Where I’ve Been (In Three Parts)

The past weeks have flown by at a manic pace. Each day seems to start and end without giving me even a fighting chance to accomplish everything I’d like to accomplish. I’ve missed blogging, and reading everyone else’s blogs! I think I’ve caught up on nearly all of my blog reading, and since I’m not inspired to write anything too in-depth today, to help me catch up on my blog posting I’ll instead explain what I’ve been up to.

Part 1: Work (and excuses)

Work has taken more time than usual lately and, more importantly, more mental energy. Coming into work for 8 hours each day for a moderate pace is one thing; coming into work for 8 or 9 hours each day for a hectic, harried pace and a list of responsibilities and worries that I carry home with me in the evening is a different thing all together. I know it’s only an excuse (cite: Charles Bukowski’s poem “Air and Light and Time and Space”—visit this web site to read it: http://www.crownfarmer.com/333/dirt/jenkinsbuk.html), but it is difficult to create anything when that mental exhaustion sets in. I’m working to regain my balance.

Part 2: Biking (and raising money)

At the very end of last summer, I bought a bicycle. That may sound like a simple purchase, but I see it more as the beginning of a love affair. My bike is red and white and absolutely fabulous. Last fall, before the weather began to chill, I rode and rode the bike trails in the Cincinnati area. On unseasonably warm days this winter, I broke it out of its garage hibernation for rides. Now at last, the weather has begun to improve again, and I’ve decided to “bike with a purpose.” I’ve signed up for the Tour de Cure, to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. If you’d like to support the cause (or just see a cheesy picture of me on a bike), you can visit this web site: http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?px=2781023&pg=personal&fr_id=3245&et=lLfM8aVJzFZLEtk5eBwmUA..&s_tafId=42172. Since I plan to bike 30 miles, and haven’t biked 30 miles straight since middle school, I’m training for this event by doing two longish bike rides each week. A good cause, good exercise, and a good time—but also something that makes my days and weeks zip by!

Part 3: Books & Movies (those that engage and linger)

Last weekend, when at last my pace slowed, instead of catching up on all of the things I could have (and perhaps should have), I instead started to read Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha. I’ve wanted to read this book since I saw the first preview for the movie of the same name that came out near the end of last year. The images of dancing and passion, the costume and color, were so appealing to me that I wanted to see the movie, but more so wanted to experience the story, which is generally best done (at least in my experience) by reading the book. Once I’d started the story, I just couldn’t stop reading. I spent a portion of Friday evening, much of Saturday, and a portion of Sunday in the mind of a young geisha, dealing with the hardships and glories of her life.

In the past month, I also experienced two very good movies that got me thinking. The first is American History X. The environment of intolerance, as well as the eventual growth of the characters presented in this movie linger.

The second movie (which I started but never completed a blog entry on the day after I saw it in early March) is Capote. I find that my mind keeps wondering back to this film, as well, and in particular to one question that came to mind as I watched it.

The movie brings a viewer through Truman Capote’s journey as he wrote In Cold Blood, the classic that more or less created the “nonfiction novel” genre. In an epigraph at the close of the film, it says that Capote never finished another novel after In Cold Blood. It makes me wonder—why? Was the experience of writing that novel too much for him to bear, too emotionally tasking for him to think about writing another novel? Did he run out of topics to which he wanted to devote the time and energy to write a novel? Was it the alcoholism? Why would you stop writing novels, when you were at the very top of your game? I am intrigued and somewhat bothered. At this point, I can’t imagine a point in my life when I would stop writing. I wonder what could bring that on. (This is not to say that he stopped writing entirely. I have no idea if he did so! If anyone does know, I’d love to hear!) Another player in the film—Harper Lee—also drove this question home for me. She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, published it to great success, and then never published another book.

My question is: Is there often a point when a writer simply stops writing? And if so, why?