A Gift to Share

How I love being a writer!

I entered this career nearly fifty years ago with few live role models and little understanding of the mechanics of publishing.  That I have been able, not just to survive, but to thrive through this half century has never ceased to amaze me.

The act of writing—not publishing, but writing—has shaped me so thoroughly that it’s impossible to imagine who I could be without it.  In fact, this daily process of sitting down to a manual typewriter/electric typewriter/electronic typewriter/word processor/computer to play with ideas and words has formed me more completely than anything else in my life . . . except, perhaps, for being a mother.

My gratitude for all the simple act of writing has brought me lives in every breath I take.  I could not feel more blessed!

But . . .

You knew there would be a but, didn’t you?  It’s the way stories go.  If they start out on a high note, everything right with the world, the fall is inevitable.  There would be no story without that fall.

The truth is that publishing is different from writing.  The rewards of publishing are far more limited and limiting than the act of writing itself.  In fact, every time I hold the first copy of a book I’ve labored over, sometimes for years, I feel a bit hollow.   

“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask myself.  “Run down the street waving it like a flag to see if anyone will notice?”

Bringing books into the world is a bit like raising children who leave home and never bother to call.  After a few reviews, they disappear into the ether.

The answer?  I go back to writing.  Of course. 

But there is something else I have spent my life on, something that justifies my days without ever bringing me to that “What am I supposed to do now?” moment.

Walking beside other writers to encourage and challenge.

Whether I’m working one-on-one, gathering a group of writers in my home, or teaching in a more formal setting such as the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, there has never been a moment when teaching hasn’t nourished me.  In fact, it has probably nourished me more profoundly than it has anyone I have touched.

And while my students leave home, of course—that’s what raising children and teaching is about, the leaving—to my delight, they often check back in. 

My shelves fill with their books.

Most recently, Nancy Bo Flood’s powerful picture book, Walking Grandma Home:  A story of grief, hope and healing, has found its place on my shelf. 

Nancy is that most unusual writer, a child psychologist and counselor who can both embrace her training and move through it to embrace the heart of a story.  I say “move through it” because I have seen over the years how difficult it can be for mental health professionals to set aside all they have been taught to feel a story at its core. 

Walking Grandma Home is felt.  Deeply.  Simply.  Honestly.  And it is written as it is felt.  Deeply.  Simply.  Honestly.  A page of suggestions for the adults accompanying a child’s experience of death carries those qualities, too.

As for me, I’m brimming with pride.  Not because Nancy’s book carries my imprint.  She and I talked about her manuscript prior to publication, but I touched it lightly if at all.  The concept and the end product are hers. 

What is mine is the connection that happens, again and again, through a shared love of this good work, through a shared interest in the manuscript on the table before us. The friendship that rises out of that process makes up the fabric of my life as completely as the act of writing itself. 

How I love being a writer!

How I love having a gift to share!