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When I Was No Writer And My Words Were Poo

September 23, 2015 By Sandra Heska King

burn-barrel - EPICTETUS 

“I like good strong words that mean something.” ~Jo March (Little Women)

 

I chinned the rusty barrel near the hem of our woods. The carbon petals curled and separated. The ashes fluttered high and melted into the atmosphere.

Cremation complete.

The weekly newspaper over in the next county had rejected my fiction story—the one where I’d caught bad guys down by our lake.

Duchess stretched up her length along the kennel, and I leaned my face against the wire so we were cheek to cheek. I inhaled the scent of poo on cement. I stroked her red and white Brittany fur and probably shed a tear or two. At least I’m pretty sure I did.

They didn’t publish stories, they said.

I was no Jo March.

I was no writer.

My words were poo.

I read everything and everywhere—in bed, in the car, in a rowboat, at the table, stretched out in a lawn chair, book propped up at the kitchen sink. I read my great-grandmother’s Book of the Month Club selections, and I still have some of those, including Joseph the Provider by Thomas Mann and The Apostle by Sholem Asch. I also read Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, The Bobbsey Twins, The Nun’s Story, and Gone with the Wind, as well as Little Women. (Winnie the Pooh, however, scared me. I think it had to do with a picture of Eeyore’s tail hanging on a tree.)

I did write often to my Aunt Emma, or Sister Lucinda, as they called her in the convent out east. She was a teacher, and my mom insisted on proofreading everything I wrote before I sent it. Aunt Emma could only write back at Christmas and Easter, often cautioning me against “doing” too much. But once she got special permission from Mother Superior to write in between because I’d written such a long “newsy” piece.

My mom, by the way, liked to write fun poetry, and my great-grandfather on my dad’s side wrote at least one poem, a long one about his days in the logging camps. I also grew up with a slew of Paul Bunyan stories.

When I “graduated” from eighth grade, my parents took me to see a Detroit Tigers baseball game. The Tigers beat their archrival, the New York Yankees. I wrote a poem about it and sent it, along with a blank autograph book, to the announcers, George Kell and Ernie Harwell. The poem never returned, but the autograph book did, each page signed by one member of the 1963 team—names like Al Kaline and Rocky Colavito and Norm Cash and Jim Bunning and Willie Horton.

I wonder what happened to that poem.

Anyway, a couple years later, I decided the autograph book was childish and cremated it in the same rusty barrel. If I could sell it today, I wonder how many conferences I could attend or trips I could take.

It was years before I’d pretend to be a writer again.

In my mind’s mist, I glimpse a shadow of me sitting on the porch of our New Jersey home in the early ‘70s. I have a pad in my lap and a pen in my hand. Dennis is mowing the front yard, and one of our horses whinny out back. Dennis shuts off the mower and asks me to do something, but I snap at him, tell him I’m writing (I have no idea what) and don’t bother me.

I still snap sometimes when I’m bothered.

Then I’m sitting at a picnic table under pine trees in a park-like area. I’m writing from prompts in some book, I think. “I am afraid of dying, but I am more afraid of not living,” I scrawl with fountain pen on lined pages in a burgundy leather three-ring binder.

But I was no writer.

I was a nurse.

We ended up in Georgia where I’d dreamed of living like Scarlett O’Hara and drinking sweet tea under a magnolia tree. But then Dennis’ company transferred us from there to Florida in the early ‘80s. I kicked and screamed the whole way. But it was there, while Dennis traveled, I began to embrace the writing life.

I took a correspondence class through the Christian Writer’s Institute. And then I took another. I wrote on a door that topped two file cabinets, tapped out words on an IBM Selectric, paper stacked on carbon sheets. I attended a Christian Writer’s Conference in Wheaton, IL, where I heard Charles Stanley and Karen Burton Mains speak. I also met my instructor (Esther Vogt) there, and we later visited her in Kansas on our way to Colorado.

I took an English Literature course at the University of Florida in Tampa and still remember the deep spiritual insights I gleaned from Beowulf.

My professor hated that paper.

I burned it.

I wrote a monthly newsletter for our little church complete with word games and puzzles and member interviews. I called it Inspiration Notations and ran it off on a mimeograph machine.

I sent articles and devotionals to magazines, keeping carbon copies of each in separate manila folders on the front of which I tracked submission travels with headings of Itinerary, Address, Editor, Date Sent, Date Ret’d, Letter or Form (for rejections), and Postage.

I still have those.

My biggest mistake as an early writer wanna-be? I focused only on paying markets. Except once I submitted a piece based on an acronym for success titled “Seven Basic Steps to Successful Christian Writing” that was published in a now-defunct magazine called “The Christian Writer.”

That still cracks me up.

In 1984, Evangel sent me a $25 check for a feature article titled, “I Will Sing,” that described my kicking-and-screaming move.

I just read it again. It could be burn-barrel worthy.

I copied the check before I cashed it.

Somewhere along the line, Christian Parenting Today accepted and paid for a little anecdote and then reprinted it in a daily flip calendar.

I also wrote the usual lessons, devotionals, and programs for church.

Then along came Abby.

Then Jeremy

I filed my files and stopped writing, except for lessons and a few speaking gigs. I’d pick up a journal for a few days. Then forget about it.

I was no writer.

But a handful of years back, I started a blog and plugged into social media. I grew a little readership, made a lot of friends, bought a bazillion books, went to some conferences, got myself some business cards, and earned a few bucks.

