cringe when someone says the word “spoiled.”

My Grandmother, who had arranged my adoption, was partially blind. It was my job to help her. Early on, long before an appropriate age for a child to look after her elders, I was my Grandmother’s caretaker

I’d be playing outside at my friend Sharra’s house. Her Mother would come to back door, “MaryJo, your Mother just called. She needs you to come home.”

That meant to help Nana who lived just three blocks away. To find her keys or her reading glasses, to move something, put something away, take something down from a high shelf. Run down to the corner grocery store for a loaf of bread.

I even fed her at the hospital after cataract surgery — then major surgery requiring several-days hospitalization. Because my uncle was on the hospital staff, I was allowed, against the rules, into the patient area. Being tall and mature beyond my years didn’t hurt.

Helpers help other people write. Helpers don’t write for themselves.

Finally Writing for Myself

I can put the blame for the current flurry of writing on Medium, on Jeff Herring, Tim Maudlin, and Dr. Mehmet Ildiz.

I blame my readers who comment and clap on what I read.

I blame my friend Sharra who reads every single story, claps, and then texts that she’s read it.

I blame being named a “Top Writer in Reading.”

All of a sudden I want to write every day, all the time. It’s become an obsession. Posting everyday is put out there as a challenge by my mentors.

It’s not a challenge. It’s what I do. I love what I do.

That it’s taken me almost 80 years to figure out my passion . . . well, some of us are slow learners. Or “better late than never” and all those other worn out cliches.

Maybe it’s taking in that I’ve given myself permission to do what I want to do. I don’t have to figure out what the market wants, where the best niche is for an online business, what I’d be good at even if I don’t want to do it.

My first ebook, a compilation of stories from Illumination, Oh Look . . . There’s a Squirrel, will soon be available on Amazon.

I’m writing. I’m loving what I do.

P.S. What about you? Are you living your passion? You don’t need to wait as long as I did. You could be doing it right now.

A grandson learns to read despite himself:

The day I threw my master’s thesis in the fire: