“Writers are people who write.”

This quote is universally attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and there is no evidence that he actually said it.  But no one cares, because it’s exactly the kind of thing he would say, and we do know that’s what he believed. 

On this matter, he was correct.  If you spend an hour a day messing around on the guitar, you’re a guitar player.  If you go to the driving range every weekend, you’re a golfer.  If you write all the time, because you‘re compelled to do so, you’re a writer.  Before I was published, I didn’t feel this way, which I regret.  It wasn’t fair to my unpublished self, because I sure as hell worked like a son-of-a-bitch to remedy the situation. 

            I have a young friend, unpublished, who’s been working on a book for many years, putting in the hours of writing and rewriting, casting about for help and advice, cramming in writing time around a demanding job and busy toddler, feeling buoyed and desperate in equal measure, and generally going through the paces of apprenticeship.  To me, he’s a writer, because he’s always working at it, no matter what. 

            The thing is, writing is rarely easy.  There are moments when we all feel as if some supernatural power has taken hold of us, directing our hands to tap away effortlessly, composing as easily as breathing or strolling down the street.  We’ll also agree that this hardly ever happens.  Instead, it’s not unlike digging a ditch.  You have to put the shovel in, push down with your foot, and haul the stuff out of the ground.  This is hard work, and you know how hard it is with every word and shovelful. 

      Pausing with your hands over the keyboard while staring into the void is something our life partners have often witnessed.  They think we’ve slipped into a trance, but we know we’re only trying to come up with the next word, phrase, analogy, simile, descriptive sentence, or clever tie-up to the end of a chapter.  You feel like your mind is now trapped in concrete, and not another thought will ever occur to you.  But it always comes anyway, you just have to wait for it. 

            Some people don’t feel well unless they run a few miles a day.  Some of them are friends of mine, and in their 70s have sleek, toned bodies and the glow of clear heads and arteries.  I’m not one of them.  I think a car is a much better way to travel from point A to point B, and will never run unless being pursued by a wild animal, which is a distinct possibility where I live in New England.  But I understand their addiction.  I’m the same way about writing.  If I don’t write something, anything, at least once during the day, I feel like I’ve not slept or eaten.  I get jumpier than an addict, which I guess I am, sort of.  I know it’s a mental problem, but I’ve heard of worse. 

            Though as noted above, running for a few hours or crunching through a narrative is difficult, even if you can’t help yourself.  It usually starts smoothly, but there’s always that point when you start to fatigue and mild regret sets in.  Your breath shallows or your hands begin to get sore.  Your brain starts to wonder why you launched this effort in the first place, when you could be on the couch watching NFL Highlights or Antiques Roadshow. 

            But then, endurance kicks in, and you keep going, because why not. You’re already out on the road or at the keyboard and it seems better to just push through.  You start to think of new things to write, new connections and old ideas that can be pulled out of the dusty attic of your tired brain.  You tell yourself: this isn’t that hard. You just have to keep going, and if it sucks, you can always erase it all and start over again tomorrow.  There will aways be other ideas, other notions, other turns of phrase, something else you can put down on the page, because this is what writers do.

            They write. 

“We love to work at nothing all day.” – Bachman Turner Overdrive

I noticed at the end of the old year lots of commentary on the radio and in print about the virtues of doing nothing.  I think the premise of all these pieces was that our modern lives are consumed by distractions and attention-seeking media, such that we never turn off our brains, or rather, never disconnect from the clamor to the degree needed to settled down our inner minds.  So not literally doing nothing, just not doing things that mess up your ability to ponder, evaluate, reconsider, plan and create in a quiet mental state.

I wholeheartedly subscribe to this premise.  I have always cultivated my skills at doing nothing for this exact purpose.  Also, to avoid doing things I should be doing, while feeling self-satisfied that I’m actually using the time for deep thinking.  There’s no better way to loaf around without feeling guilty, since what you are actually doing is properly attending to healthy cognition. 

The authors’ prescriptions for treating this ailment always include taking long walks, presumably without your iPhone.  My wife and I walk our dog every day, so check that box.  None mentioned a technique I’ve developed over decades I call “Rotting on the front porch.”  This involves sitting out there half the year with a drink, these days fruit juice, and maybe a plate of cheese and crackers, occasionally with some sliced Italian sausage thrown in.  The key to this meditative practice is to leave all your devices in the house, and only bring along the dog, who can teach us all about the rewards of serious rotting behavior. 

