Finding the Label

One of the labels I used for this blog overall is "aging." Another is "the writing life." It's too bad to be repetitious, and no blogger wants to bore possible readers, but it's so difficult to imagine what label would draw a stranger in. I've been reading John Updike's collection of short stories that are the last he wrote. Let me suggest the book, My Father's Tears and Other Stories to anyone interested in either or both labels. You can read my review next month on Senior Women Web.

As Junot Diaz said in a recent interview, there is no better preparation and continuing exercise for a writer than reading. It would be a challenge to get through all the varied collection of everything from criticism to fiction to poetry of someone as prolific as Updike, but I'd bet money that trying would be worth it for anyone with authorial aspirations.

Where Should an Epitaph Be Found?

At the risk of more self-exposure than most people will be interested in, I offer the following musing in the hope that it might make some readers consider the subject in relation to personal experience--not just of loss, but also of gratitude for the living.

Does anyone give much thought to epitaphs, other than those noted for their humor or irony? The definition does not apply solely to words on a tombstone; it includes other written memorials. However, it occurred to me the other day that these reminders may be falling out of fashion, in part because of the decline in traditional burials. Cremation so often concludes with a scattering of ashes rather than the interment of them. The reasons for choosing this means of putting a period at the end of a life are too valid for argument in my view, yet I find myself wishing for something left behind, even if nothing corporeal remains.

I've been trying to think of something suitable for my life's companion that might at least suggest to someone who didn't know him what kind of man he was, without running to many paragraphs or to wording that would strike a stranger as fulsome.

From the first day I met him, I was aware that this was true without appreciating it properly for many months. By the time he was gone, I had become so accustomed to his selflessness and his sense of duty, they became a given in my life, which was so embedded with his that his absence leaves me feeling most of the time as though I see a stranger in the mirror and am surprised that I don't look emaciated.

Anecdotes that illustrate this characteristic would fill a notebook. If I could find the right place to put these words, I might hope that his children and their children would use them as a reminder, and even as a source of inspiration.

HE NEVER THOUGHT OF HIMSELF FIRST

Promotion How-to?

Well, at last the publisher has told me Maiden Run is to be put into print. Since I don't know a single soul who reads books or magazines with a hand-held device, that sounds like good news. Yet it leads straight back to the promotion bugaboo. For me, with little or no tendency toward exhibitionism and relatively little hubris, this is the worst part.

I tried to set up a Facebook page once, the result of which was that the name of one of my sons popped up instantly, and I have no idea what to do next. Twitter's word-count restrictions make it seem an unlikely place to get noticed if you can't at least pretend to fit your work into one of the most popular genres. "Horror, suspense, sex, thrills..." just won't be a fair come-on for my old fashioned literary/contemporary orphans.

A writer friend sent me the Who Hub link, (see sidebar) which allows one to speak for oneself. There are some very good questions for your interview, and I found them challenging and interesting to try to answer. I recommend it.

The temptation is to zap off a credit card number and buy some of the advertised books on "marketing" your literary output. Summaries seem to indicate that they pretty much all say the same things, and that we've all heard them numberless times before. For instance, the suggestion that any book store in your town or your hometown newspaper will both be happy if not eager to help you is, for me in the town where I reside, laughable. I've never succeeded in getting a press release printed, nor even in persuading the local bookseller to stock a POD volume. She won't consider consignment, and even refuses to order for a customer who asks for my book. I have no reason to think she'll change her stance for a second one.

My best bet (pathetic though the results usually are) is the local public library, which is happy to give me an afternoon for a reading and talk. The last one I did sold, I think, one book. Nevertheless, if you don't live in a big city, consider that venue.

It seems to me that what we need is lessons in how to choose "key words." There must be a special trick to that. The second best idea may be to join the bloggers workshop being started up by Pat Workman. Look her up at patworkman@yahoo.com.

Road Trip

It's often said that we must keep on learning to keep on living. What you don't hear is that some of the lessons are a long way from what you want to know, while others are unexpected revelations or happy confirmations.

I've just come back from a trip to old stamping grounds with my children and grandchildren. In that first category is that I surely can't do what I used to. Keeping up with the younger generation in the family is hard enough; with the second generation down, there's no way!
Two great big graduation parties, one in lovely weather, the other in an unremitting downpour, both of necessity partly outdoors, were joyous affairs. I had to learn to drive to unfamiliar places without anyone in the shotgun seat or at the wheel for the first time in 22 years. A gracious GPS loan from a friend was twice a life- and time- saver, but I learned I'm probably getting too old for that.

