Today, I saw bluebonnets! There were periwinkle blossoms last week. First flowers are exciting for their annual perfection and reassurance that the world turns, that the axis is sure.
Hold on. Weren’t we skiing just a week or two ago? The weather has been lovely here in San Antonio, but bluebonnets in mid-February seems early enough to raise the alarm. But it’s not that bad. Statistically, Lupinus texensis are just a little early, not harbingers of climatic Armageddon.
I too have been impatient to get started on my gap year. Retired – check. Epic vacation in the mountains – check. Cleaned the garage – well, part of it, but let’s give it a check for good effort. Ready to start writing? I wonder.
I have taken a few workshops over the past year and joined a local writing group, the Veterans Writing Collective, sponsored at Gemini Ink. My contributions to this point have been short poems written during or about my deployment to Taji, Iraq, 20 years ago.
Last Saturday the Writers’ League of Texas hosted a seminar with John Pipkin, “Writing Historical Fiction: It’s Not About the Past.” I missed the first hour (time-zone gremlins!), but the last 2 were superb and energizing. I wasn’t expecting it, but something clicked. I started writing. Historical fiction.
My stab at the first few paragraphs of a novel that I have been planning (obsessing about, really) for a year had me a little guilt-ridden, even furtive. Oh, but it was fun. Something important was happening. Like a short-order cook cracking open a fresh egg over a hot griddle, I was breathless to see if the yolk had landed intact, Right now it’s looking sunny side up. OK – a little runny.
Another breakthrough arrived courtesy of Erik Hedegaard. In the early 70s we were classmates at St. James, but we had not been in touch for years. He got his MFA at Columbia and has had success as a journalist. He says of his early years, “I was trying to become a writer, I just didn’t know how to write.” Hearing about my tentative plans for pursuing a low-residency MFA, he sent a message of encouragement. That means a lot. But I remain on double secret probation.
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William Zinsser, in his 1976 book On Writing Well, wrote, “Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people obviously think it does. The professional writer is forever bearded by strangers who say they’d like to “try a little writing some time” when they retire from their real profession. Good writing takes self-discipline and, very often, self-knowledge.” (p. 9)
That sounds like me, a bearded retiree. I had no idea that beard can be a verb: “to confront and oppose with boldness, resolution, and often effrontery” (sez Merriam-Webster).
Effrontery! That sounds interesting.
To beard or not to beard, that is the question.
Scott D. McLean, MD 
scott: i don’t know if this is in that medium thing (since i can’t bring myself to read it) but when i got out of columbia and landed at rolling stone, i still didn’t know how to write. i’m not naturally gifted the way, for example, andy baldwin was at st. james. it took me years, and leaving RS, to figure it out. the way i did it is the way painters do it, by copying the masters. i don’t mean plagiarizing, ha ha, though i have lifted a few choice words and phrases here and there. i mean, by taking the writers i liked — mostly fiction folks, along with the great New Yorker humorist S.J. Perelman — and writing out what they wrote in longhand, on yellow pads, to see if i could figure how and why they did what they did. i’d take first sentences of paragraphs and scribble them down sequentially, to see if and how they connected. over time, mainly by haphazard osmosis, stuff began to sink in. and then, somehow, i rounded in on various story structures that worked for me, after which, bingo bango, i thought, hey, maybe i can do this. took me years and years. my point is, do the MFA thing but also be on the lookout for anything outside the norm that can help you on your journey. btw / have you read chuck pahlaniuk’s essays on writing? they’re a fiction-writing masterclass all unto their own. keep at it, scott. go! erik
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Copying the brushstrokes! I like it.
I will read Chuck. I hope. I have so much to read, I’m fairly depressed about it. And the adverbs keep insolently flooding into my sentences. But any suggestions for my reading list I will appreciate. No promises that I’ll read em though. Time is so much shorter than my enthusiasm.
We have some interesting parallel histories. I read some about your daughter, Elizabeth, the drang und sturm when she was born. You may have told me about that at a reunion. That’s the kind of doctor I was, am: clinical genetics. Sorting out mysteries. Vascular anomalies have been very dear to my heart, as my dad had a dramatic port-wine stain on his face. Not Sturge-Weber. He was a CPA. Great that Elizabeth is well.
Also Raymond Carver. I would gladly copy his prose and poems. And I used to live in Tacoma. My college poetry teacher was his wife, Tess Gallagher. Her workshops, though, beat me up. I needed some, not all. Writing workshops as advertised by the MFA programs now seem to be all about not making people feel bad. Can’t wait.
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