“First I Want to Say…"

“She just loves the sound of her own voice,” my grandmother would always declare, when she thought someone did too much talking, but had little of any importance to say. My grandmother, herself, had many opinions, all of which she was more than happy to share, especially with my long-suffering mother…who in turn, would share hers with us, my brother and me, that is.

My mother’s favorite expression, on the other hand, was “what on earth made you do that?” which we eventually took to be a rhetorical question, rather than an actual one. My children would probably say that mine was, “what were you thinking?” In my case, however, they would probably have answered. In fact, the older (and perhaps more introspective) we all grew, the more personal this declaration became (as in, “what was I thinking?”).

The original title of this blog was going to be “The Foolish Old Woman who Thinks She’s a Writer,” because there are, no doubt, a number of people I know well who would agree with this, but that didn’t work out; too many characters. So, I went with what my Grandmother would probably have said about me as well, and she may have been right. After all, who starts a writing career at my age?

My favorite author is Anne Tyler, whose current publicity picture suggests that she is a gray-haired, mild-mannered, and completely accessible older woman, who is still writing meaningful novels at age 77.

Unfortunately for me in terms of encouraging comparison, she has published 22 of them, the first of which she wrote at age 24. Based on this example, I still need 53 years to advance my writing career, and at least another 20 before being considered for a Pulitzer Prize (as she was, for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant when she was 44). So much for becoming my role model.

One of my other two choices to emulate is Margaret Mitchell, who wrote the “literary masterpiece,” Gone with the Wind, the paperback version of which is well over 1000 pages, and one of my all-time favorite books. But the problem here is that she wrote this novel when she was in her late 20s and virtually nothing else afterwards. Of course, she was also hit by a car and killed when she was only 48, simply crossing the street on her way to a movie, so I’m not sure how far I want to extend this analogy. My second choice, Rosamunde Pilcher, died recently at the age of 94, having written her first truly successful novel, The Shell Seekers, when she was 63. Granted I have a few years on her, even, but I loved this book…which must mean there’s still hope.

So…what on earth made me do this? Decide to write books, I mean. To all outward appearances, it seems I had a quite successful teaching career, and certainly could have rested on my laurels, while filling my retirement days with meaningful volunteer work. Instead, I bought a new MacBook Air, settled on the couch between two disinterested cats (one of whom snores loudly), and started typing away in my fictional world…with, I might add absolutely no plan or ability to market the results, even to my own friends and family. What was I thinking? I don’t know, maybe I just like to hear the sound of my own voice.