I read a thoughtful obituary on Slate today about the passing of Tillie Olsen — writer, feminist, and mother — whose real story lies in what she didn’t write. Although Olsen was an activist and active feminist, her first book wasn’t published until she was fifty years old.
After I finished the obituary, I found several other pieces, these two in particular, that cut to the heart of what Olsen represents to many of us who admire her, and like Lorraine this quote knocked the wind out of me.
But Olsen’s theme - and her fear - was silence, the dream only dreamed. Olsen knew this firsthand. After beginning a novel in the 1930s about a migrant family, her writing career was delayed 20 years for sheer lack of time. She never stopped regretting all the stories never told.
“Well, I’m going to be one of those unhappy people who dies with the sense of what never got written, or never got finished,” she said.
How many women feel — have felt — the same?
I do, sometimes, as I realize that all the time I spend doing so-called frivolous things like reading and writing cut into the mopping, laundering, and child-watching that I’m obliged to do, simply because if I don’t no one else will. I’m one of those saps who thinks she might someday make it as a real published writer, if not even as a career than as a passion (because if Dawn Eden can do it, I can fucking do it). I have a pile of blank journals that have been given to me annually by friends, each inscribed with requests for that novel I ought to be writing. I have a hard drive full of my own poems and short stories, and made a habit of writing a little something every day for probably close to ten years. Bits and pieces, heres and theres, whatsits and doodads of thought and story line and no time to put it all together or refine, refine, refine as I want. Sometimes I wonder how much time I could spend on “real” writing if I weren’t blogging, or if I would write at all anymore without the immediate gratification of instant publishing and instant audience. I quit playing piano shortly after Ethan was born and, as I explained to my mother tonight as Ethan played yet another round of Christmas carols from memory, I lost it. I can plunk out a song or two but something is missing. I wonder if writing is like that.
Several years ago I gave my mother a journal requesting that she write down some of her stories, an autobiography for my sisters and I to keep so we may know her better despite the weird confines of parent-child relationships, generation gaps, and personal grievances. It’s an easy platform, full of writing prompts and lined paper, and I eagerly searched it out to see what and if she had written. I discovered she hid it from me so I wouldn’t read it until she was ready. I hoard my “real” writing too, knowing that to reveal it before it’s ready is a painful exposure of all the blemishes I’m too busy to wipe clean, lurking about the reader explaining the rough parts raw because I haven’t found a way, or the time, to fix them.
Just tonight I received an email from an old family friend wondering where my novel is, and it’s here, it’s right here, but I don’t have the time to concentrate. Maybe when I convince somebody to buy me a laptop. Maybe when I’m fifty.
I think all writers, no matter the age or gender, understands this feeling. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to write things out when they pop in my head. One of my creative writings teachers always used to remind me that I need to make notations of my ideas before they get lost down the memory hole. So many lost stories… but nobody would pay me for them anyway, so I guess they served their purpose as internal movie time waster.
I don’t think it’s just women who don’t have time - although they probably are more stretched for it. I’ve had a novel kicking around in my head for 15 years. One of my great fears is that I’ll get hit by a truck and never finish it.
That strikes a chord for me, as well. Over a year ago, I left real estate after only six months because a) I hated it and b) I realized that if I were to die at the same age as my father (53), I only have 17 years to produce the art that knocks around my brain begging to be released. How often do I sit down in the studio and then stop to go fold laundry, empty trash, make a school lunch, etc? Too often. I’d rather leave my kids with hundreds of artworks that they can’t figure out what to do with than just the empty space where they should have been, but the juggling is damned difficult.
Once upon a time, I worked with a painter–an artist. He would teach me some of his craft (for fun, I am a writer at core, although not a ‘realized’ one). One day he showed me some drawings by his daughter, who, incidentally, had the same name as I did. They were beautiful–they had a complexity of detail and a richness of composition I envied and hoped to achieve some day (I had problems with the composition myself). And then he told me his daughter was 4 years old when she did this, and my jaw dropped.
