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| Fitzgerald photo from NYTimes |
It's midnight as I shut down the process of translating the second novel I ever wrote from typed pages to editable computer files. Only 70 more pages to go of 606 pages. "It's always three am in the darkest part of the soul." That's what F. Scott wrote in his autobiographical collection, The Crack Up.
I used to feel like that all the time. It's an alcoholic's thing, but I'm free of that for a long time, but I'm amused by my continued striving to "make it" with my writing. At age 75, it's kind of silly, but...what?...I'm not alone in this striving? What writer stops before he drops dead or his mind gives out...if...he hasn't won any recognition? I mean, if he's seriously got the writing bug, if it's something he does almost in his sleep? The few times I stopped writing creatively, I went on letter writing binges and email bombastic adventures or filled journals. If I took all the hours I've sat with pencil and paper, or before a typewriter and, finally, a computer keyboard, I'd pretty near have an additional life...well...a short life, but at least a life of some kind, different from sitting down expressing thoughts and feelings that no one might ever read.
Jung wrote that a "man" was supposed to spend the first half or his life achieving his professional successes and the second half attending to his philosophical life. Well, I did finally do something to shore up my financial picture, but it wasn't doing what I thought I'd love to do every day of my life...writing. No, I did it as a machinist in a machine shop. Somehow, I think I'm trying to combine philosophizing and writing in this last phase of my life. I'm getting pretty philosophical about failure. If it wasn't for my successful and happy life with my wife, Mertie, I'd really be desperate. This is real joy, isn't it?
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