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"What should I write about?"


Gary Lindorff
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An often asked question, by writers who are contemplating a blank page. But cheer up. If you are over sixty you are blessed with a subject that you might see as a basket for all the eggs you want to put in it, assuming that a writer worth his or her salt is at least as productive as a hen that manages to lay an egg a day.


What is this subject, this egg? Old age. Or, to be more gentle, elderhood.


If you have lived 60 years, even if you are struggling with health issues and depression, or just slogging through the valley of deferred dreams, you can write about what it is like to be in the last third of life. (Just do it!)


I assure you that, if you can focus on that, whether it is your routines or your feelings, feelings about anything (friendship, family, eating, shopping, trying to sleep, a dream you had, taking a walk, going to work, or sitting outside or deciding what you want to wear, or canoeing or going to the park or sitting on the sidewalk outside a favorite cafe . . . or climbing a mountain or climbing a stairway!) What I am saying is, anything you write about, if you are writing about it through the filter of aging (or being in the last third of life or the last quarter or the last fifth) is all yours!. It is your unique story to tell. You know what they say: "You got this!"


Unique? But "it's not interesting" you might say. F-k that. It is interesting, because it is your experience. It is interesting - intrinsically interesting, because not everyone lives to the age of 60, or 70, or 80. You are a survivor of life. And, if you are any kind of writer at all, I suggest that you try to see it that way, and start your chronicle.


Not to belabor the point, but when you read some things that are out there, you see how people either don't reveal their age, or they might mention it in passing or allude to it almost apologetically, but your age, if you are honest, is actually the best thing you have going for you if you are looking for something to write about. It is a credential that hangs around your neck like this heart that I bought when I was in Peru that hangs from my neck, that I never take off.

That's all I want to say about this. Good luck.

(Article changed on Sep 08, 2024 at 12:39 PM EDT)

(Article changed on Sep 10, 2024 at 9:21 AM EDT)

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Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and (more...)
 

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