When my niece was a little girl, she and I developed “The Lying Down Game.”  I would often come to her house after a long day at work to spend some time, and my only ambition was to lie flat on my back and stare up at the ceiling.  She was intrigued by this, and would join me on the floor.  We’d consume a fair amount of time doing this, interrupted only by occasional comments – nothing more taxing than discussing her time at school, or exchanging inane, impossibly unfunny jokes, which were nonetheless funny to the two of us.

All of this would be quite familiar to the Buddha, who taught that a quiet mind was the path to enlightenment.  He believed that forcing oneself to think was a fool’s errand.  Rather, one merely needed the mind to work unobstructed, to have the thoughts flow in naturally and unimpeded.  I think he was on to something, and maybe after a few thousand years of testing out the theory we could acknowledge the value. 

I’ve been doing a lot of woodworking lately, the thing I do along with writing.  I see the two pursuits as being essentially the same.  There’s a strenuousness to woodworking that differs from merely tapping on a keyboard, but in both activities, I take a lot of breaks.  I just sit and look around at my surroundings, which I find pleasingly chaotic, but also orderly in their own way.  Like my mind.  Even if it might appear to be a jumble to the unpracticed eye, to me, everything is where it ought to be, or will be as soon as I get off my ass and make an adjustment.  Or rewrite a paragraph.

This practice has likely improved with age, as my physical strength declines inversely proportionate to my talent for brooding and hashing things out by simply looking around. 

I could write more, but I think a productive break is in order.

The irresistible Sciurus carolinensis

            One of my writing spaces looks into the woods that stand directly behind our house. It’s full of oak, cherry and birch trees, and teeming hordes of chipmunks and squirrels.

            Also the occasional coyote, bear, deer or bobcat, but they’re infrequent visitors. The dominant species in charge of the woodland are squirrels. Since this year we’ve had the biggest crop of acorns in Connecticut history, there are a lot of those guys out there, and conditions promise to produce even more. It’s rodent heaven.

            Squirrels are the least appreciated of our Northeastern wildlife.

            They‘re often called “The Common Grey Squirrel.” Only common because they’re so successful, more than any other mammal in the neighborhood aside from the homo sapiens looking at them through the window. I also think their behavior is anything but commonplace. I know this because when I’m not working on my computer, I’m watching the squirrels.

            Their industry is phenomenal.

            They leap through the leaves and root around the forest floor with unabated enthusiasm. Their forepaws may not be hands, technically, but they hold things like I do, and munch on acorns the way kids attack an apple. However, I can’t use my hands to climb a tree, balance on a narrow branch, or catch myself after diving several yards from one tenuous hold to another with no fear or hesitation.

            Squirrels are all about work hard, play hard. Much of the entertainment comes from two, or three, chasing each other through the leaves, up a tree, then over to another, around a thick branch, back to the ground and over a split-rail fence into our yard for some open field running. There doesn’t seem to be any practical reason for this, leaving the inescapable conclusion that it’s just pure joy.

            For over twenty years we’ve had a steady supply of terriers, who are the squirrels’ sworn enemies.

            When we let them out, a mighty chase ensues. No squirrels have ever been caught, since they are very fast with plenty of trees at hand to facilitate escape. Our terriers are never discouraged by this, and never hold back, despite the lack of success. In this, they and the squirrels share the unrelenting tenacity of nature.

            We have a birdfeeder guaranteed to thwart squirrels, and it hasn’t failed us yet. That doesn’t mean the squirrels ever stop trying. The feeder is right outside a kitchen window, and after a heroic, gymnastic attempt to get at the bird seed, the squirrel will retreat to a nearby branch and look back through the window reproachfully, though with fierce determination.

“Never give up, never surrender.”

            There are many things that can distract one from writing, some of which are beneficial.

            I think high on the list are making a sandwich, letting out the dogs, putting wet clothes in the dryer, getting another cup of coffee or going to pee (the last two components of the same general process). If you’re looking for something that doesn’t entail getting out of your chair, I suggest monitoring squirrels.

