On Being A Writer

by Doug Bruns

Carole approached, palm outstretched as if making an offering. I looked into her hand —Ladybug. The shape was classic VW Bug, but the elytra, or wing covers, were, rather than nail-polish red, a lovely shade of green, properly a camouflage green—that is, as I eyeball it, a hexadecimal value of 78866b. But that seems unnecessarily clinical. Simply said, it was a pleasant shade of green. The pronotum, what we might call the shoulders, was an ink blot of eggshell white and black. If it was a Rorschach test I’d say Darth Vader. The head was tipped with the expected antennae. Have you ever noticed that the carapace creases of the ladybug form a peace sign?

I snapped a photo and uploaded it to my iNaturalist account which immediately returned an identification of a Fifteen-spotted Lady Beetle (Anatis labiculata). Well fancy that, I thought, counting the spots. Indeed, fifteen. Occasionally she would lift her casings and flutter her wings, then gently pull them in and lower the covers, like the door of a DeLorean, if you remember those. This gave her a rather animated personality, beyond simple bug-ness, though that is not technically correct, as the ladybug is less a bug and more a beetle. I released myself to anthropomorphism. She was cute.

The ladybug came upon her common name in the Middle Ages. Suffering from crop loss due to an infestation of aphids, a village collective prayed to the Virgin Mary for help. Groups of dome-shaped beetles arrived and consumed the aphids. The villagers named them, “Our Lady’s Beetles.”

Life is quiet and slow here, 3000 feet up the Appalachian plateau. It gives one time to consider the lady beetle. And time to reflect.

I grew up believing that I was born to write. I wouldn’t say it was a calling, but rather more an aspiration. Somewhere along the line, my dad got me a typewriter, an old reconditioned Olivetti. I sat at the kitchen table pounding out stories, hunt and peck style, of course. Sometimes, if my mother was cooking, I’d sit at a card table in the garage until my father came home and wanted to park the Impala. In high school, my mother suggested I take typing classes. It was perhaps the most valuable and long-lasting of the things learned in high school.

As a young man raising a family, I struggled to write. There was never enough time and rarely enough energy. One of the first things I published was an essay about my father. It ran in The Baltimore Sun on Father’s Day. I came home from work one evening and after dinner sat down at the kid’s computer in the family room. The TV was on and things were the usual degree of loud and chaotic. I wrote the essay in one sitting. It poured out of me with a flow that I’d not experienced before. Obviously, the piece about my dad was waiting for me to give it the time it needed, to uncork the bottle, as it were. That never happened again. Only struggle ensued. Then I threw in the towel. But dreams are not released completely, especially early ones. They remain at the core of being, dormant artifacts of what might have been.

I did not quit writing entirely. Rather, I grew conditioned to waiting until the writing came to me, instead of the other way around. It was not an approach that made for consistency. Despite that, there were occasional successes over the years. But they were random and wide gaps, crevasses really, spanned the intervals between the wins. I was recognized with an award for my fiction. I was accepted into a prestigious writing program. But I’d moved on. The demands of life usurped the personal goal I’d laid out as a younger man— “I will be a writer.” Frankly, I didn’t much mind. Writing was hard and I was already doing hard stuff, raising a family, starting a (non-writing) career, nurturing a marriage. You read of successful writers who struggled with the same challenges yet managed to overcome them. They would, for instance, get up at four in the morning to write before going off to work. They’d figure it out one way or another. But that wasn’t me. I got up early but went for a run. And at the end of the day, after work, the kids in bed, I preferred to sit on the sofa with Carole and veg out.

Meanwhile, I noticed the hummingbird visits to the feeder have fallen off the past few days. We only have the Ruby-throated hummingbird here. My son in Colorado might observe up to six species in a season. The titmice are in abundance, and I notice that they tend to gather on the low branches then swoop in and flush away the chickadees and finches, taking over the feeders. The nuthatches hold their ground usually, being little shovel-nosed stalwarts. Like the hummingbirds, the pileated woodpecker visits have fallen off. They were coming to the suet regularly but no longer. One flew over camp this morning, screaming bloody hell, stopping on the oak momentarily to lord over us; she gave us the tilted side-eye then moved on. The most prevalent bird in the neighbourhood might be the Eastern wood peewee if the calls in the forest are any indication. PeeWeee, they say, self-referencing. It comes into the camp from all directions. PeeWeee. At night I put the feeders in the bear box. The first few weeks here the bears woke me several times trying to get into the box. They did not succeed. Recently I awoke to slurping and looked out to see a black bear drinking from Cooper’s water bowl. The chipmunks drink from the bowl too, but Cooper does not stir from his bed. He simply raises his eyebrow and watches, which is surprising behaviour for a terrier. The couple of times he’s spotted a bear moving through he’s gone nuts. He should pick his fights more reasonably, but terriers are known for being too big for their britches, to use a phrase of my grandmother.

My writing life, such as it was, continued off and on for many years. Occasionally inspiration would strike, and I’d write something that an editor found worthy, usually an essay or a travel piece. The essay, in particular, is a tune I most naturally whistle. But such lighting strikes were random, such being the nature of inspiration. Yet, I was not willing to commit to the hard work of writing as practice toward becoming a writer.

Once, at a social gathering,  I was introduced as a writer. I wanted to crawl into a hole. I was not a writer. I’ve heard people say that if you write, then you’re a writer. Yes, I wrote occasionally, but I was not a writer. I worked as a professional photographer for a time. I put in the time, did the work and yes, I was a photographer. I had a body of work, I had evidence. Just as a person who goes out and occasionally takes pictures is not a photographer but someone who takes pictures, I’m someone who writes, but is not a writer. It might seem a trivial distinction to some, but not to me.

The kids are grown and off on their life journeys, and work, as is normally defined, is behind me. I realize I am on the other side of the bell curve. I’m fine with that. If I never clear the hurdle that I fantasize makes me a writer, I can accept that too. But I wonder, have I set the bar too high? There is frankly now no reason (excuse?) not to stretch out and warm up with a few laps around the track. Life is, as I said, slow and quiet. Some say those are the ingredients necessary for a productive writing life—at least the quiet part.

I take long morning walks in the woods with Cooper. Occasionally I put in my earbuds and listen to a podcast or a TED talk. But mostly I listen to the birds. Besides the eastern wood peewees, the forest holds a lot of red-eyed vireos, which are elusive but vocal. There is a wood thrush living at the bend in the trail, up the mountain a ways. He welcomes me with his magical song as if expecting me. It is said to be Thoreau’s favourite bird. “The wood thrush’s is no opera music,” he wrote in his journal.  “…it is not so much the composition as the strain, the tone, — cool bars of melody from the atmospheres of everlasting morning or evening. It is the quality of sound, not the sequence.” Now there’s a writer. The morning sun will on occasionally penetrate the heavy canopy, backlighting the ferns, such that the forest floor appears all the fashion of a green sea, flowing gently. There is an energy that comes from being in the woods in the morning with the vireos, the peewees, and the thrush. Perhaps it is the same energy that turns a person from being someone who writes into someone who is a writer. I’d like to think so. That feels about right.

Author Bio

Doug Bruns is a writer, traveller, and thinker living in the Mid-Atlantic (US). He is currently at work on a book of essays on Montaigne, the 16th-century French philosopher, whom he has been reading for four decades.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Dima Novozhilov