A Great Grandfather's Encouragement From The Grave

Prompt #267

OVERCOMING OBSTACALS

Your character wants something very badly. . . . will they get it?

A GREAT GRANDFATHER’S

ENCOURAGEMENT

FROM THE GRAVE

Her dad had been a writer; but, a writer of fact-based, instructional materials; writings that could not, justifiably, be classified as “creative”. She, herself, had been a writer, of sorts; but, as with her dad, her writing too consisted of fact-based, persuasive materials. Nothing creative.

Having grown up hearing her dad clicking away on his old Olympia manual typewriter down in the basement where he did most of his work, she had vicariously experienced the “writing bug” which, later in her life she realized had been in her genes.

Her great grandfather – on her mother’s side – had also been, what appears to be, a “frustrated’ writer. In looking through old boxes which had been passed down from great grandfather to grandfather to mother and now to daughter, she came upon several packets of material written by her great grandfather. Much to her surprise, she found that he, too, entered contests and wrote manuscripts. To the best of her knowledge, however, he was never actually a “published author”, but possessed the “writing bug”! 

One packet which caught her eye consisted of twenty “student” writing assignments put out by the then NEWSPAPER INSTITUTE OF AMERICA in New York City. They would send writing assignments in yellow folders, which would be returned to the writer with a critique. 

An interesting comment on the cover of the final writing assignment read, in part:  “In writing, each failure is a forward step. For it is by attempting jobs not quite within our powers that we develop strength and ingenuity”. NIOA, Editorial Dept.

“Failure”, apparently, is an inherent fear of all writers?  However, as her grandfather later optimistically wrote in a prologue to a submission to an unknown publication: 

“Men and women are looking through the columns of newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, seeking something that will satisfy an innate desire for better things. Perhaps a word, sentence, or paragraph, will have an appeal that will sparkle with the very thing they so much desire”.  HWMiller   The fear of “failure” can be allayed by a drive he so eloquently described.

Her “writing bug” was obviously “in her genes”!

After a lifetime of not pursuing what she had, in the back of her mind – without then having all of this generational information -  always considered her dream, now,  at this stage of her “senior”, retirement status,  little hope seemed left of achieving her dream.  She always loved to write, but mostly, now that she was retired, her writing consisted primarily of correspondence to friends - either typewritten and posted, or simply emailed (a despised format which she considered “without class) or in the form of notes of bereavement placed in sympathy cards which, as she aged, became more and more frequent.

Any support  she may have received over the years trying to convince her that she should “write” came mostly from those who had received her notes (youth to whom she was offering supportive advice or motherly wisdom) or to those who had received one of her bereavement  notes which they indicated to her they would “treasure forever”. 

As a retired senior, she was feeling that her ship had sailed, so to speak, on her confidently productive years and now, in the twilight of her days, she held little confidence or hope that her dreams of becoming a noted author would ever come to fruition.

Yet, almost daily, to her friends/family, she would refer, in some way, to her writing. 

She just knew she loved to put words on paper – for whatever the reason – in the hope that they would actually have meaning to someone.

She had been well-advised by author friends that there were two important aspects to becoming an accomplished author: 

First, you had to write something every day. That took discipline. She was disciplined enough in her real life. But in her writing life, she held no discipline. 

As a child, she had grown up with the routine of having to get her work done before play time. In other words, if she wanted to write, she first had to get all of her life’s chores out of the way; then she could sit down and write. More often than not, that free time never occurred. Without the required discipline, she was unable to put all else aside and simply sit down to write.

Yet, in truth, she could never quite seem to find the time to actually sit down and write. 

While she longed for, and agreed that, the set-aside daily time was necessary, at the close of a busy day other demands constantly seemed to take over. Dinners needed to be made, children needed to be cared for, laundry needed to be done and spouses, friends and family needed her attention. What was  “left” of her at the end of the day was insufficient to provide the creative thinking necessary to effectively write something on a sheet of paper that anyone would want to read.

The second  aspect of becoming an accomplished writer, she was told,  was to write about something she knew. As one ages, one is constantly reminded that we are no longer in our prime, we are no longer “with it” when it comes to knowing what is going on in the world AND we are no longer entitled to have (or at least express)  an opinion about things about which anyone would give a damn.   

Given the fact that she was now considered a senior member of society, with little to no “free” time, no energy, no creativity and no support for her dream, why did she try to hold onto any false hopes that she could become an author. If she could find the time, what did she “know”,  at her age,  that could be turned around and used in a creative fashion that would be of interest to anyone else?

Yet something in the back of her mind kept telling her that she could  make her dream a reality. Day after day, she fought with herself as to just how to accomplish that goal. 

If income was strictly her desire to publish then her chances of  success  were even slimmer. Intellectually, she knew, first and foremost,  that she needed to set aside the monetary goal and deal strictly with trying to put down on paper words that would mean something to somebody which might catapult her into a genre of creativity and accomplishment.

One day she found herself off the grid, alone for a week with absolutely none of life’s interruptions. On a whim, she shot off a note to a publishing company whose name she found in one of the many writing files she had accumulated over the years with various research articles about publishing and writing and succeeding in the literary world. To her amazement, the inquiry was immediately responded to. A publishing employee (likely in pursuit of his desire to pick up a new author for his company)  began routinely hounding her for a commitment to a completion date for her anticipated manuscript.

How flattering; but, REALLY?  

Her contact with a publisher had been a spur-of-the moment impulse;  intended to encourage her own self motivation. In her mind, she had only two writing options (in terms of what she “knew”): one being to write about a traumatic experience in her life (which she wasn’t even sure she was ready to revisit) and the second being to expand upon a short story she had written many, many years before (which would take hundreds of hours to accomplish background research because it was not set in an era about which she “knew”).   She had nothing.  No files stuffed with proposed manuscripts, or even notes or thoughts about writing topics. Nothing. Yet, she fancied herself as wanting to be this discovered, legitimate literary icon! 

After several months of follow up by the publisher’s employee, she finally fessed up to him that she had nothing. 

Why did she have nothing? When the dream of being an author had been such a part of her life – in vision if not in reality – why couldn’t she ever find the time to write; or was it that she didn’t have the drive to write; or was it that she didn’t have the confidence to write. What were her excuses?

Obstacles. Overcoming obstacles. Self-made obstacles?  Real-life obstacles? 

Would they continue to pop up in front of her; or, had she finally reached a point in her life when she would break down, one by one, those obstacles that had prevented her from at least trying to accomplish her dream.

As she sat down at the keyboard one sun-drenched day (when, in truth, she would have loved to be outside puttering around in her yard) and put her fingers to the keys, she remembered her great grandfather, and her father, writers of a different sort. On this day, she knew: first, that she was going to write something today; and second  that she was going to write about what she knew. 

And, if she failed: “. . . each failure . . . (would be) a forward step”    in developing in her “. . . strength and ingenuity. . .”  which might, as her great grandfather’s words had so aptly encouraged,  help her to create a: “. . . word,  sentence, or paragraph, [which would] have an appeal that will sparkle with the very thing [the reader] so much desired”.

Only time would tell if her great grandfather’s words would help overcome the  real or self-imposed obstacles that she felt had held her back and that now, in her twilight of days, her written word would some day accomplish her long-awaited dream of becoming a real “author”.