My Writing Life

“If I could be born again, I would choose to come in a writer’s form.  Too many things these years have ached inside of me, living in bright bursts of painful contacts with people but never once on paper.  I live in the writers’ souls of others.”  Age 21

I kept a diary from about age 12 until almost 40 years old.  Handwritten.  Emotional.  Pages and pages.  Books and books.  Trying to make sense of love, loneliness and fear.  The usual.  I never thought of myself as a writer; merely someone who kept a diary and loved reading.  Writers were extraordinary beings who inhabited a realm the rest of us mere mortals could not enter.  I would fall in love with writers:  Dostoevsky at age 12, D.H. Lawrence at 13, Albert Camus at 16, and so on.  Most recently, I fell in love with James Salter who was a pilot in WWII before he began to write.
 

James Salter AKA Horowitz

I read one of his books by accident and then googled him, and found to my amazement that he was born a Horowitz, my maiden name.  I proceeded to read every book available on Kindle that he had ever written.  Recently, I mourned his death.  His writing was so vibrant and sexy but he will live forever for those of us lucky enough to discover him.  The legacy of all artists—immortality.

I documented my first flight away from Australia in the mid-1970s.  As it turned out, I was never to live there again, although I had no idea back then.

“It is happening.  I am flying to Israel.  How do we grasp the momentous things which happen to us?  The strangeness of being suspended, alone, quietly into the mysteriousness of the world.  To have just left behind a whole era—of my first struggles towards independence and womanhood. . . It would be so funny dying now with all this sophisticated French food on my lap.”  Age 24

Always, there was the constant questioning and insecurity about my own writing.  My own writing life.

“The strange thing about keeping a diary is the knowledge that it is only for yourself.  Knowing that even your style is nothing to attract comment.  I would so dearly love to be able to write. One thing I can’t quite work out about writing.  Does it mean that you have a more complex and beautiful soul if you can write well?  Or do you just have a special talent of being able to use words in a complex and beautiful way?  I rather suspect it is a combination of both.”  Age 26

In those days, I fell in love with men who claimed to be writers, although they talked about it more than they actually wrote.  I documented them in my diary.  I started a new diary when I met a new man.  “A new man, a new book.  Inspiration for my inner whisperings...”

Just before I turned 30, I met someone who was  “the culmination of all my men.  The quickness and artist’s soul of W, the glamor of X, the generosity of Y and the sensitivity of Z—and much more... He is so foreign to me, and yet I trust him.” Age 29

In my thirties I married this culminating man who freed my creativity, which included writing poetry, short stories and novels in between my full time job as a social worker and later a fundraiser.  We celebrated our 30^th Anniversary in September, 2015.

It didn’t happen all at once.  There was the push and pull of creating our own identities within the marriage.  Two strong-willed people not ever becoming one but becoming better versions of themselves.

One day, a few years into our marriage, my husband read something I had written and said that I was good.  I was shocked, of course, and obsessed about whether or not this was true.  Searching for finality, I took an extension course at UCLA for writers.  They would let me know for sure.  Was I good?  Or not good?

The UCLA instructor gave us this exercise with a one-line prompt.  Everyone else seemed polished and confident, and looked more writerly than I felt.  I watched them bow their heads and start a furious word attack.  I stared at my paper and hyperventilated.  What was I even doing here with real writers?  Now I would be found out.  Everyone continued writing except for me.  Finally, out of humiliation and fear, I began.  At the end of the half hour, the teacher asked who would like to read their works.  Hands shot up all over the room.  Not mine.  Nevertheless, he called on me, and I read in a trembling voice.  After class, the instructor told me that I was good.  I was shocked.  I didn’t understand why he said that.  Everyone else who had read his or her piece seemed so much more than I was.   

What made writing good?  I wanted to know, definitively.  Was I good or not?  I searched for more writing courses and discovered something called MFAs. (Masters of Fine Arts—Creative Writing)  USC had one.  So did Antioch Los Angeles.  I thought USC would be so cool and then discovered I would have to take a GPA exam, whatever that was, before they would admit me.  That seemed ridiculous, considering the fact that I already had a Masters from the London School of Economics.  What was their problem?  The truth was that I was afraid.  Besides having left America at age twelve and not knowing what a GPA was, I figured mathematics would be involved. 

