Writing for the Right Reasons

It’s not about growing followers, claps, readers, or bucks…

I opened the door and entered a large crowded room — where I meandered from cocktail-clutching cluster to cluster. Everyone smiled, everyone made a space for me, and everyone just had to ask this question.

“What do you do?”

Sartre nailed it. Hell is other people.

Even well-meaning, simply curious ones.

What I have only recently learned, however, is that hell is also ME.

My beliefs have constructed my Inferno. My insecurities sparked its fires; my resentment stoked the flames; my envy of other people’s easy replies to “what do you do” fouled my environment worse than brimstone, which is an elegant word for sulfur.

Small wonder I have long hated the very scent of eggs. I covet their ability to break open and flow forth.

Or, to put it another way, to hatch.

Oh, I’d hatched over the decades — into a daughter, a wife, a mother, an ex-wife, a mother in law, a grandmother, a lover and partner, a good friend. I’d become a pianist, a soprano, a publicist, a retiree, a volunteer, a born-again Progressive, a lifelong learner, a once and future swimmer, a walker, a rock collector, a gardener, a doodler, a disciple.

What did not hatch was The Dream. Since reading my first mystery, the very yolk and white of me had yearned to serve myself up on a platter to the world as the new Carolyn Keene.

By my 20s, ever the mystery lover, I was determined to be the next Agatha Christie or PD James. There was just one problem: plot escaped me. Ditto for my subsequent forays into literary fiction, romance novels, and children’s books.

Jane Austen, Maya Angelou, Aimee Bender, Anais Nin, Ann Patchett, JK Rowling, Virginia Wolff. They and the gazillion other literary goddesses I worshipped and adored were ‘real’ writers. Not only had they brilliantly mastered plot, but they’d cracked whatever else it took to fly high and feather their nests with the following:

· A literary agent

· A publisher

· Invitations to give readings

· Hordes at said readings

· Acclaim

· A respectable livelihood and, in JK Rowling’s case, more money from a series than Queen Elizabeth inherited

For all I loved mysteries, I wasn’t much good at living with this one: finding the clue to getting published. By my 50s, I suspected why.

In the natural world, eggs are Meant to hatch. If they don’t, it’s for a damn good reason. A mother may abandon a nest. (I abandoned my craft for months at a go.) Or perhaps the egg is kept too warm. (If you can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen — I couldn’t, and did.) Or maybe the egg is too cold. (How many times did I get cold feet?)

Sometimes the embryo is simply “unviable.” Check that box, too, girlfriend, and let’s investigate this mystery further…

*****

“Guess what I’ve decided?” I announced to BG, a close high school classmate. “I’m going to be a writer.”

BG burst into laughter. “YOU?”

Granted, for most of us, high school is a Circle of Hell. Thank God, unlike the souls in Dante’s Inferno, we graduate from it. When it comes to BG, however, I’m still enrolled.

WHAT IF SHE WAS RIGHT?

Rather than risk learning BG had been dead-on, I embarked upon a stellar, Sisyphean career of self-sabotage:

I attended a University boasting one of the top Journalism schools in the nation. Just as it was time to get serious, I transferred to a campus with no j-school to be nearer a beau.

After college, I landed a gig writing features for a local magazine. I freelanced as well and momentum built. Then I quit because I ‘needed’ to make ‘real’ money. (Uh oh, there’s that word ‘real’ again.)

I dabbled in screenwriting and actually made some impressive contacts willing to mentor me. But when I got pregnant and became a stay-at-home mom, I focused solely on crafting fliers for the PTA.

I was accepted into a prestigious writer’s conference (Bread Loaf) and, encouraged by my advisor (a ‘real’ writer) completed a children’s book my daughter’s classmates still ask about. I received a grand total of one rejection…and, you guessed it, buried the manuscript in the back of a closet.

I wrote not one but two versions of a book chronicling my spiritual journey through divorce… then chucked it, after (a record!) four rejections. It wasn’t ‘right.’ No one would relate.

I still don’t know how or whether Medium and the Magic are linked. Whatever. Three days ago, after a year and a half dillydallying on Medium and over forty of christening myself a wanna be, I realized I AM.

It was such a proverbial bolt out of the blue that I can only say I was Saul on the road to Damascus, minus the three days of blindness. In an instant, I SAW.

When I hit “submit,” I AM a writer.

No, that’s wrong. When I conceive an idea, type that first word, I AM a writer.

I know.

I knew this. But I didn’t KNOW it — the way you KNOW your cat, Mr. Aloof On Steroids, understands you lost your job; he hasn’t left your side since you walked in the door and now he’s on your lap, licking your hand.

Gimme acclaim. Gimme adulation. Gimme big bucks. Gimme vengeance on all naysayers beginning with BG. What is Gimme but a debilitating, appalling lack of gratitude for what I do have?

The sacred drive to write.

The supernatural strength to persevere.

The patience (well, kind of) to trust.

The blessed willingness to click on an acquaintance’s Facebook link and discover a platform called Medium. The faith and courage to believe that what worked for others would work for me.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Carl Jung

My unconscious was clogged with gimmes, blinded by lack. And while my ex-husband is the astrophysicist — “In much of physics, opposites attract, thus winding up making things neutral,” he informed me” — I am convinced, by the example our marriage provided, that negative energy attracts more of the same. Spats in the 1980s were mushroom clouds by 2015. Our desire to behave with integrity, decency, trust, and, yes, love throughout our separation ignited an invincible friendship.

Ergo, lack attracts lack. Including a lack of readers. Not that I give a damn. (Well, I do…but I’ve got a point to make.)

Gimme has been replaced with Let’s.

Let’s write something that will help others, I urge my muse.

Sometimes others turns out solely to be the two of us, my muse and I. Sometimes others includes you. (Thank you.) Other times, a few more.

But I’m no longer focused on increasing the few to thousands. I have the luxury to be retired, and I’m going to take advantage of it and leave the marketing to Gen Xs and Millennials.

That said, GXs and Ms, consider this: marketing from a desire to serve humanity rather than your pocketbook or ego just may be your best promotional miracle yet.

Meanwhile, for this old Boomer, it’s enough to publish the thing then, like a mama bird with her fledgling, send it off with a prayer.

Bon voyage, little bird. May you land where you are needed.