Jan Ekels II: A Writer Trimming his Pen (1784)

"I wasn't quite a writer yet …"

I discovered that I'd become a writer while in Exile. This discovery took a while, for I needed to work through the usual stages of acceptance to make it. I had already become an author by the time I made this discovery, and though I'd been writing for decades, this discovery shocked me. I had previously considered myself a wannabe writer with the aspiration but without the necessary certifications. I didn't yet understand just how one became a writer. I just knew that I hadn't become one until then, I had. The final transformation came in a moment of begrudging and beligerate acceptance, an "alright, then, dammit" moment that finally quieted the roiling questioning and controversy forever. Before, I wasn't. After, I really was.

This discovery resolved nothing but the lingering background uncertainty anybody might hold about any aspiration. We each carry intentions without understanding how to maintain or manifest them. If not in utter ignorance, we begin close enough to utter ignorance to amount to little difference. Circumstances encourage or dissuade as much as will. With practice at not yet having realized, we might come to realize: an unsatisfying recipe that accompanies accomplishing every impossibility. We arrive by means mysterious.

Anyone asking me how they might become AWriter receives my heartfelt mute response because I have little idea how to respond. The usual advice suggests reading an obscene amount, for writing seems to emerge from a well-stocked larder. However, many read without the intention of ever writing and manage to avoid the writer's fate. It's also probably important to start intending to become AWriter too late to expect much hope of success because writing requires a decent reservoir of experience, which doesn't grow on trees. A personal style also seems required, and nobody knows where that emerges.

By the time The Muse and I relocated our Exile to Colorado, I had attained the final stages of my pre-writer identity. I was teetering. I'd spent much of the first half of our absence plotting a return. I still imagined that I might somehow regain the standing I'd lost in bankruptcy and The Great Recession. I still dared to hope the economy might one day return to its pre-9/11 state, before The Great Technology Crash of 2000 and the distracting, senseless Middle Eastern Wars, but few seemed terribly interested in improving their project management philosophy. I taught one workshop to a distinctly unappreciative client who just couldn't get it. Their indifference encouraged me to leave my past behind me. I shifted my focus from recreating my fading past to creating a future. I'd shifted before I'd acknowledged the change.

While still in Takoma Park, I'd connected with my publisher's writer's co-op. I found it an accepting group of similarly-minded individuals who agreed on perhaps only one thing. They'd each authored at least one book. A few were famous. Most labored in international obscurity. Each seemed able to at least offer to help somebody laboring through the lingering illusions that accompany genuine authorship. Not all were writers, though all had written. Some would write more, and others would dream of reviving the work that had already survived publishing. I entered believing that my next chapter might be to become a second-time author. I focused my attention on contributing to the co-op's governance. That gave me a chance to participate in something larger than myself.

That's where I met a soul brother. He was serving as the co-op's leader, and we spent considerable time conspiring about how to improve that sucker, which had fallen on the usual hard times eventually experienced by all volunteer organizations. This spawned all the usual crises and dramas. Then, my soul brother was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal pronouncement. He opted to remain public about his experience. I decided to write him a letter daily to remind him that he was not forgotten and to remind me of our connection. That's what I did those early mornings when we were still living in that Barbie and Ken transitional housing in Colorado. I was writing my daily letter to my dear departing friend. I learned later that he and his beautiful wife would gather each afternoon to read whatever I'd sent that morning aloud. It became their ritual those final few months.

The inspiration was a question asking, “What Do You Say To A Dying Friend?” Through sometimes tearful repetition, I learned that that answer was always "Anything." I came to understand that a dying friend makes the perfect confessor, if only because those confessions ain't going all that far. Once that friend's gone, the secrets will remain securely held. Nobody ever leaks that stuff, though it will have had a respectful airing. I didn't understand in those months that I had also received a terminal diagnosis. Those years since bankruptcy that I'd spent quietly plotting my return had not been wasted but had been preparing me for a radically different next chapter. I was writing as a reflex response to the heartfelt trauma I was experiencing over my soul brother's dying. This response is the sort of thing only AWriter does.

I became AWriter after I'd been a practicing writer. My letters to my dying friend were not the first instance, just one closer to full manifestation. Writing must be more than writing. It must include conclusions, which demand much more from a person than the actual writing. Finishing insists upon drawing some conclusions and making some sort of ending statement. It separates creation from whatever follows. A piece of writing gets done. A writer might not formally publish, but they deliberately leave behind what was once most prominently held in their mind. AWriter leaves behind a history rather than piles of dissociated papers. The Muse and I were walking near Clear Creek in Golden, Colorado, just on the verge of moving into our new home, when the news of my soul brother's passing caught up to us. I'd written the final installment of my letters to my dying friend. I must have written that chapter earlier that morning without knowing its significance. AWriter realizes he has nothing left to say only after already saying it. I wasn't quite a writer yet, but I had certainly been working on it.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz