Wild, wild horses, couldn't drag me away

Of course, you cannot “used to be a writer.” You might not always be physically writing things down but you continually look at the world as an observer, searching for that moment of insight when everything suddenly clears and you actually see what you have been looking at and at that moment truly find something to write about.

And what brought that on? I had just finished the newest novel by one of my absolutely favorite authors. A new book by John Irving, I have told people, is an event in my life. In Last Night in Twisted River he went a direction I don’t recall him going before. He started giving writing lessons. Norman Mailer could not write a book without putting a writing lesson in there somewhere. I learned how to handle adjectives from Mailer. And now Irving is doing it, too. Taking John Irving’s lesson. well, need to explain that first I guess: What he did was refute another great writer’s writing lesson. He accused Ernest Hemingway of originating the ubiquitous advice for people to “write what you know.” Irving said that’s baloney and so limiting in subject matter. As I thought about it, of course he is right, although somehow tarnishing Hemingway seemed almost blasphemous. You can always “know” new things. I actually had thought of that before. It all harked back to something else about John Irving. I saw him interviewed on television one time and the host asked him where he found his stories. He said he liked to find someone outrageous. someone who perhaps had performed a heinous act and then give that person humanity. His example was Cider House Rules. What he said was if you saw a headline in the New York Post on the doctor’s obituary it would have read something like “Ether addicted abortionist dies of overdose.”

Could that person ever be a sympathetic character. Irving made him one, doing “the lord’s work and the devil’s work.”

So the thought process goes on. John Irving and I are the same age. He is who I envisioned myself being at this age. Only I fell a little short. Not even sure I gave it a good try. Vonnegut (whom Iriving met at the Iowa writer sessions): “So it goes.” All of it comes to the point where maybe I didn’t get to the level I dreamed of, but though little comes out on a screen these days, I am not done yet. That moment of clarity is still out there somewhere, the problem is I never really went looking for it, rather took the lazy way and waited for it to come to me. But, “ether addicted abortionists” do not necessarily walk the trails I know. So, of course you cannot used to be a writer. You most likely always have been, and for sure always will be. Might as well say you used to be a breather. You may not think about it much, but you are still doing it.

And, thanks, Tom