Old Writers Never Die, they just...

Read Mark Gottlieb

Sometimes, I turn to Google when I’m wondering what others have said about something I’m pondering. Today, for example, I was thinking about where I am in my writing career - what still fires me up, what seems so yesterday.

So, I started typing, …old writers never die, they just… and what pops up?

A post by literary agent Mark Gottlieb titled, Old Writers Never Die. They Just…

He opens with,

Rather than give up a love affair with words, old writers, with decades of footprints in the book trade, simply change genres, refurbish stories, and stay delightfully crazy.

Gottlieb’s introductory comments took me back to an exchange I had decades ago in Fort Lauderdale.

In a shop that sold crystals, magical cards and fancy journals with paper made by hobbits, the pale, young man behind the counter pushed a lock of unruly hair behind his ear and peered at me over the top of his wire-rimmed spectacles. “What do you do?” he asked.

I admitted (hesitantly) that I was a writer. This was early days and I wasn’t yet comfortable confessing to such a thing. Still, I’d had a few magazine and newspaper articles published, was a regular at the local poetry open mic and I was fondling one of the gorgeous leather-bound, too-expensive-for-me journals, so it seemed more appropriate than claiming an identity as a boat bottom-washer. The latter was what I happened to be doing at the time for cash during that spell down in Florida, but it seemed highly unlikely that I would go to my grave scrubbing hulls.

“May I?” The slender fellow took my hand in his and turned it palm up. “Ah,” he said, peering at the delicate web of lines. “You will write a book.”

I didn’t disagree or pull my hand back. I was earnestly working on not one, but two novels at the time - and a collection of poems, so yes, with any luck I had at least one book in my future. [Note: None of those early projects saw the light of day… a good thing, as they were dreadful.]uyb

“It will be a memoir,” he went on. He closed his eyes and tipped his head to the side as if he were listening to a voice coming from somewhere beyond the back of beyond. “It will be called, A Love Affair With Words.”

I took my hand back, smiled, and a moment later stepped outside into the steamy heat of a South Florida summer. Really? A Love Affair With Words? That was going to be the title?

While none of the 40 books I’ve published so far has been so-named (or, for that matter, none of the shorter pieces either…), giving up on my love affair with words has never been an option. Yes, I’ve switched genres many times and I’ve reused material to refurbish old stuff and give it new life (last night, actually - I dragged out an old poem and presented it as a spoken word piece at a gathering of local lit-lovers). And, yes - I know plenty of people who will attest that I am delightfully crazy.

Maybe, I should add a writing life memoir to my list of current projects… In honour of the budding seer from long ago, I already know the title.

[Apparently, Part 2 of my Spring Catch-up Series will have to wait until next time.]

Ever been to a psychic? Do tell!