My high school mathematics teacher’s name was Mr. Scott.  I was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, but still counted on my fingers that I hid under my desk, ashamed that Mr. Scott would be disappointed.  I loved the class because, there, I could study his beautiful square hands as he explained all the various incomprehensible formulas to us.  I would furrow my brow in great concentration and nod occasionally so that he would think I was smart.  When he turned his back to write on the chalkboard, his shoulders were so strong and broad.  I marveled at the strength of him.  When he turned around to ask us questions, he would push a strand of sand-colored hair out of his Bondi Beach blue eyes and I felt a sharp pain straight through my under-developed but tender breasts to the thin walls of my heart.  The more I studied him, the less I understood about algebra and calculus. 



My mother ended up hiring a tutor that we could barely afford.  I don’t remember his name but he was a thousand years old.  Eventually, I passed, but barely.

I enrolled at Antioch because they gave me credit for my degrees and never asked me to take a silly exam.  It was creative writing, for God’s Sakes, not rocket science.  What could that have to do with mathematics?  Seriously.  There, I was sandwiched between the extreme young and much older folks.  I was excited but intimidated—probably a good combination to throw myself into the writing life.  Even if I was a pretend writer, I had made this huge commitment of time and money, which had to count. 

I just wanted to know if I was good; if I would make it in the world of writers.  But all I learned that I was better than some and not as good as others.  Slowly, I began to understand the real question:  What was I going to do with that knowledge and where would it take me?  We were told over and over again that everyone could learn to be better.  But could anyone learn to be great?  I doubted it.  I focused on ‘better’ and tried not to feel too shabby, or even worse, untalented. 

I entered the program with the whisper of a short story and left with 100 pages of a novel.  In addition, we were required to write a dissertation.  Mine turned out to be about mothers in literature and mine in life.

“I am still grappling with my flawed mother.  In many ways, she is the terrifying figure of my childhood, which also means that I am stuck in that hypervigilant place:  I am watchful and then full of hope, joyous and then crushed and furious.  And then it starts over again.  Will I ever be able to release my own unrealistic expectations of her?  I can’t help longing for that flawless mother even though I know she doesn’t exist even in good literature, where the best characters—the ones that endure—are imperfect, complex and interesting.  Admittedly, I never wanted an interesting mother, just an emotionally healthy one.  Though I am prepared for a not-so-happy ending, I am also hopeful that the journey I have undertaken through this paper has brought me new insights about my mother and myself.  Perhaps forgiveness is simply ‘having given up all hope of having a better past.’ (Lamott 210) But then the future, ah the future, is wide open.” Grappling with the Flawed Mother: In Life and Literature.  Lisa Horowitz Brooks. 2001

 One might argue that was my most important learning at Antioch.  My mother died several years ago, and now, when she visits me in my dreams, she’s a softer, kinder mother.  And I’m a better daughter.  The past is suddenly better.

Flush with my degree and newfound friends, I felt very writerly.  I even went to a writer’s retreat at Squaw Valley, where writers sold their wares to agents and publishers with the ‘pitch’.  There were so many bad writers there, with a few good ones sprinkled in between.  The pretense of the organizers was to help all writers to be successful.  The reality was to help a few really talented ones or commercial ones (neither of whom really needed the help) and let the rest of the poor schlubbs underwrite the entire operation.  Give them enough hope so that the leaders could keep paying their bills, even though they knew the odds were against the majority.  The whole thing made me nauseous.  I felt embarrassed and lost there, wondering which category I really fell into.  Going home was a relief. 

I was working at a job that frankly bored me.  I had been there too long and knew where all the bodies were buried.  I looked forward to rushing home every night to write.  I would stress over every extra minute of my under 12-mile mile commute—ranging from 30 to 95 minutes depending on the dysfunctionality of LA traffic.

Once home, after my shower and while I cooked dinner, I worked on my fledgling novel.  It grew and grew although I wasn’t sure where the flowers started and the weeds ended.  So I joined a local writers’ group to help me prune.  The leader had great instincts and I agreed with much of her critiques of the other writers. 