            It doesn’t really undermine concentration and can even provide a bit of inspiration. No fictional character is pluckier than a squirrel. Conservative in his acorn husbandry; liberal in his tolerance of competing chipmunks. Courageous to a fault, innovative in pursuit of life’s rewards, yet always ready to just goof around. Living freely with unchecked abandon. What’s a better model?

            The way my writing space is arranged, there’s a little less than three feet between where I gaze outside and the split-rail fence.

            This means that a squirrel can perch on top of a fence post and look right at me. This happens frequently. When we stare into each other’s eyes, I wonder if he’s thinking, “What the hell are you doing in there? Why aren’t you out here collecting acorns? Don’t you know winter is coming?”

            Or it might be, “Can you please do something about those terriers?”

---

Goin’ places that I’ve never been, seein’ things I may never see again

 I heard a philosophy professor on the radio, Agnes Callard, who famously wrote a piece for The New Yorker called “Against Travel”.  Her basic premise is that the actual, long-lasting benefits of travel are delusional.  All you’re doing is disturbing the lives of people who speak another language, spoiling the very places you profess to admire, while retaining nothing of any enduring value.  That discussing your travels is a type of virtue-signaling that pleases your ego and bores your listeners

Rarely have I disagreed with a person more than Professor Callard.   She has the right to her

opinion, and her feelings, which are hers and fairly held.  One of my best friends hates traveling.  He’s a brilliant, erudite, accomplished man.  We just don’t share the same convictions on this matter, just as I hated the original “Top Gun”, which he loved, and he heaps scorn on my cherished “Independence Day”. 

Callard maintains that “tourist” is a term you use to describe other people with suitcases who go running around the world, but not yourself.  Fair enough, since tourist is clearly a pejorative, often for good reason.  The assumption is these are people who travel badly: dress like slobs, hog scenic overlooks, yell at shopkeepers as if volume will overcome a language gap, gorge on unhealthy snacks and cheap tchotchkes, and fall off cliffs trying to take shareable selfies.  They clump together in their tour group, rarely mingle with the natives, pine for hometown meals and remain blissfully unaffected by the foreign country’s physical and cultural charms.  They’re dumb jerks over there, which means they’re likely dumb jerks over here, too. 

Asked if she’d give a pass to creative people, such as Gauguin in Tahiti, or Picasso in Paris, Professor Callard grudgingly gave an inch.  The thing is, the question itself is fraught with a certain elitist presumption.   A professional accountant, not encouraged to be overly creative, can be utterly entranced and enriched by visiting a new place.  I know this because my brother-in-law was a partner at Deloitte and Touche and was positively glowing after returning the other day from a cruise around Scandinavia.  He doesn’t have to be transformed into a different person, nor would he expect to be, but he now has a mind that’s fuller and more aware than before he hopped on that boat.

My wife spent a few weeks in Africa on safari in four different countries.  She thinks about it every day, and is always moved by the recollections.  Is she a different person?  Not exactly, but she would say she is more of a person, an expanded version.

Entranced, expanded and intellectually refreshed is how I’ve felt after visiting strange new lands.  Notably Japan, Australia, Alaska and Budapest.  You can only really grasp these places, however superficially, by going there.  Driving around the Australian state  of Victoria, I felt like I’d been dropped onto a different planet.  Vast grasslands punctuated by gigantic Eucalyptus, waves of Kangaroo streaming through the grass at startling speeds, a mountainous rainforest where you half expected a Tyrannosaurus to burst out of the tangled tree limbs and vines. 

You might not care to know that on one side of the River Danube is the city of Buda, and on the other side Pest.  By I do.

My wife and I always make a point of talking to people wherever we go, which mostly means conversations with bartenders, waiters and waitresses, cab drivers, bell hops and store clerks.  But these are people who live in their places, and they have a lot to tell you if you ask.  You don’t have to move in with a family to get the basic lay of the land.  People love talking about their lives and their homes.  You just have to engage. 

For creative people, the benefits of travel are self-evident.  James Joyce moved to Paris (along with Picasso, Dali, Hemingway, Stein, Pound, etc., etc.).  Orwell, John Singer Sargent, Joyce Cary, D.H. Lawrence and artists you’ve never heard of journeyed and lived all over the place.  Critics agree that their art was hugely influenced by the changes in venue.

