Life Difficulties Which Led Me To Writing -- Garbo

Maine winters are long. In April it will be spring on the calendar, but it will be late winter in Northern New England. The days are unusually short because the Atlantic coast pokes out eastward once it starts heading for Canada. It's not Alaska's two hours of daylight but in December and January the sun starts going down around 4 p.m. One tells oneself it's still afternoon but the desire to go to bed is strong. 

The New England snow can really pile up, and there's a layer of ice on everything. Over this last weekend, as I shut the storm door and then shut the front door to keep Old Man Winter out, I thought "A person who loves the outdoors would either be cross-country skiing or running around the house like a squirrel, leaping at the windows and doors and squeaking to be let out. Good thing I'm an interior-life kind of person. And I bet this is why writers live here, huh?"

This thought brought my mind around to difficult circumstances which have actually driven me to write more than if life had been easier:

1. I often had no one to tell my troubles to when I was young. 

Frankly, what I learned early about people was that you couldn't tell until too late who the dangerous ones were. And then when I was older, I was always the kind of person who wanted to fight her own fight, not run and tell on people to others. Most of my life I was agnostic, and rarely did it occur to me to pray. Other people might have kept a diary, but I'm naturally the creative type, so the people and situations were melted together and re-formed to become stories and novels. 

2. I grew up when working outside the home was discouraged for women.

When I was a girl, since I insisted on refusing to marry, I had it pointed out to me (repeaedly) that I would need my own income. You could be a teacher or a nurse, people said to me. 

Or you could be a writer, thought I! Daphne du Maurier was a writer, and so was Agatha Christie, and Pearl Buck. (Happily, I didn't realize yet that most writers also have a day job.) 

3. This is a hard one: people want me to shut the hell up, and they express that wish constantly.

 I blame the "Edith, will you stifle yourself?" responses on timing. I was born in the Year of the Fire Rooster, also known as the Year of the Lonely Rooster. This noble bird is shown with bedraggled feathers falling off, perched on a rickety fence with the farmyard littered by scattering of shoes and old cans thrown by people who didn't want to hear crowing at dawn. I guess the Fire Rooster is supposed to grasp a stick in its talons and scratch "Hey, the sun is up!" message in the dirt.  

4. Writing takes grit and determination anyway, and here's more celestial resistance: I've been pretty sure at times that I was meant to depict things instead of do things. I have a T-square in my astrology chart , which is the "Oh no you don't" pattern of daily frustration. People without a T-square do, people with a T-square either explode trying to force things, or they try and figure out why nothing's working, or they find an outlet. Running, bare-knuckle fistfights, dozens of acid trips, or writing have all been triede by people with T-square horoscopes.  

Note: not my actual natal chart.

5. In my youth, I was immersed in an agro-industrial culture, otherwise known as Indianapolis, Indiana.

Just outside the city limits, and on my grandparents' farm in West Virginia, people grew food. A couple hours north, people made steel and shipped it down in railroad cars for us factory folk to make into cars and refrigerators.

If someone asked you what you'd been doing with your time, they meant they wanted to see a bushel of corn. Or a well-made rubber seal for an auto's oil pump. They don't want to hear about a wonderful story you just read. Books about pretend people doing pretend things? What would anyone want to fool around with those?  You don't end up with anything worthwhile.Thank my lucky stars for Julia Cameron, who came along when I was in my forties, to help shape my modified worldview.  

In The Artist's Way, Cameron had some good things to say about trying to be a creative type if you grew up in a factory culture where the goal is always what you have to show at the end of a work day, and the monetary profit or loss. She pointed out that a writer could legitmately put in real effort, make true progress, yet have very little on the page. We just had to try again tomorrow.

Also, I thank my lucky stars that I am pretty contrary and of the "I'll show you" type. The cosmic clockwork gave me that, anyway.

 

6. We currently live in a blame-the-victim, keep-it-simple, if-I-don't-see-it-it-isn't-there culture. As everyone has, in the history of the world, because that's how people are. I've just described all human beings, including me. This has been difficult because I am, well, smart. And captable of paying attention for up to three minutes at a time. I am often left hanging, after trying to link two ideas together, or attempting to extrapolate from an idea and I can see I've lost whoever I'm talking to. 

A mercy: people who read are people who crave complexity. Instead of pushing away the connections and explorations, they want the product of my busy brain putting it all together. So there's that.  

Actual shelf label from Capitol Hill Books in Washington, DC.

*****

Mark the Date!

Always the last Saturday in April. This year: April 26, 2020.

Garbo

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