TURNING SIXTY

Our amazing friend Kathy Wiechman guest blogs today.  We know (and love) Kathy from two Highlights Founders workshops and co-blogging with her over at Swaggerwriters.  After over thirty years of writing fiction and submitting her work to various publishers, Kathy has been offered a contract with Boyds Mills Press.  Today, she writes about determination, age and writing success.  

CONGRATULATIONS KATHY!!!

(Kathy Wiechman, Jon Egan, Melissa Kline, Regina Gort, Juliet Bond, Grace Buonanno and Rich Wallace)

TURNING SIXTY

               By Kathy Cannon Wiechman

     It seems a number of entertainment types are turning sixty. Christie Brinkley. Howard Stern. Oprah. They are celebrating their birthdays with joy. But they have already achieved great success in their chosen fields.

     I seldom discuss my age, but for my dear friends, Juliet and Gina, I make an exception. I found turning sixty disheartening. I have been writing since Age five, and thought I would have accomplished some degree of writing success by the time I reached my “golden years.” I had a couple poems published and my short stories earned prizes in a few contests, but my real goal (and dream) was to have a novel published. I have been writing them for more than forty years. By the time I reached that milestone birthday, I was working on my eleventh novel. None of the first ten have been published. But disheartened does not mean giving up.

     On December 16, 2013, I signed a contract with Boyds Mills Press, and I’m currently working with my editor on final revisions for LIKE A RIVER, that eleventh novel! Not giving up finally paid off! The actual birthday might have been disheartening, but the dream is alive and well!

Success

This week is a big push for me. I have a deadline for some revisions. When I get into this mode I get a visit from the little voices. You know the ones that like to make you doubt. That's when I pull out the poem below and gain some perspective. Here's to a successful day of writing!

FOR THE YOUNG WHO WANT TO
Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.