Brain science can explain some of this.  When you’re in familiar surroundings, your mind can sort of relax and shove many basic mental functions down and away from the most cognitive, and energy consuming, portions of the brain, like the pre-frontal cortex.  When you’re in an entirely new environment, your survival instincts kick in, and you become hypervigilant.  Your brain literally gets extra busy.  You also instinctively compare your immediate experience with the well-known, which has the effect of bringing perspective to your life back home.  This is why James Joyce sat in a room in Paris and wrote about Dublin, why Lawrence wrote about English people in Italian villages and an adobe hut in Mexico. 

I love writing in places where I don’t speak much of the language. I’m in the midst of people having a pleasant time with no danger of being distracted by neighboring conversations.  All I have to say is café Americano et croque monsieur, or cervesa y patatas bravas, and I’m good to go.  I once wrote half a book over less than a week in joints hanging off the cliffsides of Positano.  It just gushed right out of me. 

Faulkner muddled through rarely leaving Oxford, Mississippi, my favorite philosopher Immanuel Kant barely budged from Königsberg, and Emily Dickinson basically never left her room, and they all did fine, though I still think those smart folks should have travelled more.  Dickinson’s poetry might have taken a different trajectory had she consumed a Philly cheese steak or punted on the Cam.  Kant’s belief in the tenuousness of objective reality might have been bolstered by meeting a platypus. 

As with all literary pursuits, there are prosaic travel writers who can recommend great hotels and ticketing hacks, and geniuses who happen to like a good amble.  For that, you can’t do better than Bill Bryson.  Or Paul Theroux, who I think went everywhere on the planet without ever relaxing his keen eye or joie de vivre.  Even Mark Twain, the Innocent Abroad who was anything but. 

Sorry, Professor Callard.  I’m sure you have other fine qualities, but on this issue you’re just dead wrong. 

Ode to the blank page.

           It doesn’t frighten me.  I like looking at it.  All naked, pure and brimming with possibility.  A flat field covered in snow, untrammeled.  A white void, unlike the black version whose magic is threatening and malevolent.  You’re invited to disfigure the nothingness with words, which in the age of electronic pages, you can easily wipe clean again.  You can have a conversation, first with yourself, then with a possible reader, if the words start sounding like something you’d want to share. 

There is nothing about a blank page you need to dread.  It will accept anything you wish to contribute.  There are an infinite number of blank pages waiting for you to trundle across, clumsily or with easy grace.  They don’t care.  Like your devoted Labrador, a blank page will forgive your every transgression and never love you the less. 

Nothing feels more perfect than the communion between two beings.  You and the blank page are one-on-one, a fundamental relationship that produces a third thing, nourishing the world.  And like all successful unions, the more you put into it, the better it gets.  The richness is limitless, the possibilities beyond counting. 

The blank page is the ultimate renewable resource.  Consume all you wish.  There will always be another blank page, and another after that. 

Assuming the continuation of the species, the product is eternal.  It will outlive you and other material things.  It will be reborn with every new edition, or preserved as an artifact for future observers to unearth. 

            All it asks of you is to join in the process, to convert its blankness into something real.  To shape the whiteness into a new form, unique unto itself, that allows the void to exist as a tangible thing and not just a potential. 

           When the blank page is no longer blank, it becomes something else.  Its purity has been compromised, never to be perfect again.  It can never be perfect because no two readers will ever agree on what is written there.  Including the writer, who likely has the least ability to judge the result.  Even a sonnet that wins the Pulitzer Prize will whisper possible revisions, hint at blemishes, betray compromises.  Though what should be celebrated is the almost-perfect.  Or perfect in its own way.  Perfect for me, if not for thee. 

The more the fleshed-out pages, the greater the possibility for imperfection.  Irritating for the writer, though often endearing to the reader, who may savor the nicks, scuffs and scars as evidence of the work’s unique allure, its true claim to originality.  As with any object prone to the capriciousness of time, the planned purpose, that first proof of brilliance, may dim, while the less intended, the rough shavings that litter the words, sentences and paragraphs, begin to glow. 

