The Buzz of Life and Love

Even in old age

It is a beautiful autumn morning; each one a dress rehearsal for the next. Today it feels like a gigantic task to finish a story started a year ago. I have tried to be disciplined and finish it but feel caught in this merciless trap of routine and doldrums.

Recently I gathered up a whole bunch of writing and piled it into a folder and gave it to Steve for his opinion. A week later, he told me that he had shared it with some friends, the consensus being complimentary. I hadn’t meant for him to do anything but read it and give me an idea of what was wrong.

Writing has never been something that took my life over to the point that nothing else mattered. Most of my work is a mess. I’ve been fortunate to have a few friends on Medium who have been most encouraging. Writing folk seem the best of all in this difficult world.

Steve is a smart man, and I trust him with anything I write, having always followed his advice. He is not an editor, agent, or has any contacts with publishers. He’s just smart guy, great intellect, and reads avidly anything and everything he can lay his hands on.

“You do have a feeling for stories, for plot, and maybe the dramatic situation. Personally, I enjoy reading the dramatic situation to anything else. But honestly, and I’ve said this many times, the story you need to tell is your own. Why waste your time with fiction?” Steve and I have been through a lot together. He knows damn well why I like to work at fiction.

I like a good image and yes, like most everyone, I can look back upon my life and bring a dramatic scene to the page, but I want more than that, and it is this ‘more’ thing that demands creativity.

Stories need texture, smell, taste, and a place to grow. I’m trying to create a mushroom here, not grow crabgrass. A life of writing into old age is saving me. I am someone totally lost from the world and everything in it for a few hours a day. There will come a point, and it needs to be sooner than later, I’ll get past the lousy writing. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I never will.

In old age, or being older, the buzz of life becomes something different. You’ll get around to it sometime. But here’s a thing that doesn’t change. You don’t stop caring. Being a writer helps me with life, with sincere and tender thought. There was a time, honestly, when the notion of tender thoughts was as faraway as youth is today. But every day I come to my study, look out over the ocean, turn on my laptop, and feel the buzz of life and love.

Writing…thank you God.