Writing with the Knowledge of Time
By Barbara O'Neal | October 26, 2016 |
As I write this, I’m looking out the window at the fluttering yellow leaves of an aspen. Storm clouds are rolling in over the blue mountains. I’m at a retreat, with friends I’ve known for nearly all of my career. It’s a lucky thing, this house, this time. I have a book that absolutely must be finished, and it’s good to have the time.
I’m listening to the new Leonard Cohen album, just released. He’s 82, and his raw, regretful, whispery voice goes directly to the ache in my heart. There’s that thread of melancholy violin, his mystical wonderings, his admission, again and again, that it’s hard to know the truth, but maybe trying is all there is. In his work is the knowledge of impending death mixed with love and beauty and lust and song, whiskey and women and high mountain tops.
He reminds me that one of the greatest things we can bring to our writing is that certainty, lurking always, that we will die. If you find yourself ducking away from that, getting ready to skim, don’t. Stick with this for a minute.
I’m grieving my old dog, who lived a great long life and loved me madly and kept me company for 14 years. Jack was the warm body next to me during some of the saddest days of my life, when I was first divorced and feeling like nothing would ever be okay. He traveled with me up the highway to a new city, hanging out with me as I dated and went on hikes and found my way into a new life.
His death was not unexpected, and it was as clean and good as one would hope for such a loyal companion, but it was the second significant loss of the year. A good friend of mine died last spring. There is more, but you don’t have to hear it all to know my point.
Grief is exhausting. It leaps into your arms and must be carried for as long as it takes to work through it. There’s no getting around the powerful, philosophical, urgent questions it brings with it.
The main gift is has brought to me this year is a sense of urgency, an awareness of time. Time is the essential element in all of our lives, the utterly democratic allotments of minutes and hours, the days that make a year. It’s also utterly tyrannical in that we don’t know how many hours we each possess. It’s maddening, and it’s a great gift. It allows us to forget time, let it flow.
As writers, however, that knowledge of tyrannical time is the greatest of gifts. It brings piercing clarity to the smallest of things—a tiny silver pitcher in a patch of fleeting sunlight, the fleeting laughter of a baby, who becomes a toddler and then a legging four year old and then in the twinkling of an eye, a woman at her wedding. A knowledge of the fleeting nature of life can serve to keep us present, here, aware of what gifts time is giving us right now.
It should also galvanize us. Write the book, the one you really want to write. Make the time to do your best work. Don’t skim and skid through time, dig in with both hands and all your love and give it everything you have.
I nearly cancelled this trip. I had more sad news late last week and it suddenly seemed that I should just stay home. My friends, however, let me rage for an afternoon, and then said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come anyway?”
In the other room, three of them are talking out a plot. I can hear them laughing beneath the rumbling voice of Leonard in my ear. Since I started writing this piece, the clouds have moved in hard and the wind is kicking up. Snow has fallen on the high craggy peak I can see through the window. I am not young anymore, but I am not old, either. Leonard Cohen is alive in the world, with me, this very moment. My dog’s ghost is rattling along beside me for now. I’m writing a book that’s strange and beautiful and I know the relative I’m grieving will want me to finish. I am here, showing up in my life, right now. One moment at a time.
How do you grapple with the tyranny of time? Can you remember a moment when you felt it in your gut? How does that transform your work?
[coffee]
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
Trying to do just that, not waste whatever time I have, not leave without finishing what I’m writing.
Every day when my brain won’t kick on makes me more conscious of how much time illness wastes. Some days there’s barely enough energy to breathe – and that time passes somehow anyway. That part is not a choice.
And I remind myself not to waste the precious hours when I can write.
Angst over the election was the latest thief of time – and I didn’t even realize it. I gave it up two days ago, as soon as damaged brain made the connection (I thought I was going mad – turned out to be eminently fixable), and yesterday could write again.
Have to watch for those, the things so pervasive they overwhelm.
I go to write.
I remind others: time is not a given. Voice crying in the wilderness – like the cartoon of the guy with the sign: The End is Near.
I think a lot of us have lost time to this election season. Almost there….
I think we all suffer from attention deficit disorder these days. It is so hard. We are wired – on a computer, phone sitting near by and it is so easy to get distracted. I seems I never get as many things done in a day as I used to.
I find that it the only way I can do it successfully is to go somewhere there is no Wi-Fi and leave my phone in the car.
Thank you for the reminder that I’ll have make best use of the time i have left. Please keep writing and don’t let any setbacks dissuade you from touching other people’s lives.
Thank you for that encouragement. Seriously.
Beautiful, Barbara, beautiful. Resonates with my heart. Maybe it’s because “I’m not young anymore, but I’m not old, either.” As a writer. As a human being. Don’t stop putting words out there. Thanks for showing up and sharing.
Barbara–
Your meditation on life and death is heartfelt and full of truth. Thank you for it. As all romantics know, death is the mother of beauty. Without being mortal, how could a fine dog or life’s companion matter so much as they do to us?
