Writing, "Block," and Getting Old, Among Other Things

This is going to be a salad, or maybe more aptly a hash where the flavors blend into one another.

I have not been writing. It's not about some missing muse, it's just I have not been writing—this or anything else for that matter. No excuses. I don't think there is a thing "writer's block." Either you are writing or you are not. I've not been.

Coincidentally my writing group died after a long lingering decline. I don't put the two together. I wasn't writing before it died. And I miss it. It was a thing to look forward to for the last nine or ten years. Some good work was done in it. I haven't given much thought to trying to put together another one. There was something sweet and copacetic about the first few that assembled and saw fit to ask me to join, and despite some changes in characters, it stayed pretty much that way. I think people went out of their way to make it work. I miss it.

After a long hiatus I have picked up draft 22 of "Cowboy...," the first script I "finished." I have had it staring at me for almost four years knowing that the ending wasn't right and not knowing what to do about it. On our annual to Montana I was talking with my wife about it. My wife talks about the thing as if it is a movie she has actually seen. A few dozen miles of I-90 later she had me on the path to a fix where my protagonist finally brings it home the way you know she should. So now I'm actually in the nuts and bolts of the rewrite. A definite improvement.

Then amid a jumble of thoughts about things that are going on right now, this came to me, so I'm writing this and seeing where it will go. My wife is scheduled to have a hip replaced a week from today, and I've probably been a little anxious about it. But it will also be a relief. She hardly has a waking moment without pain.

And I have had another go round with the eye docs. I've had both lens replaced (cataract surgery) which had really great results, but lately I've had some trouble with fine print. The net: I have the slow form of macular degeneration in my right eye. It's in my left, too, but not progressed enough to impact my vision. I went to a specialist and got some really straight answers. Except for the prognosis (slow deterioration over time) it was a great conversation. He gave me a chart I can use to monitor it, explained the difference between what I have and "wet" macular degeneration which is worse but treatable, and said that unless new research comes up with something (and it might) there was nothing he would recommend doing. He said some of his colleagues do intervene but that he thought the risks were not worth the rare and minor gains.

Some days later I was talking with someone a bit younger and said something to the effect of this business with my eyes "being one of the not so good things about getting old." To which he said "So what are the good things about getting old?" It took a moment's thought and I responded "Complaining about it!"

Then our book group was making its annual selections and one of the women recommended a book which she described as being "a little dark, sort of like the Updike Rabbit books, about a man in late middle age who loses his job, gets divorced... it's supposed to be really good." She looked around when no one jumped on the suggestion and then added, "Maybe we should defer to the men in the group on this one." I looked across at one of the other two men and said, "I think not. Been there, done that," to general laughter. It did not make the cut.

This all munges together for me. Not being completely well, though not sick, getting old with things that just don't work the way they used to—what we take for granted in youth—not writing that way I say I want to (not much good saying and then not doing), having associations change and dissolve, being a long distance away from kin and in some cases being deeply estranged from them.... Makes me feel time passing.

Well, I have a hot script waiting my attentions.