You don’t know, the writer, the maker of footprints across the drifts of snow.  You probably never will.  But this is no reason not to make the attempt, over and over again, as long as the hands, or voice, or blinking eyes have the ability to convey.  It’s why the act of writing is always justified, the blank page an everlasting invitation.

 What’s not to love?

Amadeus

Some of the best writers I know have never published a word, nor have they tried. They don’t think of themselves as writers, and I only know of their brilliance because they write me letters (these days emails).

Concordantly, there are many professed and professional writers I’m aware of who are, to put it charitably, not very good.

I think this random sorting of talent is true with any of the arts. I like to refer to the guy who’s never joined a band sitting on his bed ripping off guitar solos like Eddie Van Halen. And clunky wanna-bees who keep starting bands and disappointing people like me when they attempt a lead. We all know both these types.

One theory for why my talented correspondents are so good is they feel no pressure. They’re just writing to a friend, and having fun with it.

They’re under no deadline (journalist, novelist, copywriter, attorney, academic) so the stakes are zero. They also have an audience of one, or just a few, and aside from the pleasure of entertaining each other, no other purpose.

I worked with a guy, a Brit, whose charm was apparent and irresistible. Occasionally dazzling. But put a camera in front of him, and he’d suddenly turn to stone.

The words wouldn’t come, and the lively grace demonstrated in casual conversation would dissolve away. I guess this is called performance anxiety. The same malady often affects talented musicians, actors, circus acts, and writers.

I can understand this when the artistic expression needs to happen in front of a live audience. If your show goes off the rails, you know it immediately, even if the people out there don’t start throwing tomatoes, storm out, or just sit in stony silence with confused looks on their faces.

With writing, chances are good the critical reader is in another room, long after you’ve written the piece, and far, far away.

There’s another more important distinction. While no one is expected to sing on key, everyone is presumed able to write at least a little, and virtually everyone does so at one time or another, even if it’s a note to the postman to stop sticking your neighbor’s catalogs in your mailbox.

So we all get a lot of latitude. The difficulty comes when you decide that you want to write well, and tell people of that intent.

Then the fear of rejection begins to creep into your heart. And by extension, once you’ve declared yourself, you assume tolerance for your failings will turn into ruthless judgment. So now you feel compelled to demonstrate your facility at every opportunity, or that’ll be the end of such foolish ambitions.

For most writers, this feeling never goes away. I remember how long it took to get the boss’s birthday card out of the copy department.

You can imagine the paranoia, the competitiveness, the relentless revisions, the magic marker-sized well wishes, the collapse of self-esteem when one of us would really hit one over the fence.

Back to my clever, officially non-writer correspondents, they are very, very good. And it is such a delight to read their work. Aside from their misspent school years (one never made it to college, though his father was a certified genius, which counts for something), no one told them how to do this.

It just happened through some natural bent toward eloquence and wit. I know these people about as well as you can know anyone, and none of them ever aspired to write professionally, because they simply didn’t want to. They had other fish to fry. I’m sure they’d sell their God-given talent to the highest bidder if such a market was available.

I once chatted with one of my father's close colleagues. They were executives in a huge, international corporation involved in engineering and technology. I knew my father was a consummate gearhead, but this guy told me, with a hint of reverence, something no one ever said to me, before or since.

“Your dad was the the best writer in the company.

His memos were legendary. They would piss off a lot of people, but only because there was no getting around how well he made the case.”

I never knew. He was long gone by then.

---

Dear Friend:

            I know you haven’t heard from me for a while.  I’ve been busy, what with geo-political upheavals and the local zoning board hearings, the copy editor’s final notes on the review copy of my book, to say nothing of feeding the needy cats and attending my cousin’s son’s bar mitzvah (I was there for the bris, not actually there, but in spirit) taking so much of my time, I can hardly drag myself into the email ecosphere. 

I do have a topic in mind, and that’s the importance of maintaining a regular correspondence, even though you’re so much better at this than me.  I have two points:  1.  Connections established and preserved over time through the written word are precious and indispensable.  2.  Writing letters is the best practice any writer can ever have.  By that I mean any person who writes for a living/wants to write for a living/loves writing/is occasionally stalled in a big writing project and needs to limber up before going back at it again.  For writers, writing letters is like training for the New York Marathon.  Without the dehydration and sprained ankles. 