Abby copied two years of blog posts and had them bound into a real book. “You’re an author now,” she tells me.

A couple of my devotionals appear in The One Year Devotional of Joy and Laughter. I got paid for those. And I make a little pocket cash these days–almost enough to feed my book-buying habit.

The IRS believes I’m a writer.

I suppose I am.

Maybe my words aren’t poo after all.

 

burn barrel 1

Still and forever writing,

because I am still a writer

Sandy

Note: This is a repost of my response to an assignment for the “The Writing Life,”  a workshop I took through Tweetspeak Poetry two years ago with Ann Kroeker and Charity Singleton Craig.

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Comments

  1. Ann Kroeker says

    September 23, 2015 at 9:15 am

    Ban burn barrels!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 9:46 am

      LOL!

  2. L.L. Barkat says

    September 23, 2015 at 10:31 am

    I will finish reading in a second. But?

    Oooooo. I’m with Ann. Ban the burn barrel.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 12:31 pm

      Maybe I should write about the time my daughter tossed all my parenting books into the burn barrel and set a match to them. (I salvaged them, though.) 😉

  3. Lynn D. Morrissey says

    September 23, 2015 at 1:05 pm

    All I can think of is that crazy song: Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun. Roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run! I agree w/ Ann. Burn that barrel or shoot it w/ both barrels! You ARE an author, and a wonderful one. Ah yes….there is always that soul-searching question: Am I an author because I write, or an author because I’m published? I would say that writers write, period. They will *always* find some way to do it, as you have discovered. And yes, I think that writers read as well (I keep telling this to my husband as a reason to own a gazillion books and to keep stocking them). What I love today about writing is that there are so many avenues for it today, like using publishing houses, self-publishing, blogs, journal-writing, and personal correspondence. Writers can explore so many possibilities. But I, for one, am glad you have found ways in which to make your writing public, Sandy. Because, frankly, you’re so gifted at it, and my life is richer because of what you write! In fact, even though you are often serious, you are also a barrel of fun! KEEP WRITING!
    Love
    Lynn

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 1:13 pm

      You always make me smile, Lynn. Thank you! (And I’ve polka’d (or tried to) to that song. 😉 )

      • Lynn D. Morrissey says

        September 23, 2015 at 6:47 pm

        Ha! You are so cute.

        • Lynn D. Morrissey says

          September 23, 2015 at 6:47 pm

          Sandy, actually I did too at a St. Louis beer garden in my drinking days. It didn’t help me dance any better, and I’ve been sober now for thirty years (praise be to God)!

          • Sandra Heska King says

            September 23, 2015 at 9:16 pm

            🙂 The town I’m from has a large Polish population, and my parents loved to dance. I actually polka’d with my ex-boyfriend at my wedding reception… I don’t think it was to Roll Out the Barrel, though. 😉

            And yay to sobriety. (A car I stopped behind at a light today had a vanity license plate that said “IAMSOBER.”

  4. Dawn says

    September 23, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    I so loved this and maybe was just meant to read it today as hide away in the library supposedly writing my goals which include writing, submitting, publishing…and continuing to call myself a writer because even if I never make a penny, I will never stop writing, for it makes me alive to life, God, others in a way that is unique and liberating.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 4:11 pm

      “makes me alive to life, God, others”

      Write on, Dawn. You are a writer.

    • Lynn D. Morrissey says

      September 23, 2015 at 6:48 pm

      Amen, author Dawn!!!!!!!!!

  5. Linda says

    September 23, 2015 at 2:03 pm

    I just ripped mine into as many pieces as I could and threw them in the trash! Oh, I love this, Sandy. I’m struggling with this writer business myself. From day-to-day it’s a battle over whether or not to just scuttle the whole thing, blog and all, and concentrate on knitting.
    I don’t say it often enough, but I’m thankful you’re still writing – my writer friend 🙂

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 4:13 pm

      No more ripping. No more burning. (Some days I think I should just go back to quilting. 😉

      I’m thankful you aren’t scuttling. I’m thankful for you, my writer friend.

  6. Martha Orlando says

    September 23, 2015 at 6:23 pm

    The writing journey is a bumpy road, and there are many efforts I did in the long-ago past which deserve to be incinerated. Sandra, I dabbled in poetry for years before, in 2007 and in my 50’s, I finally determined (God determined) this was it! Hence, The Glade Series, Adventures in The Glade, and my bi-weekly blog.
    You are born to write, my friend. Whether what you create sells in the financial sense, your words have certainly enriched many lives as they have mine. You are an inspiration – don’t you forget that!
    Love and blessings!

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 23, 2015 at 9:17 pm

      Can I just hug you, Martha?

  7. Elizabeth says

    September 24, 2015 at 2:49 am

    I loved reading about your writing journey. It made me hopeful that, quite possibly, I,too, am still a writer.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 24, 2015 at 7:38 am

      Elizabeth, my friend… I KNOW you are a writer. Still. Always.

  8. Jody Lee Collins says

    September 25, 2015 at 1:49 pm

    Clearly, ‘from the archives’ or not….this still resonates. Great encouragement, Sandy.

    • Sandra Heska King says

      September 25, 2015 at 3:36 pm

      And I still have a burn barrel… not that I’ve tossed anything “important” in it lately. 😉

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