Midlist
“Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.”
–John Gregory Dunne
You receive a letter from an arts organization you’ve never heard of and certainly don’t recall applying to. They want you to come to the side of a mountain and do nothing but write for five months. You tell your husband, and he is not happy. “That’s too long,” he says. “The cat will die of missing you. I will be very mean when you come back and who the hell needs to live on the side of a mountain for five months?” Well, no one.
You negotiate for a shorter time, and they say “yes.” It’s a long time away, and maybe something will make the whole plan moot, like the end of the world, or you break your leg, which you have already done, as you recall. You arrive despite going through Canada by mistake and are given a key to an enormous house from 1902, dark, dirty, and nearly unfurnished.
This is art camp for the midlist, haven’t been published in a long time; art camp, unlike those other places, you know, the ones where they serve you meals and people are always referring to their agents, their publishers, the thousands of paying subscribers to their Substacks which they barely need as they have a tenured position at X college where they mold MFA writers into being the new Sally Rooney or at least have a branded tote bag.
And you? You are over sixty, agentless, a few hundred lovely Substack people; you have scraped a career out of teaching, but, oh dear, some of that was as a high school English teacher. Never mind that you loved it, that scores of miserable teenagers have told you how much it meant to them to be safe, loved, and encouraged in your classroom. Never mind that your third novel received an absolute rave in the NYT and was chosen as a Notable Book. You are told by an agent who is sort of committed to you that any main character older than forty is doomed. You are told by several agents/publishers that “your writing is so good, but…”
Anyway, back to that dark and dirty, huge house and this town where old hippies go to dance in mystical circles, wearing tie dye and using vocabulary you vaguely remember from when your oldest sister was taking drugs and educating you in all things Zappa. The other artists are mostly younger painters, grateful for this time to leave their lives while you are slightly miffed by the bat in your bedroom, the woodchuck living under the porch, and missing your husband and cat because you actually live in a gorgeous place and there are no spider webs.
photo by Jeremy Bishop
You write. You write and swim in the dingy YMCA, unlike your brand new, light-filled Y and the exquisite lakes you miss, as you pull words from the depths of your soul. Or play solitaire. Sometimes you take hikes that are often a disaster, straight up the side of another mountain, hot, stony, you are alone, you miss your cat and your husband, the other artists, being young, are hopeful and possibly put off by your over sixty lack of belief in the wonder of creation. When your son calls, you share these thoughts, and he reminds you of your wonderful life as a writer and when you sulk and point out the dark and dirty quarters, he remarks that this will make you more grateful when you go home. Your husband barely speaks to you and sends pictures of the cat looking abandoned but really, he is just hungry. You ask yourself why you don’t give up.
This is a ridiculous question. Would you stop breathing, stop sleeping or stop eating because you feel neglected and hurt by an industry that never cared about you but at one point seemed eager to embrace your stories? This is what you have done since you learned to read. You have lied, invented, recorded, and witnessed everything, and this will be what you do until you allow yourself to sink beneath the beautiful blue water.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach