Can We Be SANE Without Writing?

 

Recently, I reached an age where I admit to being in my 60s. 

This milestone has got me thinking about what it means to be a working author at a time when all your friends are retired. (Husband as well, the poop.)

For instance, today Mike is golfing.  I - in contrast - am sitting at my computer taking a break from three solid hours of going through publisher edits, working to a deadline of Friday.  This includes several hours yesterday, the day before and the day before that.  

My neck hurts.  I'm not sure I'll be able to get out of this chair without help. And as I look wistfully out the window at lake Ontario on this glorious day, I can't help wondering if I'm doing the right thing.  There are only so many hours left to live.

 

1000 HOURS A BOOK

It takes me a year to write a historical mystery, from the original first draft, the endless research, to the final edited version.  1000 hours for each book, I estimate.  

My 18th book will be published in March.  My 19th (the work in progress) will be a year after that. My 70th short story will be published this November. 

Even ignoring the short stories, that's 20,000 hours of writing for 19 published books. (The first didn't get published, to my immense relief.  Even I thought the protagonist was a whiny nincompoop.)

I have writer friends (the best of the bunch) and non-writer friends (incredibly patient and tolerant) who seem to have more brains than I do.  So I ventured this question out loud to them:

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY I'M STILL DOING THIS?

Bless them all. Here are the two best answers I got:

YOU HAVE A PUBLISHER, NINNY!

For so many of my writing students, getting a publisher is the Holy Grail.  And indeed, I thought so too, as I shlepped my work around twenty years ago. 

Having a publisher means your work is still getting read, and is making the publisher money.  They let you go if it isn't. 

I'm under contract for two more books, but it does make me wonder what comes after that.  And this leaves the ultimate question: do we quit writing novels on our own terms, while they are still being sought, or do we wait until a publisher no longer wants them?

 

WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU DO?

At first I burst out laughing, when Thom said this to me. My friend and writing colleague Thom Bennett is blessed with wisdom and good nature.  He also deals in tough love.  I listen when he talks.

He tells me this:  "What else would you do with that time you spend writing? I know women your age who have nothing to do but go to lunch. They spend hours lining up people to have lunch with every day, desperate to keep their calendars full.  Is that who you want to be?"

I like lunch.  But I have to admit, he made me think.  If you had a full time job in your middle years, and kids at home, you probably didn't have time to develop many hobbies outside of work.  My hobby was writing, of course.  Which is why we are having this soul searching today.

To which I add my own question:  

CAN I BE SANE WITHOUT WRITING?

I honestly don't know.  Can you?

I've been writing since I was eight. I earned my first award when I was a high school senior (a City of Toronto children's book award.)  

I can't imagine my life without days full of writing.  In fact, it scares the hell out of me.  

At the same time, I worry that - on my death bed - I will regret having spent so much of my final decade/s alone in my office at a keyboard.

How about you? Any advice? Do you ever question whether spending your 60s and upward years writing is the right thing to do?

 

Melodie Campbell has been called the "Queen of Comedy" by The Toronto Sun.  Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine called her "The Canadian literary heir to Donald Westlake." You can get her books on Amazon, and all the usual suspects.