I somehow forced her story out of him, little by little–it clearly pained him. In short, this woman was exceptionally talented. She went on to learn everything she possibly could from her father, and won numerous awards, branched out into sculpture (which he didn’t do), had a few exhibits of her own by the age of 19, was starting to get recognized as one of the most promising young artists of her generation, etc.
Then at some point, abruptly, she dropped from college (she was studying engineering, of all things), and ran away with some guy. The details were fuzzy from then on, but all I know for certain is that she basically gave up her artistic career, and, years later, she eventually married a German guy, settled in some small German town and promptly had three kids.
She would send her old father some pictures for Christmas–in them, a stout, Germanic-looking hausfrau was busy holding on to her tots. As far as my friend knew, she never painted again–well, except maybe as a hobby.
That story has haunted me ever since, as absolutely My Biggest Fear. Women have particular challenges when taking up a creative career, and often they don’t have people (husbands, parents, mentors) who back them up. They also tend to be blamed for their choices at the same time as those choices are basically made for them by society (see my painter friend, who couldn’t shake some resigned accusatory tone off his voice when talking about his daughter, at the same time as this woman did the ‘right’ thing by the society’s conservative standards).
I’ve lost track of my creative ambitions myself, why, getting married and busy following my husband around for his career, but I’ve started to remember them, and what you wrote here is so, so true, and again, so haunting. And you’re already 10 times the writer I could every hope to be (been reading you for several years, since Feministe,and I know what I’m saying), and I will truly, honest-to-God, buy that book of yours when you decide to write it. You’re a great inspiration to me, and I hope you will, truly, really, write, because that’s what you’re meant to do.
Oh, and your blog writing: NOT insignificant at all, au contraire. Just thought I’d let you know!
That’s just incredibly sad. I can tell just by reading your blog (here and at Feministe) that you’ve got a lot of talent and it sucks that you can’t find the time and energy to devote to it.
I always feel jealous of you writer types. I hate writing and storytelling, as I find that I just don’t have anything to say. I mean, I have things to say, but nothing really meaningful and nothing worth writing down. I’ve never been in the slightest bit imaginative with anything except cooking, although I’ve always wished I were more of a creative type. I love to read (and I’ll read pretty much anything), but writing is incredibly difficult for me. In fact, that’s part of the reason I didn’t finish grad school, because a PhD has to write, even in the sciences (I got a MS in physics), regularly for their living. And I just can’t do it–it’s a horrible chore for me and I’m no good at it either.
Blogging is real writing; it is also practice writing for the writing you really want to do.
I mourn Tillie Olsen too. Before she died, I heard someone read Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” and it made me think that I wanted to read “As I stand here ironing,” again. And, fuck me, I’d completely forgotten about “Silences”.
yrs,
B. Dagger Lee
What would it honestly take for you to write this book???
“Sometimes I wonder how much time I could spend on “real” writing if I weren’t blogging, or if I would write at all anymore without the immediate gratification of instant publishing and instant audience.”
Oh, I always think like this, as if writing is a zero-sum game or something … would I work more on writing plays or novels (which I hold up as, you know, the “real” things to write) if I wasn’t always writing in my personal journal? Or on a blog? Or sending long emails to my out-of-town friends? And who knows, maybe we would …. it’s the same with reading, too … could I finish more of the literary greats if I wasn’t consumed in newspapers and culture magazines and blogs? Well, yeah, probably.
I like to think it doesn’t matter one way or another, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it does, and on any given day the anxiety/guilt over what I’m not writing/reading can get overwhelming …
I really admire that you can take time to sit and write something every day. When I was younger, I wrote prolificly, poetry mostly, and it was just a part of me. At some point, when I was going through a serious depressive episode, I just stopped. And its been 4 years, really, since I’ve done it and its very awkward even finding a voice to write in again. I have been going to readings and events with people I used to know when I wrote all the time and they keep asking me to read…but I just don’t have any sort of confidence in any of it any more. Its coming back, but I could imagine if I had all the pressures of children and household maintenance to deal with there’s a good chance it never would.
Lauren, I want to help you find a laptop! I don’t want to offer unsolicited advice, especially if it’s something you’ve been looking into for a long time, but if you give me some details about what you’re looking for, I’ll try to help.