For anyone who is still reading these random and intermittent musings, I am going to take a hiatus from posting here. Of course given the long gaps between posts one might reasonably ask what difference does it make? To which I would answer that the difference is not so much in action, but in intent. I always intended to post more often. Now I don’t plan on doing even that much, for a while at least. Not because I am putting down the pen, but because I decided to make an attempt at becoming a published writer rather than one who merely posts. Again, one could reasonably ask what difference does it make? And for that I do not have any good answer, other than it seems like the thing to do. However, in order to do it, I need to write pieces that are not shared here since literary publications have rules about that sort of thing. So for now at least I am going to be submitting pieces for publication elsewhere. But I will leave you all with one last amusing anecdote (well, amusing to me at least) related to writing.
Through a series of events not worth telling, my family moved from Seattle to Baltimore in 1983, right before I started high school. I was enrolled at Baltimore Friends, a Quaker prep school. My egalitarian and rather lax Seattle childhood did nothing to prepare me for that experience and I found it to be a bewildering labyrinth of social codes, academic expectations and fine distinctions of class and wealth. Even more so than your garden-variety high school. But eventually I found my niche with the art and theater nerds and was happy enough.
Writing was the only thing I was any good at so I did a lot of it, and in my senior year I was selected to be the editor of the school literary magazine, The Mock Turtle. When we transitioned from the previous staff to the new one that year we all went to dinner at the house of the previous editor, a girl who I remember very little, and who I am sure does not remember me at all. Except that for the rest of my life I will always recall one critical detail — her last name was not the same as her mother's. Which I was not aware of at the time.
Dinner was lovely — a home cooked meal in an old, gracious, and quirky house in Roland Park, a neighborhood that is associated with the wealthier sections of the Baltimore intelligentsia. The former editor's mother, Anne, joined us and we all talked about writing. I don't remember the details of that conversation but I do recall that I held forth in a manner that can only be achieved with that combination of overconfidence and insecurity which is particular to high school boys. I waxed prolix on the topic of writing and how to do it, the importance of symbolism, the constraints of grammar and syntax. I may have even condescended.
It was not a performance of which I am proud. Even so it would have passed into history and been forgotten but for what happened the next day. Upon arriving at my creative writing class the next morning my teacher, who was also the staff advisor for The Mock Turtle, asked me how the dinner went and then mentioned how nice it was for us to have had the chance to meet Anne Tyler.
Excellent story, as always. Chris, I think what's important about your post is intentionality. There are times we do things intuitively or out of habit. On other occasions, making an explicit public statement is both a motivator, but also a focus, perhaps a point of personal clarity embodied. Good luck with whatever it is you plan to write. Us readers will be waiting.
Ah yes, I’d forgotten that, truly delightful, story. (As with other things, forgetting happens.) Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors. I read books with a friend (someone from those “egalitarian and lax” Seattle days) and will have to suggest we read one of Tyler’s. I first read her when I was at the UW, “Celestial Navigation,” which was recommended by another Seattle friend. But you were good at things in addition to writing, even in your callow youth. Driving motor boats, for example.