I presented bits and pieces of my novel and got feedback.  Too much feedback.  Being a social worker by training, I like to make people whole.  Slowly, slowly, I began to write for the common denominator.  I got some accolades.  Applause.  But slowly, in a strangulated way, my novel took many detours and dead ends.  I tried to stay true to myself and sometimes rebelled against the group consensus and went the opposite way.  But wasn’t that still kowtowing to the group?  And was it really serving the story?  I could no longer tell.  

By the time I left, I wondered if the rewritten novel was really mine or the sum total of everyone in the group.  Or if that was a bad thing.  Wasn’t collaboration supposed to be good?  There were definitely benefits of being in a writers’ group: support to market your book, get an agent, not give up, work, work, work.  I, an overachiever, did it all.  Wrote the synopsis.  Polished the first few chapters to perfection.  Sent out the pitch letters to search for the agent.  Etc. Etc.  I received some polite interest and some polite rejections.  I recalled the many greats who had been rejected innumerable times and went on to achieve fortune and fame.  But still, I felt like an imposter. And disheartened.  I stopped reading other writers, afraid it would further dishearten me.

And then, a life change.  I got a new job.  Bigger than anything I had done before.  My heart was no longer in the ‘marketing myself’ business.  I quit the writing group and stopped writing.  Dead.  Full stop.  Nada. 

Yes, I had to write things for work.  And yes, it was a job that stretched me to capacity and used parts of myself I never knew I had.  And yes, I was relieved to put the marketing of that novel behind me.  Perhaps I did not have the temperament for rejection.  Perhaps I needed to focus on those activities that brought me accolades.  Like my job.  For which I was paid a very decent salary.  And felt happy every day.  And so I stopped writing.  Except for marketing materials for work, a newsletter for the service club I joined, and an occasional blog.  But I began to read voraciously on my Kindle.  I read dozens and dozens of writers.  When I found a great one, I read every book he or she had ever written.  I fell in love with many female writers amongst the men.  Ann Patchett.  Meg Wolitzer.  Alice Hoffman.  Amy Bloom.  Tara Ison and Alice Sebold (my Antioch mentors.) Donna Tartt.  Anais Nin.  Iris Murdock.  Janet Turner Hospital.  And many, many more.

Lately, I’ve begun writing non-fiction.  Takes a leap of faith to assume reality is interesting enough to not have to spin tales.  Although there is a certain amount of tale spinning even in memoir where one has to frame things, and the frame one choses is very personal, creative and subject to interpretation.  Just like our lives. 

Who knows what the future will hold?  I no longer stress about ‘being discovered’, or winning writing accolades.  Or being bad or good.  I am way too old.  Now writing feels personal.  A way to communicate with my loved ones.  A way to make sense of the world.  Because I know that all the tough stuff is yet to come.  Although I had a painful childhood and young adulthood, my thirties to now have been rather lovely.  That is certainly not everyone’s reality.  I read about all these dire scenarios of young people diagnosed with dreadful diseases, or people shot in the prime of their lives, or rape victims and on and on.  I have this theory, unproven, that the fact that I suffered so much in my younger years has earned me a reprieve during my middle/late years.  I keep waiting for the reprieve to end.  Because I understand that the longer one survives, the tougher the learning.  About sickness, and death.  About loss of too many things to document.  About becoming one of the invisible older women for whom men no longer rush to open doors, check you out in restaurants, and fall all over themselves to be your friend.  If they do rush over to you it is because they think you may fall on the uneven pavement, or keel over in the street.  Some respectful people (men and women) probably had stellar mothers whom they have elevated as saints and treat older women gently and kindly.  I could benefit from this in my final years.  I hope.  I pray. And then, I think, being smart and kind and very experienced might be valued.  Even if your hands are twisted with arthritis, and your neck hangs in pouches, not to mention your fallen breasts. 

But then I remember that I am not really so kind.  I am very private.  Very critical.  Very selective.  Kind of like my mother.  No one will really care if an old woman writes stuff.  Even if it's good.  Certainly not the agents or publishers, who will not have years of payouts to hope for.  So, now that I'm jaded, I am starting again to write about love, loneliness and fear.  Hey, cut me some slack.  I’m just an old broad.