The Age Thing

In a recent blogpost, I listed reasons I envied a particular Western Slope poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. One of my reasons was her being six years my junior, yet already so much further ahead of me. Perhaps because I’m the baby of my family, age has always been a factor, a gauge, for longer than I can remember. Too, I grew up in Texas, sorta the South, where regard and respect for one’s elders is axiomatic. And even now, as I’m but a year and small change from AARP age, I’m still feeling behind, like the baby of the writing family—even amid those younger than I.

Those of my tribe who are older than I, nonetheless, at ages much younger than my current one, had accomplished so much already. When Terry Tempest Williams came to a bookstore in Colorado Springs for a reading and signing of, Red, she was already such a name that the bookstore had to hand out seating tickets, which were filled weeks ahead of her arrival. During the event, Williams had just the month before turned nearly three years younger than I am, now.

Here I am, on the cusp of half a century, with so phenomenally little to show for my writing: A dozen, maybe a dozen and a half, book reviews; handful of essays, several rejected short stories. Every writer I see is, or was, at least ten full years ahead of me. The latest bloomer I can find is, Annie Proulx, who wasn’t published until she was forty. (I was forty-three when my first book review was published.) Typically, by their early- or mid-thirties, a writer’s career is already being established, if not already firmly so. Reading John McPhee say he submitted to The New Yorker for ten years until they accepted his work exacerbates my feelings of inadequacy and having come far too late to the party.

Yet, listen to me, being upset and despairing because I’m not following convention. Acting as though I have to give up my vocation because I’ve become later along in my years in answering it. As though because I’ve had a late start, I’m destined, doomed, to never finish. Too, I forgetting one of the crucial traits writers and artists must possess: persistence.

Writing, like much any art, can be isolating and lonely. It can be despairing during the tough spells. It can seem an easier and better thing to chuck it all for something more sensible, more conventional. For those of us without a family or readily-available support group to spur us onward through the fog and muck, to remind us of our abilities and how the world is needfully hungry for our gifts, it can seem even more uphill, even more isolating and lonely.

Early in my association with Susan J Tweit, I was commenting how it seemed I hadn’t gotten much of anywhere, even after all my years of writing. “I think you’re further along than you think,” she replied. At around the same time, during a writing conference, WC Jameson pulled me aside and told me much the same thing. Perhaps this is where talent, ability isn’t enough. I’ve read Georgia O’Keeffe regarded herself as possessing mere average talent, but above average arrogance. Afterall, writing is the easy part. It’s the placing your work into the outside world that takes courage. Perhaps it’s something other than talent for writing that’s placed so many of the rest of my tribe so far ahead of me.

Where We Work

In the four-plus years I’ve known Susan J Tweit, I’ve coveted her writing space. With its views, its layout, its two shelves of books, its being set aside solely for her writing, I feel I could produce incredible writings. (Much moreso than at the desk I currently have crammed against my apartment’s living room wall.) Likewise, many of the local artists have long longed for her husband’s large and thoroughly-stocked studio, where he turned boulders into sculpture.

I’ve just finished reviewing David E Hilton’s recently published first novel, Kings of Colorado, for, Colorado Central. I was struck by Hilton’s seemingly innocuous placement of details, early on, which develop into resonant symbols or are the beginnings of the filo layers of the story.

 “Writers write,” goes the aphorism; and Ron Carlson says, “The writer is the one who stays in the chair.” Andre Dubus III wrote, The House of Sand and Fog, “in the front seat of my car.” Hilton wrote his novel, “mostly in his apartment’s stairwell just after the birth of his first son.”

That such haunting works have been crafted under such conditions should be a strong lesson for all of us—artists, especially; writers even moreso. What matters isn’t so much the place outside us where we do our work, as is the place we are inside ourself.

 Back in college, my advanced comp professor would listen only so long to our whinings and questions about an assignment until she’d bark, “Shuddup and write.”

Ah, but excuses come simply and readily, don’t they? And there are rational reasons we don’t give our craft the time and attention it deserves. But, according to Dr Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie, “Excuses are the lies we tell others; rationalizations are the lies we tell ourself.”

So where else does that leave us, but fully responsible for, accountable to, our craft? Me? I’m hearing again and again, Dr Cockelreas’, Shuddup and write.

Whispered by Name

In last week’s blogpost I mentioned being amid an upsurge of good things regarding my writing. One of those “good things” will happen tomorrow night, when I’ll be included with a gaggle of writers in celebrating a local bookstore’s re-opening at its new location. The writers’ part of the celebration is being called, A Rapid Fire Salute To The Written Word. Each writer will be given one minute to read something they’ve written. Here’s a short list of writers invited: Kent Haruf, Laura Hendrie, Susan J Tweit, Felice Larsen, and Mark Irwin. For me to be included in a presentation with any one of these writers is a substantial honor and blessing. To be included with the entire lot? To be among the limited number there are spots for? Well, even though I’m a skilled writer, I’m not finding words that do justice.

Perhaps one of the sorceries of small towns is that you’re seen for who and what you are, even when it’s still unapparent to you. Since the days before moving to this magical mountain valley river town, I’ve considered myself merely a beginning writer. And while that may be true, in a sense, I am considered by those around me as something more than, something other than, “beginning.”

It’s not an uncommon occurrence for writers to hold themselves at bay, keep themselves in check until they’re given “permission.” Typically, this permission is received when someone whose judgment carries weight calls them by name, calling them a writer. The irony is that this receiving permission has never been necessary, for the writer has always had it. It becomes something of a post facto realization—just like the fact that folks have been calling them by name, calling them, “writer,” for quite some time. It’s just been a little below hearing range, as though whispered.

Skinning the Cat

The past few weeks, I've been back-and-forthing, via facebook, with Steve Edwards, author of, _Breaking into the Backcountry_. (For a brilliant review of Edwards' book, check out Susan J Tweit's blog-review:
http://susanjtweit.typepad.com/walkingnaturehome/2010/09/book-review-breaking-into-the-backcountry.html
Steve had posted a line from Springsteen's, "Atlantic City," which led to the aforementioned back-and-forthing.

In my most recent FB message to Steve, I mentioned Springsteen's development as a songwriter, musician. How his newer songs are far more hope-filled, less dark and negative. Further, and what I didn't mention to Steve, is Springsteen's taking audience requests for songs (not his own) during his recent concerts, and then he and the E Street Band would play them.  *sigh*  To have such depth of knowledge of one's art---'twould be a wonderful thing. I hope to get there, myself, regarding my writing.

The past handful of years have brought me into occasional working contact with Susan Tweit. I've been able to see, up close, how one particular writer makes it work: the "doing of the thing." With my current collaborating with Sherrie York, I'm seeing how another artist, and in a different medium, "makes it work." Will I take either's way as my own? Hopefully, I'll figure my own way. But will both of these craftswomen inform and influence the forging of mine own path? I hope I'll be so wise.