My husband was trying to get my brother to respond to me. I’d been trying since he stopped talking to me in 2002. Gary asked a friend with a pickup to help move Mom into assisted living (the first time), and my brother went with them, but didn’t help carry anything. Earlier that day, Gary suggested to my brother that he and I could work things out. “One thing at a time,” my brother said.

That’s the way I make a quilt.

In the years before then, I’d published poetry, essays, memoir, and many stories beginning in my twenties. Since that day my brother put Gary off, I completed my MFA in fiction and wrote recommendations that helped my students go to Yale, Brown, Pepperdine, Stanford, Berkeley, Duke, Chicago, UW, BU—top schools all over the country. I pushed my students hard and they found they could do what I asked. The other day I got a hug for that. Another former student, a MAGA, posted on Facebook that she “used to look up” to me. Like my MAGA schizophrenic brother-in-law, this victim of a horrific accident, has failed to appreciate that she’s alive only because of Democratic policies. But never mind.

After 31 years of teaching (not counting 11 more as a sub), I retired. The pandemic happened. I live in a flood zone on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Earlier this week I attended a writers’ workshop on publicity. The Big 5 don’t devote much energy to promoting new authors. Small presses might offer to “assist’ but have no budget for promoting the writers they publish. The suggestion was to hire a good publicist. I should begin developing a plan to promote my forthcoming book six months in advance of release. I should expect to pay a publicist three to six thousand dollars per month. I lasted that far in the presentation, one person noted “So a minimum of $18,000 for publicity?” in the comments, and I finally understood why a writer-friend nearly gave up writing altogether after attending such a workshop. It is theoretically possible to earn back the cost of such a campaign. It is unlikely. It is what people I know can afford. It’s not affordable for me.

People sometimes assume I am rich. That’s always been true: college profs and co-workers, people I meet at conferences and events, members of nonprofits I’ve served. My diction was precise and I was (I realize now) a pretty girl when I was young. I was smart and well-spoken, but my crooked teeth should have given me away. My parents quoted Shakespeare and sang lines from Gilbert and Sullivan, but we lived in a three-bedroom, 800-square-foot ranch on a gravel road. I went to the second best public high school in Washington State, and I attended the University of Washington, earned an art scholarship three years in a row and graduated with honors, but I thought I would teach art and Gary thought he would teach elementary school. Life intervened. Our fathers died of lung cancer, but I inherited the family beach house from my grandfather’s third wife which was worth, at the time, about the same as our house in Seattle, which we sold to pay for renovation of the beach house. Insulation and wiring and two more bedrooms. I did half the work while our little boys slept. While we were still in college, I’d indulged in an expensive hobby of showing Afghan Hounds. I served on a national nonprofit board with the chair of an investment bank and a vice-president of JC Penneys. I recently had lunch in the home of a multi-millionaire. I thought I was used to rich people.

I remind myself. You don’t get used to that.

I write every day. Writing is not a vanity project for me, not something to do as a hobby, not a way to make a living or pass the time. It’s not just something to do. It’s closer to compulsion or intuitive puzzling. I pose questions such as: How does a mother whose ex has deliberately bankrupted his practice and then killed himself and their children come back from that? I wrote “The Promised Hour” using a personal experience to explore a real event. I wonder how a hospital volunteer might discover compassion she didn’t know existed or how the world might change if almost everything died, and then write fiction in order to understand my experiences and life concerns.

In my thirties I expected to have published a novel by my forties, and I’ve written those novels, six so far, and I expected each of them to be published. You can’t help but love them when they’re puppies. The first was a very bad novel, the second was too ambitious and well beyond my skill, the third and fourth were good. (I wrote the fourth during my MFA program, though writing a novel as thesis was discouraged at that time.) The fifth novel was a struggle and that shows. The sixth is the one that tries to accomplish something unique and awful. I have sent that one out to agents and small presses more times than I am willing to admit here. I still think it’s good now that it’s fully grown.

Men are afraid that men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid men will kill them.

When I am stuck—not “blocked” because I think that’s a silly excuse—I take a break and make a quilt or knit something. I go for a walk or a run. [And after limping for a few months, I am now able to walk miles again. Next year, at least, I expect to be running again, and if I can’t find a small press foolish enough to take on this novel, I will self-publish.] I understand now I cannot afford a publicist. I only hope to print a few copies to send to the many people who helped me along the way with this book. Most of them won’t read it since they’ve already read drafts and it’s generally a bore to read the same book twice. I’ve been reminded of that reality. If I mailed them a copy, even some of my dearest family and friends, and members of writing groups in which I’m active would never read it, not even once. [A few writers are eager to read my query letter, but they don’t respond to it.] I’ve read my novel aloud to Gary. He isn’t a writer, but he likes it and is not uncritical. None of this is the reason I write. I write despite the lack of readers because it matters to me.

Like my discouraged friend who announced she was “giving up,” I go right on writing. We do what moves us, what makes us sing in our hearts.

Maybe if I hadn’t had people I loved who counted on me, I might have devoted my life to “become a writer.” But those people I love mean more in my life than the writing. How could they not?

I never bought the idea that anyone (much less women) can “have it all.” Not all at once and some things never, I think. If we are fortunate, we can have many things, can enjoy many things. I am gifted with a wonderful husband, sons, grandchildren, a career in teaching that I only regret leaving, art, an ocean view, a jewel-box condo we cannot actually afford, and writing. Not all front and center simultaneously. One thing at a time. First things first. Don’t save the best to last.