To:
Marian Thorpe
@marianlthorpe
Hey, #seniorwriters in #WritingCommunity. Drafting &/or published, self, indie or trad, anyone interested in contributing blog posts on motivations, challenges, triumphs, strengths, of being a writer over a certain age (55? 60?)
12:17 PM · Jun 30, 2019 ·
It ain’t tebackee.
515 words:
Challenges in writing at sixty or older?
Think about being worried, in a hospital or going to the doctor “AGAIN.” Dealing with bad times or unexpected times – life issues stopping you cold from that deadline.
Why should I start writing again? I mean, I go from one uncompleted project for three weeks to another, because of my health.
I’ve been on crutches and can’t go to the bathroom without – excruciating pain. Who can write?!
But wait, I can deal with the pain. No one knows the pain I’ve been through. A small virus in my intestines is nothing like having your chest cracked open 3 times since you were 5 years old. OMG. No one knows that pain.
I swear at my parents. I swear at my doctors. I swear at myself. I swear at the gods that did this to me and realize I can’t do a fucking thing about it.
I AM THE PAIN. I LEARN THE PAIN. I DEAL WITH THE PAIN. (then I thank the doctors and nurses for the meds that temporarily stop my pain…)
My leg or arm wasn’t blown off in a bomb attack. I can’t think of that type of pain. Yet, pain is pain. It impedes a good writing session. No argument – hands down.
When I’m healthy, I can work – either with my hands or my head. Things are much easier then. Much simpler. AND, all those teachers and professors since the third grade saying to me: “You Should Write!”
HELLO?
It’s difficult when I can’t feel creative or looking at my heart rate monitor in a hospital and I’m being held hostage for four days because they can’t figure out what the hell is going on with my heart rhythm.
Yet I feel fine. They try to convince me otherwise and I start to wonder if I’m in a Twilight-Zone episode. Everyone in the hospital – especially the administration idiots in pig masks are messing with my head. Most of all, they’re LIARS. I threaten legal action and they take their masks off.
They can’t wait to sign me out.
But I won’t sign a damn thing. I get back at them for messing with my creative writing. Making them pay for their lack of knowledge.
I know my body better than anyone.
I get home and self-doubt enters my consciousness as I worry about my blood pressure rising every time I take it, 5 times in a row, starting to think I should call 911, when I’m trying to write.
But, I stop and rest and think hard.
Yes – I ate 5 pieces of bacon at the Windmill restaurant. They made a mistake with the “small order” of sausage links and brought five delicious, smelly bacon slices and my wife is on a plane to Denver for a week and she won’t know I’m eating them and the waitress swore allegiance to me and won’t tell.
I love her.
Did she know it could kill you? No. Anyway – It’s not her fault. She doesn’t know I’m a writer. Where are the words?
American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961) working at a portable table while on a big game hunt in Kenya, September 1952. (Photo by Earl Theisen/Getty Images)
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