You might not believe this, but I’m always very excited to see your emails pop up in my gmail account.   You could tell me anything you want, and I’d be enthralled, because I can hear your voice in your words, see your face, and imagine your life going through various triumphs and travails.  I find myself really wanting to know all about Spotty’s gastrointestinal difficulties, the struggle to pay all those vet bills, your benighted spouse denting the new Subaru, little Evelyn’s soccer goal, and the short-listing for the National Book Award. 

My life is so much less interesting than yours, since most of it is consumed by hours at this keyboard in a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side with two cats and a neighbor whose snoring is loud enough to be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records.  Though by now, it’s become sort of soothing.  I might miss it when I start my book tour, sending me to places where the walls are thicker and the loudest noises are the Harleys fleeing from law enforcement. 

You might realize that we’ve been writing to each other for about thirty years, ever since we started passing notes in Mrs. Braverman’s social studies class, including that one Mrs. Braverman intercepted where I noted she had a little piece of tissue stuck to her chin and nobody had the courage to tell her.   She got very red, but did thank me, sotto voce, after class, to her credit.  Since then, all this back and forth with you has never stopped, even when you were in Beirut and I had that little time away in rehab. 

The thing about letter writing is it’s very different from face-to-face conversation, or talking on the phone, which has it’s own peculiar qualities, positive and negative.  There’s something honest and pure about a letter.  Maybe because it isn’t a two-way communication until you hear back from your correspondent.  You’re writing it all alone in the quiet, dispensing a monologue that you control without interruption, unless a cat decides to jump on the keyboard.  Yet the whole time I’m writing to you, I’m thinking of you.  You’re there in my heart and in my mind.  I know who I’m addressing, and what you might want to hear about.  What amuses you, what stirs you to fire off a rejoinder.  It’s tailored exactly to your sensibilities and the tempo of our relationship.  And thus maybe the most personal of all types of communication. 

I’m sure you’ll answer this with a very funny satire on writers entering the formative stages of sentimental middle age, but I know you know what I mean.  I know because you’ve always sent me two letters, or emails, to every one I write back to you, so I know you understand why this is important.  And so much fun. 

Just because it isn’t a love letter, doesn’t mean you can’t send a letter to someone you love. 

Sincerely,

Your Friend

 

Reverse Bucket List

Things I will never do (in some cases, again):

Jump out of an airplane, with or without a parachute.

Eat an insect, even if cockroaches are more closely related to lobsters than spiders.

Drive 100 miles an hour, even on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Climb Mt. Everest.

Climb a ladder to change a light bulb more than eight feet off the ground.

Sing Karaoke.

Descend in a submarine of any type.

Pose naked in a figure drawing class.

Ever spend another minute in:

• Hampton, New Hampshire
• Camden, New Jersey
• Boise, Idaho
• Altoona, Pennsylvania
• A 6^th grade talent show

Compete in a talent show.

Celebrate New Years Day in Times Square.

Buy a lottery ticket.

Check into an ashram to find enlightenment.

Ride a Greyhound from New York to California.

Bungie jump.

Go to Disney Land. Disney World. Birthplace of Walt Disney.

Run a marathon.

Run for political office of any kind.

Run with the bulls.

Proofread.

Dive off a ten-meter platform.

Learn Mandarin Chinese.

Complete my own federal tax return.

Program a universal remote control.

Rebuild an automatic transmission.

Hike the Appalachian Trail.

Reason with a teenaged girl.

Saw off a body part to free myself from a boulder (easier than the above item.)

Roof the house.

Paint the house.

Paint my nails.

Paint still lifes.

Perform origami. Or auto harp.

Attend a concert in a sports stadium.

Ride a unicycle.

Ride a roller coaster. Luge.

Descend into a coal mine.

Change genders.

Take up gourmet cooking.

Publish a cookbook.

Hang glide.

Drive a motorcycle.

Drive an 18-wheeler.

Ride a mechanical bull.

Drink a glass of tap water in Tijuana, Mexico.

Spend more than one hundred dollars in a casino.

