writes

I'm a little envious of my friend Patricia Morrison, whose writing habits are so much more professional and disciplined than mine. She does have the benefit of a fabulous imagination and a journalism degree, but she couldn't have published a memoir, ten books of fantasy and two of mystery (with another one ready to go) without dedication and perseverance that I don't think I'll ever match. (Her newer books are available at Lulu and the older ones at Amazon and other good book search sites.)

Writing, mainly fiction, used to be my vocation. I was turned on by the ideas I had, when they came to me, as I allowed them to ripen, when they were finally ready for harvest. I had the habit of the double life, one life walking around while also testing every experience, sensation or phrase for use in the writing life.

I'm a verbally prolific talker and a very painstaking writer. I spent twenty-five years trying to find a method for bringing more stories to the page. Freewriting. Assigned writing. Writer's groups. Writing outdoors. Carrying a notebook everywhere. Pinning myself to the chair in front of a freshly opened doc for hours.

I had some encouraging response to the stories I finished: publication in New York Press when the brilliant John Strausbaugh was editor; an actor calling me out of the blue for permission to mount a dramatic presentation; a request to write a screenplay (boy, did that not pay off); spending six extraordinary weeks as a MacDowell colonist. And I eventually accumulated enough stories to fill a proper-sized collection.

I'm proud of those stories. I think they are well-written; I think they do something interesting with the language. I even feel that something good is added to the culture whether or not an artist manages go get their work out to a public, so I take satisfaction in that. I self-published them in a volume to give to friends. (And apparently you can buy a copy from Amazon.)

But I'm all out. For more than five years I've kept my brain case open for new seeds, but whatever nut or acorn drops in there, it never sprouts. No meat in the shell. No hungry body to begin accumulating ideas, words, contrasts. I miss that most of all. Nothing was better than living one life and writing another. And so while I credit Patricia, I am still a little envious that her mind remains fertile and her story-culture productive.