Putting My Life Into My Writing

About 20 years or so ago I decided the time had come to pursue writing seriously.  I would become a writer.  A free-lance writer as it turned out--reporting mostly on medicine for those throw-aways you may have seen in your doctor's office.  

The docs, harried as they are, pay little attention to them beyond items that bear directly on their practice. 

Assignments were not easy to come by; pay was wretched--sometimes I wasn't sure I'd be able to pay the rent.  And my writing was confined mostly to what editors wanted.  

But I wanted to write on what interested me, not as a hack or journeyman--which is not to demean them in any way: most reporters are hack writers, though that doesn't keep them from being excellent journalists with their own style. But when you work for another, you're limited in how much of you goes into your writing.  Your writing is in your life, but I wanted to put my life into my writing.  

Ah!  There's that old ego that Zinsser mentions.  Philosopher David Hume warned, however, that it wasn't easy to talk long about yourself without indulging in vanity.  Still, Montaigne noted that it was customary to allow oldsters "more freedom to prate and more indiscretion in talking about oneself."

Well, I decided to write my memoirs  

But that, too, proved not to be what I saw myself doing as a writer.  It suffered too often from the academic/scholarly kind of writing and thinking (and feeling) that I'd been indulging in as a professor.  And I was still confined to a pre-set format--chronology--and solely about me. 

So now I'm pulling out all the stops; you can expect to see a wide--or wild--range of topics, nonfiction and fiction.  I will not be pushing a cause, grinding an axe, getting on a hobby horse and writing it to death.  Though sometimes you may think I get on my horse and write off in all directions. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)  In some ways, my blog is my declaration of independence from topics, formats and styles that I have adhered to in the past.  If things tend to get giddy at times, I hope you will bear with me.

More than just put up with me, however, I hope the writer in you will be galvanized into writing back.  You will note that you are able to comment after each posting.  I do want to hear from you; maybe have ongoing exchanges; maybe even dialogue. Tell me--and others--what you think.  I look forward to seeing what you have to say.  

And so we begin. . . And what can be better than beginning with sex?  I mean talking about sex.  Well, I really mean talking about talking about sex.  (The distancing should help keep this a family blog. (Uh huh. . . .)