The Writing Life

Difficult, Joyful, Tearful, Grateful

I have to write.

Some people have to make art or compose music or do yoga or sing.

I have to write.

Writing holds me together, it holds my life together. It’s my work and it’s my escape and it’s a joy and it’s a bad literary puzzle.

I knew I wanted to write when I was sixteen. My high school had a newspaper and I would read articles by classmates older than me, smarter than me, and certainly more engaging and cool, as I was about as awkward as an iguana.

I was in awe of their writing skills, and in awe that their names were actually in the paper.

My latest book. Ruthie Deschutes is a 70-year-old retired English teacher on a reality TV dating show. She’s not there for the right reasons.

There was a kid named Paul P. who wrote the most entertaining articles on sports. I was not remotely interested in sports articles, but I was interested in the WAY he wrote. He was funny, personal, and descriptive. I wanted to be like Paul.

One had to apply to write for the newspaper and so I gathered up all of my courage and sent in my work which consisted of numerous poorly written English essays. I could hardly breathe as I waited. This breathlessness went on for days. It is a wonder I did not pass out. It is a wonder I did not turn blue. (See the iguana below)

The journalism teacher’s name was Bev Kerns. She was in her fifties, super sophisticated, dressed like a model, and was no nonsense, strict, and blunt.

I was accepted. I could not believe my good fortune.

(To be quite honest and fair, my mother was an English teacher and she and Bev were friends. It is HIGHLY likely that’s the reason awkward - iguana me with dismal writing skills was accepted.)

This isn’t exactly how I looked in high school.

Bev used to take my articles and, using a red pencil, slash them to bits to show me everything I did wrong. When she was done, it was as if she’d bled on it. Her basic message: Start over. There is nothing worth saving here.

She was not a teacher who believed that children should be coddled, their self esteem falsely uplifted by praise they did not deserve. No, she told all her students the truth about how we wrote, and what we wrote, and that’s why we all improved.

She might have been a little scary, but damn. She knew how to teach kids.

I wrote articles for two years for that paper and I loved it. I found my calling. I went to college, took tons of writing classes, and became a teacher so I could write on weekends and during the summer and wouldn’t be dead broke with no health insurance. I ended up loving teaching. But for 25+ years I was, I am, a writer.

And I love it, though I often put my forehead flat down on my table and wonder why I could not have grown up to be a painter. (Secret wish, zero talent. My sisters got that talent. Very unfair.)

Yes, dear sister Karen Straight, an artist in Montana, made these beautiful birds with felt.

I am often asked about how I write. Each story starts with a spark, which turns into a hundred other sparks. For example, the idea for my first book, Julia’s Chocolates, started when I had an image of a hysterically crying woman throwing a fluffy wedding dress into a tree on a dusty and deserted road when I was 21 years old.

My professor at U of Oregon, a salty, intimidating sort of man said my story with the wedding dress “wasn’t bad.” He said it with a bit of wonder in his voice as if he were quite surprised that the quaking kid in front of him could write something that “wasn’t bad.” I took the “wasn’t bad,” as encouragement.

Years later I wrote Julia’s Chocolates.

The Last Time I Was Me started when I had a vision of a woman having a nervous breakdown giving a speech in front of hundreds of advertising executives. A funny nervous breakdown where she declares that they are all, “schmucks.”

The spark for Such A Pretty Face came from an article I wrote for a hospital magazine about people who had bariatric surgery who lost 150+ pounds and how it changed their lives. For the good and the bad.

The spark for my new book, Ruthie Deschutes O’Hara has Ulterior Motives, flamed in my face when I realized I really wanted to read a modern, kick-ass, unique, funny love story with someone who was not your typical 20/30 year old. I passed those years up decades ago, thank heavens.

I wanted to write about someone who was eccentric, bold, and sometimes outrageous. So I did.

Writing, to me, is creative.

Hopeful.

Difficult.

It’s full of problems to untangle and characters to figure out and a lot of, “Everything you wrote today is total crap, Cathy. What is wrong with you?”

But writing calms me down. It gives me something to do every day. I like telling stories. I like leaving my own life and jumping into the lives of my characters.

Today I’m sitting in my “outdoor” office, which means I’m sitting at our table staring at my garden with my cats. I’m writing/editing another story and it’s making me laugh sometimes and tear up other times.

I seem to tear up more than I used to when I was younger. I’m not sure why that is.

I hope that if you read my books you, too, will laugh and cry because we all need to do both.

Yours sincerely,

Cathy

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