33 Years of Patience
When I started teaching over 33 years ago, I never really thought my career in the classroom would last so long. You see, more than anything, I wanted to be a writer. I was going to be a best-selling author. In fact, every time my wife and I wanted something (an expensive vacation, a new car, exclusive dinners) we would joke—”Guess I better get working on book number five.” Or six or seven. We kept an unofficial count.
Those books never came.
Instead, I immersed myself in teaching. I enjoyed the students. People told me I was good at what I did. I felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction teaching how to critically read and write about literature. My students learned valuable skills and perspectives about life through the various books and poems and stories we read and discussed. Five years turned into ten turned into twenty…turned into 33 years before I knew it. I started various personal writing projects, but I never finished them. Instead, I lived in the world of other people’s books, and I evaluated my students’ writing instead of my own. I built lessons instead of plots. I tried to figure out how to teach characterization instead of creating the lives of people in my own stories.
What started as a persistent nagging (hey, get writing that first book you promised to yourself) became a dull hum in the background. Eventually, it went dormant only to be rekindled the closer I got to retirement. During my last year, colleagues would ask me, “So, what are you going to do with all of your free time?” My answer: “I am going to write the novel I have been waiting 33 years to write.”
And I did. I started the weekend that I retired.
Was The Pain You Seek the exact story I envisioned back at the start of my teaching career? No. It was born out of decades of reading and discussing and presenting the artwork of truly talented authors year after year after year after year. The first time I taught the Medea myth I had no idea I would write a story about how she had become immortal. But seeing the state of the world and our country during the last year of teaching made her part in the larger story inevitable. If I hadn’t parsed and dissected her mythology in the classroom, I cannot say she would have made it into my novel.
So, I guess waiting 33 years for the first complete work wasn’t terrible. I met some talented students who went on to be amazing and successful adults. I made friends with accomplished and inspirational teachers. I had so many years of hearing and analyzing so many literary voices. All of that played a part in what my wife and I now call “Book Number One.” I am glad it took so long.
