Thinking the Unthinkable - IWSG June, 2023

 

Welcome to IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. To find posts from other contributors, click here. Thank you to this month’s co-hosts: Patricia Josephine, Diedre Knight, Olga Godim, J. Lenni Dorner, and Cathrina Constantine.

This month’s optional question: If you ever did stop writing, what would you replace it with?

Those who know The Princess Bride should hear Vizzini's voice in their heads. Stop writing? "Inconceivable.”

I joined my first (short lived) writing group in 2010-ish. Our town library had received a grant to offer a free writing course taught by a Grub Street instructor. When the class was finished, a few of us continued to meet regularly. Our members included a yoga instructor who liked to write, a woman who had never written before, a young mother working on lengthy piece of historical fiction and me, recently unemployed and trying to find her writing way. The fifth member of the group was a bit of an enigma. Petite and delicate-looking, she wore her iron-grey hair short and presented a funky vibe in her faded blue jeans and red canvas high-tops. She didn’t share much about herself, but we suspected she was older than she appeared when she skipped meetings if it meant driving in the dark or the rain. I remember a story she wrote in which she dropped us into a tension-filled hospital emergency room during the sixties drug culture. She was the best writer among us.

Not long after the group disbanded, I began my current role at our town's Department of Elder Affairs and shortly into my tenure, this woman became a client for a service I am in charge of providing. Our business is always conducted via phone, and over what has now become many years, the only time I’ve had occasion to see her was pre-Covid, when she attended a writing class our center offered. Yet even now I talk to her often, and occasionally we talk about our writing. Last week there was one such day and the end of our conversation she said, “I hope the center will offer another writing class soon.”

I told her I’d pass on the request to the individual in charge of arranging programs. After we hung up, I kept thinking about her in context of this month’s IWSG question, and I confess. I looked up her age.

Honestly, I can't fathom choosing not to write, anymore than I can picture what could replace it. Here’s to achieving 91 years of age, and still looking forward to writing.