In speculating on the idea of an eternal, unchanging heaven, Wallace Stevens asks a question in his poem “Sunday Morning”: “Does ripe fruit never fall?” I take him to be talking about what you take up in your post: mortality is fundamental to our sense of beauty and meaning.
Thanks again.
Lovely, Barry.
Thank you for this generous post, which perfectly illustrates your point in miniature. We’re so accustomed to taking time for granted. We need to respect it by making wonderful use of it it.
Turning 50, a season filled with devastating grief, the world seeming to spin out of control … you will never know how much I needed this essay this morning. Thank you, Barbara.
I’m sorry for your grief, and I’m glad you found a moment of comfort.
The new Leonard Cohen album is a masterpiece, dark, spiritual, his brooding voice heavy with more than a lifetime of living. It’s a liturgy of acceptance and despair from a fallen angel who believes in love no longer yet cannot help but remember it.
Cohen speaks his songs, no need any longer to sing them. You can’t even call his voice a growl, more like a dying star emitting its last light. But it still illuminates.
Cohen is 82. The album’s personnel includes the cantor and choir from his synagogue in Montreal. It is said to be a return to his Jewish roots and I can hear that. You cannot listen to it with indifference.
Which brings me to your question, Barbara. I am beyond the halfway point with a heart broken more than once, yet still I am finding new depths of love in my life. And the more my aging heart opens, and the closer draws death, the more I treasure the days.
Everything I write now has to matter. Why didn’t I know that when I was younger? I know it now, though, and I am not going to waste the time left.
Phillip Roth recently said he was done writing fiction. He has donated his library to his hometown, Newark. But he wrote from a personal place from the outset and captured his times all along.
After 21 books, I feel like I’m only beginning that mission, but I’m starting from a wiser place. I have enough time. What I write can yet illuminate. It must.
I still have light to shine and send speeding across the cold universe, where it may flicker in some night sky somewhere, sometime, inspiring wonder in a young night wanderer, long after I’m gone.
It really is a masterpiece. I just love his work so very much.
Thank you for your beautiful response.
It’s rainy and blustery, and falling leaves drift by my window as I write. Perfect day for this topic. I’ve always loved the delicious melancholy of autumn. And I love inclement weather for writing. I even tend to write a lot of inclement weather into my stories. It’s all part of who I am as a writer.
Years ago I commented on another of your essays here, about how the passing of our dear old girl, Maggie, changed my life. Maggie was the black lab who patiently supported us through the years of building our business. She was with us when we built our cottage here in Michigan, and her love of this place was a part of ours (she even picked our building site – true story). There couldn’t have been a more fitting messenger than Mag to tell us it was time. Her passing clearly told us it was time to stop living in a blur, time to simplify and appreciate each other and our days together, time to seek a more meaningful way to spend the rest of our days.
So yeah, the ticking clock of mortality has always been a metronome for my writing. And it certainly offers the opportunity to explore the meaning, and yes, even the beauty in our mortality.
The other day, I was climbing the dune path back from walking the shore with Gidget (black lab #3, and beneficiary of Mag’s life lessons), and she got a bit too far ahead of me. I called to her to wait, and the effort of speaking while climbing seemed ridiculously difficult. I noticed how winded I was at the top. Looking back, and having made the climb several times since with less trouble, I suspect it was mostly due to indigestion. But the incident brought the ole’ ticking clock right to the forefront. I even though of it when I woke up at 3 am that night. If I allow it, I get a bit panicky about it. I’ve got so many stories to shape up and get out there. But then I realize that they have to be made worthy. If our stories are to be a legacy of sorts, I want mine to be the truest and deepest reflection of who I am.
Then I remind myself of Mag’s lesson. And I realize that these dozen years of writing have been the best of my life. And that I’ve spent them with my soul mate, in my favorite spot on earth. So even if that’s my legacy—loving deeply and being loved, having great friendships and being a good friend, exploring my own version of living meaningfully—then I have done Mag proud. Funny how striving to be the person a dog sees in him can straighten a guy out.
Thanks for another beautiful and introspection-provoking essay, Barbara!
The best writing turns us inward and then outward. Wonderfully, beautifully written.
Your post is beautiful, Barbara. Elegant, postured, and ageless. Thank you.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
This article is full of emotive language that makes this piece especially pleasant to read. I love the writing style and found this to be a great read.
I’m arriving at my desk late today after spending time with my mom in the hospital. I have the great honor of being near her as she grapples with aging, fading, and loss. I say ‘honor’ because it is all the things you say above. It’s the most human thing to be there for arrivals and departures.Time passing is both tyrannical and freeing. I watch my mom struggle to stay here for us, and then I hear her call to my father. So I’m with Leonard about the search for truth being the thing. I’m pretty sure that why I write is to try and make sense of paradox. I’m also still missing my crazy white Lab, who was my confessor and companion and foot-warmer. As others have said, above, your post was perfect timing for me today. Thank you!
