“A hack is on the constant hunt for ‘ideas’ for his plots, or ‘new angles.’ The real writer is haunted by a plot which he must write out of inner necessity. He is impervious to suggestions.”

~ EDMUND BERGLER

Today’s post is a bit of a personal journey, one that will be of interest, I suspect, to relatively few people, but I have made my situation vis a vis writing a matter of public record here and elsewhere, and it deserves closure. This essay, I hope, will provide it.

First, a bit about my childhood. Bear with me, it’s relevant. My father was a sailor stationed in San Diego shortly after WWII. My mother was a student at San Diego High School. They met (don’t ask me how), mistook their infatuation for “true love” as teens so often do, and married. I was born about nine months later. Dad left the navy and took his little family back home to Georgia, just as things should have unfolded. Alas, Mom wasn’t happy there, and they divorced soon after. Her mother and grandmother drove across the country, no small feat in those days, to bring her home. As so often happens, I stayed with mom.

Unfortunately, mom soon leaned into her budding career as a professional gambler, and as that wasn’t, and still isn’t, a career that goes well with single motherhood, I wound up with grandma and great-grandma. These were bitter women who between the three of them had been married at least a dozen times, and blamed those men for all of their misfortunes. The grandmas blamed my dad for not being good enough for their little girl, and as my name is Tyler as well, those feelings were extended to me, a toddler, in the form of such cracks as, “You can tell a Tyler, but you can’t tell him much;” “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear;” “If brains were gunpowder you couldn’t blow your nose;” and my favorite, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” Born and raised in urban San Diego, I was twelve years old before I learned that dirt occurred in nature, but there you are. Mom’s favorite nickname for me was “Fool,” and she loved to use it loudly in public during the brief times we spent together.

I never met my dad, but through my daughter’s constant digging into Ancestry.com, I have met his other children, two younger half-sisters, who paint a very different picture of him and whose loving nature lends credence to their version. I sometimes wonder how life would have been had he gotten custody, but then I never would have met my wonderful wife nor my wonderful daughter and grandchildren. You can make yourself crazy exploring paths of that sort…

But what does this have to do with writing, you may wonder? I’m getting there. See, no one ever missed a chance to tell me how stupid and even retarded I was from my early preschool years right up until I joined the navy to escape. Teachers for the most part joined in. I had turned seventeen five days before I was sworn in, and I still celebrate October 12th as Independence Day. Away from their influence, I was finally able to grow into the person I should have been from childhood. The navy made me a radioman, a highly technical rating, and from that I learned that I was smart. From shipboard life I learned that I was reliable, and from my comrades I learned that I had value as a friend and coworker. That was the launch pad to the rest of my life, and while it wasn’t all fun and games, I owe the navy a great debt and won’t complain too loudly about the negatives.

So this explains, at least in my own mind, why I’m not writing anymore. I believe I was driven to write by a burning need to prove to those people, all of whom are long-dead, that I’m not the village idiot that everyone tried to convince me that I was. Having made my point to my own satisfaction through a half-dozen novels and a score of short stories, I no longer feel the need. Writing has been a big part of my adult life, and is a habit that’s hard to walk away from, especially considering all the friends I’ve made because of it, but it just isn’t there anymore. Nothing moves me to the keyboard with any particular purpose. In short, I’m a hack, constantly on the lookout for some idea to develop. I even have a deck of 720 cards, each with a type of person or a situation that you draw at random to create a story. That hasn’t worked either.

I still love the writers and fans I’ve met on the journey and I certainly don’t want to walk away from them because of this development, but you need to accept that, at least for now, my pen is archived in a place of honor. If I ever feel that need to put it to work again, I’ll do so with great enthusiasm, but for now I’ll administer this blog, try to offer insightful comments, and let that be the extent of my activity. Of course, I’ll continue to post my old stories here until you’ve seen them all, and maybe in the course of that process a spark will ignite something, but no matter how that goes, know that I love you and am proud to have been one of you for a good many years. Thanks for the ride. I had a blast!