Historian Steven Pressfield tells the story of how he wrote a novel when he was 21, got 99.9% through it — and froze up. Couldn’t finish. He was so depressed about it that he started acting out in all sorts of self-destructive ways — alcohol, drugs, sex. He destroyed his marriage. His life was hell for seven years and he was near suicide when he decided to try writing again.
He wrote a few hundred words of dreck, but when he was finished he realized that he was happy. So he decided to keep writing because it made him happy, and he eventually became a best-selling author.
I can relate — to the happy part, not the best-selling part. Nothing makes me happier than the feeling of writing something good. Even something bad, I guess, although that also makes me feel terrible at the same time. But like the little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead, when it’s good it feels very, very good.
Back in my radio days, my secret dream was to be a writer. I wanted to write a book about my stepfather, Joe, and what happened when he was stabbed in the neck one night while trying to break up a gang fight in my mother’s diner.
It happened in the spring of 1967. I was a 20-year-old new mother, working for my parents at the diner on the north side of Minneapolis while my husband went to radio school. After the stabbing, Joe was in surgery for ten hours and had a stroke on the operating table.
He came out paralyzed on his left side.
Six young men involved in the fight were quickly arrested and brought to trial. We were shocked and demoralized when they were each given a 90-day sentence in the county jail. One, a minor, was even allowed to finish high school and graduate with his class while sleeping at the jail at night. To add insult to devastating injury, after the sentencing a woman stormed into the diner and said to my mother, “Your husband ruined my brother’s life!” We all shook our heads and wondered what kind of people they were.
Joe struggled with depression, bitterness and constant pain. The business failed a couple of years after he was hurt. That’s how my mother talked about that night: When Joe was hurt. We never said stabbed or attacked.
My parents moved to San Diego where Joe, a strong, virile man whose father lived into his 90s, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 63. Mom, heartbroken, followed in 1981.
Years later, I moved back to Minneapolis. On my daily commute, I drove by the drab building that once held Mom’s bustling restaurant and started thinking about the men involved in the fight. They were all around my age, grew up on the North Side just like me and were, I assumed, in the same socio-economic class — blue collar. What was the difference between us, I wondered, and how could that woman say such a thing?
Then it occurred to me for the first time that only one person held that knife — and no one knew which one. We had always thought of them as equally guilty, all of them somehow holding the knife as it sliced into my stepfather’s throat.
No wonder the woman was so angry. From her point of view her brother was innocent, and now he would have a record as a violent criminal for the rest of his life.
What was his life like now?
I started to write about what happened, with the goal of finding the men and interviewing them about how the crime and punishment had affected their lives. I wanted to compare their experience with my own and see if we were really that different.
At the library, I looked up the newspaper stories on microfiche and found their names. I interviewed the detective who investigated the crime and made the arrests. [And let me clear one thing up that everyone asks: they were white.] I went to the courthouse and found more records, including the current addresses of most of the men, who would now be in their 50s. I could barely breathe from excitement when I saw those addresses.
I wrote five chapters about all of this — pretty good ones, I think — and sent them off as part of a book proposal to a big literary agent. Who wrote back. Wanting more. Like, a chapter about me actually meeting one of these guys.
And just like Steve Pressfield, I froze.
I was terrified of meeting them, not because I thought they’d hurt me, but because I didn’t know what to say. How would I introduce myself — “I’m the daughter of the man you stabbed?” What would I ask them? What would they say to me? Would any of them even talk to me? I couldn’t do it.
I never replied to the agent’s letter.
That was the end of a years-long dream for me. I had wanted to write creative nonfiction books ever since I read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, The Right Stuff by Thomas Wolfe, and The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. They were my heroes. I was thrilled when I once got a chance to interview Kidder on the radio.
But instead of dusting myself off and coming up with a book idea I could handle, I gave up. And like Steve Pressfield, I became very depressed. I didn’t drink or do drugs; I ate lots of ice cream and gained 50 pounds. Not so dramatic, but the feeling was the same. I was mourning my lost dream. And now that I think of it, I was ashamed of my cowardice. I hated myself for not having the courage to seek out those men, and for giving up on my dream. My work suffered and I eventually lost my job. My career never recovered.
I had lost my heart.
That was 17 years ago. I’m not going to be melodramatic and tell you my life has been hell since then. I’ve learned a lot. I became very interested in yoga and Buddhism, which helped me come out of my depression. The pressure I had put on myself since my teen years to be “somebody” lifted, and I understood deep down for the first time, that none of that matters.
Back during my blackest period, under the guise of being a skeptical journalist, I interviewed a well-known psychic medium. I asked her the question that was burning in my soul:
“What is our purpose in life?”
Her disappointing answer: “To be happy.”
That’s all? I was expecting something more profound. I couldn’t comprehend how truly profound her simple statement was.
The medium’s response did not compute for me then. Now it does. I understand what Steve Pressfield meant about being happy after writing those few paragraphs, even though they weren’t much good. It’s not about how good it is. Being happy is about doing what we were meant to do, whether it’s writing or making pottery, being an amazing parent or creating an awesome website. It’s about making something new. That’s what makes us happy.
It’s what is making me happy right now as I type. I’m finally writing again. It’s not a book but that doesn’t matter.
I’m writing.
Go. Make something. Be happy.
Image credit: Scott Ableman
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