Why?

A Story of Groping for Answers

My word-count chart, 1973.

Why? Why keep doing it, whatever it is – in my case, writing –  when you’ve reached the age at which you realize, even deep down in your gut, that the silken phrase “the world will little note, nor long remember” could be the first line of your obituary? 

When the chief goals of life have come down to having a good bowel movement (speaking of gut), at least once a week – or, some weeks, any bowel movement at all – , and living at least one day longer than the whole life annuity break-even date. When you’ve accepted, as I have, that you will not be the Hemingway of your generation (which generation, anyway, is dying off at such a rate that you could never be a best seller even if you were their Hemingway – and, remember, even THE Hemingway wound up blowing his brains out, so maybe not a mentor to aspire to emulate). When you watch even your Substack subscriber number diminish day-by-day – hour-by-hour after some posts. Why keep doing it? Why not just chuck it, and spend your pitiful few remaining days displacing all your hopes and dreams (disappointed hopes and blasted dreams) onto your grandchildren – those who wisely planned ahead, and now have grandchildren – or even just doltishly screwed along, unplanned, but now have lucked into grandchildren anyway?

Though I can’t claim it was clever planning, as things happened, I have no grandchildren, so I don’t have even them to fall back on. Hence the appropriateness of a friend’s recent question, as I lamented, not for the first time, about the futility of writing: “What else do you have to do?” Another stab to the heart, to go along with that first obituary line above.

“Et tu, My Friend?” Though I have to admit, there is at least a grain of truth (ok, I admit it: a whole granary of truth!) in what Friend asked.

Why keep doing it – sitting hour after hour, watching a blinking cursor on an empty laptop screen – hoping that something – anything – worth keeping will come out – something that won’t have to be flushed away with tomorrow’s revisions (a sort of variation on the weekly hope referenced above). Knowing all along that even if something worth keeping does come out (unlikely), there’s still no hope of seeing it published far and wide (and praised, of course – the hope of praise never seeming to get flushed away, and – let’s be frank – a real point of it all at any age), the market for pearls of wisdom from white, gay, grey-haired old farts being the un-flourishing one it is.

So why keep doing it?

Thanks to the annuities referenced above (where would this essay be without “above”?), I don’t have to do it for the money. Which is a good thing, since my experience has been that “the money” for things I write has been small, even in the flushest times. In which case, Why? Since, as someone once said that the only reason to go through the loneliness, pain, heartache and rejection of writing, is for the money (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” Samuel Johnson, in conversation with his biographer, Boswell).

Perhaps one reason to keep writing is for the shear joy it brings – though those diminishing Substack subscriber numbers (referenced “above”) would suggest that the joy may not be shared by all. Can you believe that two subscribers checked out with the Gadbois Wine Room piece (teetotalers, do you suppose?), and another gave one more rejection to Elizabeth Bishop!? Frankly, I would have thought it would be all the GAY stuff that would be rated UNSUBSCRIBE. One or two did leave after some of those, but that’s been a while ago. Lucky for my annuity account (see “above”), these were all FREE subscribers, so no fees had to be refunded.

OK, so there will be no fame or fortune, thus I’m already convicted as a blockhead; the Joy has its limitations; and brutal truth might suggest that my time (and energy – what little of both are left) would be better spent making a late stab at grandchildren even now. If I start the process without further delay, they could be teenagers by the time I’m 90, the perfect ages for mutual enjoyment, right?

And yet, I persist with the writing instead. Why?

Is it because writing, as they say about living, is better then the alternative? But is it really – always? Might it not be better, sometimes, to just lounge around eating bon-bons and reading trashy novels? Instead of woofing bon-bons while writing trashy Substacks? Of course, someone has to write the trashy Substacks, just as they do the trashy novels. How else would we have them to compare the good ones to? So why not me? But that alone may not be reason enough.

I should probably be writing here, some things about the thrill: of having the words fall into place, of knowing that a quip has landed perfectly, of seeing the paragraphs grow into essays. But what the gods of writing giveth in those regards today, they too often taketh away tomorrow.  

Recently I came across a card I made in 1973 – yes, 50 years ago – on which I intended to record my daily word count, for discipline (see above). Numbers don’t lie. Looks like 500 words a day was my hoped-for sweet spot then. I didn’t make that number many days. Imagine if I had. That’s 500 words a day, times five days a week (since even the dedicated deserve weekends off), times 52 weeks a year, times 50 years. That’s 6,500,000 words – say, 100 novels – no sweat. Just think what my reputation (and praise) would be today had I kept that going. As the chart reveals, I didn’t; though I did travel a good deal, considering my poverty then, and I was pretty good about taking the weekends off. And, by the way, I also had a day job.

Which is why I’ve set myself a new goal: 1000 words a day, to make up now as much lost time as possible. But even if I’m lucky and have another 20 years, that’s only 5,000,000 words (still taking weekends off, and a few days for kicking back with bon-bons). Maybe 80 novels. But what good is that with so much time already frittered? So why keep at it?

In the end, there may be no definitive answer, no plausible irrational, not to mention, rational one. Perhaps it comes down to blunt reality that just has to be accepted. Why must I write? As well ask, why must the moon be made of green cheese? It just IS. I just MUST. And, when it comes down to it, “What else do I have to do?” (see “above”).