A Passion to Write...

03/12/2010

Yep!  I have a passion to write; however, it is the skill I lack, not the desire.  The desire goes way back, close to twenty-five years, maybe longer.  There are two binders on my desk each containing a couple of chapters of gobbledygook, two great American though uncompleted novels.

“The Letter” was begun in 1990.  It is the story about a letter written to a relative from prison with some incriminating evidence on another inmate.  The thrill part is what happens to the writer as the incriminated inmate attempts to recover the letter.  I thought it was a great idea then, and perhaps it is, still.  I just lost interest in the project, but cannot remember why.

“Charleston City Lights” got started in 1992 at the height of my mid-life crisis.  It is the story of a fallen “man of the cloth” and his lover.  It is not without a hint of truth, and was begun at a very low point in my own personal esteem.  Luckily, I popped out of it, but only after months of a personal, self-inflicted hell.  The story, has a beautiful, albeit twisting ending, or would if it ever gets completed.  I can hear my friend Dale’s incredulity as he reads this defeatist, self-degrading bullshit that I now wish I had not started.  His wrath is forthcoming, I can feel it.

I was not a good student when I did go to school.  My underachiever mentality ruled over good sense, in fact, it completely ruled my life until 1983 (when I was 39).  I was a college dropout over and over.  My high school average was barely above the passing grade.  My motto was to never do more than it took to get by.  As a youth, it is probably the only goal in which I succeeded beyond my own expectation.  I was the quintessential procrastinator.  I never learned how to study and I never tried to learn, so I didn’t.  Not long ago I let my granddaughter know I did not go to college.  She asked me how I got to be so smart.  “Bullshit” did not seem like the proper way to answer her, but it is the truth.  I no longer lie, but, man, can I bullshit.  I should be President or Speaker of the House.

Okay!  After that bout of self-denigration and exposing myself, as it were, I feel a lot better, but not enough to finish the novels.  Maybe I will get around to it in a few more years?

And that is all I have to say about that…