Try to play a violin.

Be rude to a checkout clerk/waitress/flight attendant/bouncer.

Cut down a tree with a diameter greater than 12 inches.

Change my own oil.

Surf.

Remove my own appendix (maybe in a pinch).

Dye my hair.

Tap dance.

Juggle.

Buy bitcoin.

Spelunk.

Go to a sporting event with my face painted in my team’s colors.

Understand quantum mechanics, though I keep trying.

Sail to Bermuda.

Or across the Atlantic Ocean. Or the Pacific Ocean. Or any other large body of water without a helicopter on the foredeck ready to fly me to dry land.

Stop opposing racism, sexism, fatism, ageism, culturalism or any other ism that threatens or demeans any distinct group of people.

Stop opposing political correctness or any other curtailment of free speech.

Have cosmetic surgery.

Swallow a sword.

Eat a glass.

Watch daytime television (even worse).

Join a fraternal organization.

Affiliate with a political party.

Attend a fundraiser for a political candidate.

Assert the merits of a political position with a stranger.

Mountain climb.

Dress up in drag.

Troll.

Get a tattoo.

Travel to Moldova.

Open a retail outlet.

Teach kindergarten, or any course south of post graduate.

Compete in a hot dog eating contest.

Hunt.

Slaughter a pig, or any other animal.

It might be hypocritical, since I eat meat, but I couldn’t do the deed myself. I can’t even catch a fish or step on a bug.

Plagiarize.

Write a negative book review (if you can't write anything nice, don't write anything at all).

Do not go gentle into that good night. Bring a flashlight.

I’m in my seventies, which makes me officially an old person.  In our euphemism-afflicted age, the preferable term is Senior, though I still think that label is better suited to someone in the twelfth grade of high school.

Another sop to this PC frenzy is to call someone like me older.  Okay, older than whom?  My brother is older than me, and always will be.  He was when I was ten and he was fourteen.

They say you’re only as old as you feel.  I feel like I’m in my seventies, at least with regard to aching joints and memory lapses.  The rest of the brain appears to still be functioning, surprisingly, given how I’d mistreated it as a younger person.  It’s a known fact that when one part of the body declines, or is abruptly taken offline, the other parts compensate, growing stronger.  This is a pleasant thought, which suggests I might be getting even smarter as I stagger out of bed in the morning and lose my car keys.   

I’m not sure what effect this all has on ones writing.  I’ve had the displeasure of reading some of my juvenilia, and it’s predictably callow and risible, though I can hear my voice buried in there, yearning to be free.  There’s no certainty that being on the other end of the age spectrum means your writing will improve, or decay.  But there are plenty of examples of the former, and precious little of the latter, barring critics’ mercurial tastes, not known for their discernment at any age. 

Thorton Wilder wrote my favorite Wilder work, the novel Theophilus North, when he was seventy-six, back when that age meant something.  And nothing good. 

I published my first book when I was fifty-three.  When checking Google on this subject, I noticed that people over fifty were categorized as “starting late.”  I didn’t know that at the time.  I did write about three books in the decades before, none publishable, but it was good exercise.  And I got to enjoy a blizzard of rejections, which strengthens the spine. 

Arthritis aside, the only physical demand of a starting-late writer is typing.  And staring at the computer screen through bifocals.  What we do have, as compensation, is a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and experience.  This is a quality that’s revered in Eastern cultures.  In America, it mostly qualifies you to be ignored by the middle aged and ridiculed by your children (the grandchildren instinctively know better, though they’re too young to copy edit or help you find an agent.)  However, if you’re lucky enough to not reprise your old mistakes, writing becomes a much more efficient process.  The key here is knowing more quickly when the work sucks, and much more willing to swipe it into the trash icon with little or no regret.  When you’re young, you don’t know that it’s possible to compose thousands, if not millions, of sentences.  That you’re capable of drastically revising a hundred-thousand-word manuscript.  So every line on the page is more precious, more deserving of life in perpetuity, even though they might, in a word, suck.

At writers conferences and panel events, when I look out at the audience, most of the heads are white or grey, or would be if not for hair dye.  So writing and reading are largely pursuits of the not-so-young.  We have more time, and fewer pressing responsibilities, and if fortunate, greater resources to sustain the habit.  And unlike Olympic-level gymnastics, something you can do until you face-plant into the keyboard. 

