Writer

I'm not a writer. I write, but I'm not a writer. I spill words out of my head onto a keyboard. Sometimes they make sense to me and sometimes they do not. I'm surrounded by writers, real writers and I am humbled by their works. Each one of them has an impressive body of work, multiples of books, thousands of pages, published and 'un'. I have this blog.

When I was going through the breakup of my twenty-five-year marriage and subsequent divorce I kept a daily journal of thoughts, feelings, and activities. I thought, at the time, it might serve as a blueprint for an escape route to anyone in a situation like mine. It wasn't great literature but it was tremendously useful for me. I don't think anyone has ever read it except myself although I've offered it up for reading to a few of my closest friends. They just tell me that they lived it with me and that was enough. I get it. Plus, my own personal belief is that a relationship is like a chemical formula and they don't all mix well or play nice in every situation. Maybe I just brought out the worst in him and he in me. By the time our 25th Anniversary rolled around, my 25-year-old self wouldn't have recognized my 25 years married self. Now I go back and read passages just to remind myself of how far I've come.

Still, the blueprint stuff might work. It pays to write things down, work things out, go back, and read them again after a time. I find things I'd forgotten or that my memory had rewritten and I'd fashioned a different outcome. So in tumultuous times, I think its a great idea to keep a journal who knows who you'll help? Now that might make you a writer too. 

I used to write stories with my best friend. We were teenagers impressed with the world of TV spies and rock n' roll heroes and, like many teenagers, dreamed up lives where we walked among these spies and rock n' roll legends. We gave ourselves great names, dreamed up worlds of fancy cars, flashy clothes, fantastic situations, and brilliant dialogue! (as brilliant as one could be at 15 anyway...plus it's really nice to have the time to come up with all the great quips, better than having to come up with it on your feet, so to speak) We called it "the story" and kept it going for many years, over oceans and, great events in our lives. Truthfully, I loved it but grew out of it. I couldn't imagine myself a clever spy married to a brilliant, talented, handsome, and crazy rich superstar any longer. My version of "the story" was always taken from a hopefully screwy kid that thought that just maybe some of this stuff could actually happen. As adulthood set in I lost that aspect of my imagination I'm sorry to say. I could no longer make the transition but my best friend never lost her rock and rolling spy girl and continued writing or dreaming of writing, I'm not sure which. 

When we sat down about a year ago to discuss "the story" I knew, even though I am retired and (some might say) have nothing better to do with my time..... I didn't want to marry any consistent expectation of my time or talents. She was itching to dig into it and after years of not doing anything with it, I urged her to take the project and run with it. I used an analogy that it was 'like we'd had an amicable divorce and she got custody of the baby'. She smiled at the time like she 'got' my attempt at humor but apparently not because months later she told me how hurt she had been over my dismissal or the project. Clearly, though, it couldn't be in better hands. She has refashioned it, jazzed it up, and written reams without any of my input. I think it's fantastic!

My sister writes too, volumes and volumes of great stories, reconfiguring heroes of old into fresh new ones, creating great distant lands and,  exploring family dynamics. When we lived together she would sit me down each night and read to me. It helps to read your stuff out loud and then its easier to 'read' someone's stuff if they read it to you. It's been a very long time since those late-night reading sessions of tea and cigarettes. These days her lastest submissions are files attached to emails that can be opened with certain Apps on my tablet or phone, all 300+ pages. I miss the ease of listening to her read it, and maybe the cigarettes (not so much). She has invested in her writing, attending seminars, doing readings of her works, and even publishing on her own. She invites critique but I know she's wary. It's hard to hear negative results.  To her credit, she uses it to improve what she has done. To each their own, I say.

My breakfast companion writes too! (I told you I was surrounded) He's published lots of tasty morsels using a self-publishing site. Everything he produces is very different, from missions to the dark side of the moon to recounting cross country adventures writing one of the most haunting views of the desert I have ever had the pleasure to envision, and although the exact text evades me the haunting memory of that vision remains. He has taken classes in writing but is also schooled in humor and art that he skillfully combines to the delight of many of his followers on social media. He has shared his expertise on many subjects like cats on the web; a subject near and dear to both of us. We have six of them between us, and a dog who probably thinks she's a cat by now but can't figure out why she's so much bigger than the rest of them. He tells me I'm a writer too and I blush. I know what high esteem that title is held in. He encourages me to continue to spill out my thoughts across the keyboard and that feels very loving. I shy away from the title while others embrace it. It's a lot to live up to.