“Sally,” an ivy-league educated real estate broker started
out as an archaeologist, studying and cataloguing pre-Columbian textiles. In
the course of her work, she obtained hundreds of pieces of priceless handicrafts – several of which are on display in her 6,500 square foot mansion. After that she married
and had a child, and while raising him in New York invested heavily in real
estate. From her divorce she took away millions of dollars and opened an art
gallery in Miami which she sold for a tidy sum just before the economic
collapse of 2007/2008. Sally remarried, this time to a charming con man from
north Georgia who would have bankrupted her had she not kept her New York
properties within her brokerage business. Fortunately, by the time she had
figured out his true nature, the real estate market had recovered and she lives
comfortably on the money left over from the divorce. Now she spends her free
time maintaining five acres of beautifully manicured gardens, hosting lively
dinner parties, traveling, and buying and selling art.
“Kimberly” has a Ph.D. in art history and encyclopedic
knowledge of fine arts and furnishings. She made a small fortune buying and
selling antiques and artifacts at Sotheby’s and Christie’s while her husband
served in the U. S. Army. Now she volunteers for numerous art organizations in
Athens, GA, generating new memberships and participating in various
fund-raising activities.
“Andrew,” is a financial planner who stopped working when
his life partner, Jonah, died of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He hails from an old
Charleston family which still owns the plantation, minus a few thousand acres,
along with priceless pieces of Americana which the remaining heirs cannot
afford to insure but refuse to part with. Andrew’s ability as a raconteur makes
him highly sought out on the social scene.
Doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs along with artists,
poets, architects, designers, and published authors complete the population. My
husband fits right in. He’s educated, articulate, cultured, interesting, and
interested in everything. He is an attorney for a Tampa-based business which
keeps him quite busy and keeps us from spending our savings.
So, what do I say when someone asks the dreaded question? In
the 1970s, I was a full-time student. In the 80s I worked as a consultant
automating offices and putting people on the internet before there was an
internet. In the 90s, I became a mother and stopped collecting a paycheck.
During those years I was a community activist and tireless school volunteer. In
2005, my husband took a job in Florida and we pulled up stakes and moved. In
2007 we bought a pony for our youngest but he quickly became mine. When she
went off to college in 2011, I decided to devote myself to writing the novel
that lived inside me: the one about women’s friendships, the healing power of
horses, and the essence of love. The pony had chronic problems which I believed
I could heal with the right intervention, so I had an endless supply of
material with which to create stories.
Corporate dishonesty happened and my husband lost his job.
Meanwhile his father began his lengthy departure from life, we sold our Florida
house at a huge loss (flushing the profit from selling the DC house and then
some), and relocated to a small University town in north Georgia. Shortly
thereafter, in late 2014, my husband’s father died and his mother, in her
unique way, fell apart. I did too, but it took a while for me to realize it.
When our youngest graduated from college and the eldest
relocated to Los Angeles, I thought I would have the time and energy to write.
So I joined an on-line writing group and began submitting chapters of my book
for critiques. Things were going well and I had completed the story map. When
people asked me “What do you do?” I loved being able to say, “I’m writing a
novel.”
Something happened in the course of editing my
work-in-progress, however, and I stopped being able or even wanting to write. I
got into therapy and upped my medication, but the inertia would not lift. My
horse continued to cycle in and out of soundness with various injuries and
ailments, but eventually he and I made a breakthrough and the chronic pain went
away. We finally became a team-in-training together, each of us improving
individually and as a pair. And yet, I felt no joy and still could not write a
single word. I felt like a fraud for calling myself a writer, and so I stopped.
My husband, perhaps sensing that I was in trouble, “volunteered”
me for a museum fund-raiser committee. Even though I didn’t want to do it, and
would have been much happier binging on Netflix, I put on a happy face and went
to the first meeting. I was intimidated by how accomplished and interesting
everyone else was, but I had experience with silent auctions and fund-raising
so I decided to pretend that I belonged.
As work on the silent auction progressed, we received
invitations to social gatherings and began meeting people and making friends in
our new home town. I fought hard against my wish to hole up in my writing room
and lose myself by critiquing the writing of my on-line “friends”. I would try
to foreclose on the dreaded question by asking it first and then keeping the
interviewee talking about him- or herself, but more often than not someone
would beat me to it.
“Nothing,” is what I must not say, even though that often
feels true. Usually, I’ll manage to stumble over some version of “readin’,
writin’, and ridin’,” and put on my happy face. The fact that I have such
difficulty with this simple question is, I have come to understand, more of a symptom
than a problem. I am questioning whether I have what it takes to be a writer.
Am I able to develop a theme and create a story around it? Can I force myself
to do the hard work of plotting and outlining a better novel than the one
languishing on my computer’s hard drive? The answer to these questions is “Yes,
but…” I need to start believing in myself again.
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