I just had a birthday, an occasion once celebrated, now more regrettable, since it marks less potential for repeat performances.  Some say it’s just a number, though these people can still count the numbers off on their hands and feet without losing track. 

As I’ve noted in prior posts, short term memory does not improve with age.  If I need to carry an item from Room A to Room B, I immediately put it in my pocket.  Then it will find its way to the destination, even though I might not remember why it should have gone there in the first place.  Long term memories, on the other hand, become seasoned over time.  Leavened by recurring recollection, burnished through sharing with old friends and family.  These may not be quite accurate – actually, they probably aren’t – but if you’re a storyteller, all the better. 

Ones life becomes a kind of artform of its own, where the rough outlines of events are curated and shaped into reflections both material and inventive, true by Hemingway’s definition, faithful and well aimed.  

Solitary confinement.

            Novels, short stories and poetry may be the last bastions of solitary writerly pursuits.  With the exception of the rare co-author team, most fiction writers labor in isolation, islands unto themselves.  In other creative fields employing writers, notably film and TV, and advertising, creativity is a team sport.  Playwrights usually start out on their own, but in the course of production, others are likely to stick their hands in the cookie jar. The playwright still gets all the credit, but she knows that others had their say.

            I’ve written alone and as part of a team and each has its charms.  This may be self-evident.  When working alone, all you have is yourself, and you can write what you want.  No one is over your shoulder, no one is scowling at one of your ideas (except your editor, who usually comes in at the end of the game).  It’s you alone, all by yourself, the god of your world, immune from interruption or censure.  It’s what I also love about fine woodworking and single-handed sailing. 

            But few places on earth are more fun and exhilarating than a writers room.  In advertising, we usually worked in teams of two – a copywriter and an art director, where our specialization would dissolve at the conceptual stage and each would throw in ideas for art or copy without restriction.  I might have a half-baked notion that my partner would slice into a fine part and add something interesting.  I’d take this fledgling thought and add something else, and it would go from there.  Before we knew it, something workable would emerge, and when the creative director came into the room, we’d have something to show for the time spent.           

            When writing alone, all the talk is inside your head.  In a writers room, the talk is usually about anything other than the thing you’re supposed to be working on.  If this was recorded, most strict administrators would fire us for wasting precious business time on nonsense.   But we knew we were actually circling the idea, finding context, getting to the destination via a circuitous route.  That’s because we were always thinking about the task at hand, and any nutrition from the conversation went directly into the conceptual efforts.  Ideas beget ideas.  Talk gives birth to lines of thinking that spew out concepts.  This is how it works. 

            Advertising might not be the noblest of pursuits, but it’s not that easy to do well, and when it all comes together, the adrenalin flows just as strongly as when you compose a satisfying piece of fiction (though some would argue advertising and fiction are not that different from one another).

            In his book The Innovators, Walter Isaacson maintains that the most important common element of all history-making digital advances was collaboration.  He makes his case vividly and convincingly.  Though he also cites iterations as key components.  One idea building on another.  You could apply this to fiction.  Where would the modern detective novel be without Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade?  What constitutes inspiration versus simply cribbing from an earlier work?  

             Discerning readers know the difference.  They can spot a derivation, which can be rewarding, and just as easily condemn a book as derivative.  I once wrote a book that was heavily influenced by the first chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses, which my editor mentioned to a Joyce scholar he knew.  The scholar was offended, telling the editor that my work had nothing to do with Joyce.  Okay, but I knew how I felt when I was working on that book, the same way I felt reading about Stephen Dedalus.  In the quiet of my private mind, I told the Joycean snob to stick it where the self-importance doesn't shine.  

            I think it’s fair to say that an iteration, at its most benign, is a form of collaboration.  Musicians will tell you at least half of popular music is based on the traditional 12-bar blues - tonic, sub-dominant, dominant - format (Steve Liskow, please weigh in).  That doesn’t mean so many priceless songs are illegitimate.  

Often when confronted with two equally appealing alternatives, I vote for both.  Working alone is the best, except when working in a team.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.