Then there are the other little lessons--or maybe they aren't so little. Even when you know there will be changes in places you haven't seen for years, you're seldom ready for what those turn out to be. No matter how good you think your kids are at taking care of you, if you're lucky, you underestimate them. Don't expect not to be emotionally shaken by backward glances.

If you're thinking of subjects to write about as you decompress, you realize that ten days will provide material for essays, either serious or humorous, along with digital photos and programs -- a final bonus for the time spent in unfamiliar beds, trying to choose fast foods from backlit menus above the service counters, and hours on the highway.

Best Mysteries

Psychological suspense is a favorite escape genre for me. I've just finished rereading Elizabeth George's A Place for Hiding. It's very long, the plot so intricate it reminds me of crochet—impossible to follow all the threads closely enough to see the pattern if you look too closely. All the major characters in this story come from childhood trauma, as do the secondary characters.

Other writers who follow similar themes like Ruth Rendell, for instance, surprise me by their ability to dream up such horrors without giving the sense of "horror" I think of when I watch movie trailers. The grimmest parts of the suffering of these authors' characters are emotional; the scars borne by their creations are psychic. The stories are therefore fascinating, in part because it's possible to sympathize even with the villains at least some of the time.

But I have to ask myself where those ideas come from. Is there a darker corner of these authors' souls than most of us recognize in ourselves? I confess to much more interest in these artfully layered personalities than I can find in pure thrillers where the protagonist is usually called on for physical bravery, special technical know-how, and cunning, and not much more.

I find it incredible that the most profitable movies and many of the most-watched TV shows involve enormous amounts of shock and melodrama in the form of blood, thunderous explosions, impossible chases, and the tiniest threads of coincidence to hold the stories together until the (usually foolishly upbeat) endings. I haven't the stomach for them and find them specious. I can't resist the intricate character studies of modern mystery masters (and mistresses) that make some of the old standbys like Agatha Christie or Rex Stout, with their two-dimensional heroes, seem not really worth my time. Those mystery writers of the thirties don't seem just tame, they're unconvincing. I'm addicted to some of our newer practioners of what are really novels that happen to be mysteries like Ms. George, P. D. James, the best of Tony Hillerman—especially when I want to get away from a world that seems too much with us.

Why Do You Write?

Frequently a writing contest shows up that asks the question, "Why do you write?" Many an author has answered that question, some seriously and some not so seriously. It strikes many as a foolish question and others as a profound one. I'd guess there are not numberless answers. They might begin with the personal and range all the way to messianic motives. Each answer would give a reader some idea of the personality and aspirations of the answerer, but I bet there would be a limited number of headings under which those answers would fall. Would anyone reading this be willing to help with a survey? Just post a comment?

I write because I can't help it. The better question would be why can't I help it?

First, I need to find out what I know; second, I need to discover what I don't know; third, I need to note what I must not forget. I am an indifferent amateur painter and the other visual arts are beyond my talents altogether; I can't perform music. I find I can put words on paper. They can do what nothing else can.

With a poor memory and perhaps a little too much emotion, the act of writing helps to suggest the perspective I need to cope with what is happening or what has happened to me, and to suggest how one experience might be useful to others. Utility is not quite all there is to that. Love for rhythm and cadence and image-making, and the opportunity to cause a chuckle or the frisson of recognition are involved.

Writing is the corollary to reading. All the words that have instructed and inspired and comforted and exhilarated me through all the years of a long life convince me that if I could find the readers, even I could add to that legacy. I can't resist the temptation to try.
I care about how words can conjure and reveal; I respect the fact that if you think (as opposed to dream or imagine) you need words. They matter.

Most people want to live a life that matters. After my children, words seem to be my best opportunity to accomplish that, on however small a scale.

Happy Accident

It's obvious, but now and then we tend to forget that the reason a cliche is a cliche is because it's so true. I feel like a walking cliche some days. You never know what you're going to find out by accident, and yesterday I proved it yet again.

Someone on whose blog I had posted a comment replied with a comment that didn't make sense, and thereby hangs my tale (see what I mean about cliches?)

His reply was to my friend and free publicist, Glenda Beall. I followed a link and came upon a nugget of pure gold: The Way I See It. It's to be hoped that most who read these remarks are either writers themselves or interested in writers and writing. I'm delighted to have stumbled over this super spot so filled with more links and thoughtful takes on what I love to capitalize:
The Writing Life. Go there and enjoy an experienced writer, teacher, poet, and person.