Love to you during the transition of your mother, Susan. Yes, it is an honor to be present.
Absolutely gorgeous piece, Barbara. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. And I’m so sorry about your dog. I lost my mother and dog within a month of each other. It makes a hole that never goes away.
That is a pretty big pair of losses in so short a time.
My wife and I are recent (almost) empty nesters, which means here that the kids are out of our house most of the time, one at her apartment, the other at college 100 miles away. We are embracing our newfound freedom. I will spare you the details (though I will high-five all the men reading), but we’re doing more of the things we love, things that we didn’t have time for, or were too tired for, when our kids lived at home. We bought a new trailer and discovered a love of winery tours. We take spontaneous trips out for dinner or to a book store. We even go to a movie now and then.
But lately I’ve come to grips with the fact that we are in our 50s. This active lifestyle won’t go on indefinitely. People slow down through their 60s. So what do we have? Another 20 years of this newlywed behavior? At most. More like 10.
And I know now how fast 10 years goes by. Even 20. I suspect we’ll both live another 40 (I will brag here–at 53 she still looks amazing). But even that seems like the blink of an eye.
As a Christian I believe there are much better things to come after this life. But God also intended for us to enjoy this life. After 50 years, I’m just getting warmed up. There’s too much to do and not enough time. But mostly there’s just not enough time to spend with the people you love. That time seems compressed, doesn’t it? Like with your dog. I have one of my own. What an injustice that their time is so short. It’s as if love compresses time. The more you have, the shorter the moments.
Somewhere in Proverbs the writer states that “life is but a vapor.” He understood. Each second is a gift. And one day you realize that you’ve squandered many millions of those gifts. Possibly that is the moment you really start to live.
Thanks for the post. Enjoy this very moment.
Ron, it’s so great to hear from newly empty-nesters enjoying their time together. Our kids are going away for a retreat this weekend and my husband and I are giddy with the prospect of an entire day and night together, just the two of us. I feel 19 again.
I feel 19 until about 9:30. Then it’s lights out!
A timely reflection for me, thank you. I’ve just returned from a major writers’ conference, rejuvenated and eager to dive back into my writing. The hard reality of my advanced age, however, reminds me that the likelihood of my novels getting published is small. My idea of success is changing as the years slip by. There is still joy in the writing and that joy is important, perhaps more so than publication.
We lost our previous black Lab prematurely, but a year later we have another and his joy of living is contagious. Despite loss and pain, life goes on. It’s what we do with what we have that counts. Attitude is everything.
They do bring infectious joy. Thanks for the smile that gave me.
Barbara, I loved this essay. And yes, from the time I was a child, the specter of death has remained in my life. Carpe diem is my motto. In one week, two accidental deaths have occurred, one a colleague of my husband’s, another a writer’s husband whom I did not know. The suddenness chokes me up. But I’ve been practicing Faure’s Requiem Mass daily now for All Souls Day and it is a prayer for the dead. But it’s also a reminder to be in a state of grace at all times, to live well so that when I meet my Maker, He’ll say, “well done, good and faithful servant.”
I have not found a publisher for my contemp. YA novel and it does nobody any good sitting in a drawer. I’m pulling it out to work on it again before I hire professionals. My story cries out for an audience. So even in the midst of WFH projects, I will get this book of my heart out. Before I die.
I’m very glad to inspire you to pull out that manuscript and give it a chance at life!
Barbara, this is lovely, stirring language. Time, yeah—I crammed a bunch of that stuff in a bottle and sealed it tight, but when I last checked, it was gone. Slippery stuff.
I’m going to LA for the writer’s conference (see you there?), but also very much to see my 94-year-old mother, who is frail, blind and happy. She IS time for me. Can’t stop the river, so I’ll try and enjoy the flow.
I am delighted to hear that I’ll have a chance to talk with you in person, Tom. I mean that most most sincerely.
“Frail and blind and happy.” That’s the best line of the day.
Mr. Cohen sang to me after our eldest son died in a car accident in 1991. He sang to me again when we lost another son in 2006, twin to the first one. I remember Mr. Cohen’s voice sounding as if it was cranking a turnkey around his throat to stop himself from howling in agony. And then I realize that was my throat choking. I can’t write about this stuff, but when one of my characters is hurting, I go to that place and let it rip.
Barbara, I meant to mention that my sons aren’t here, but they are somewhere, and I will see them again. So, while death feels horrific, especially when a man/child leaves first, it’s just another step. Apparently, it’s quite euphoric crossing over. Yet, we make a huge of deal of death, as if our fear will somehow cushion it. I hope I’m right and it’s the ultimate adventure. Beyond orgasmic. I don’t have a concrete answer, other than I stay in the moment and let my characters do the same.
Yes, Cohen sings to the bereaved and the broken-hearted.
Nine times out of ten your posts bring tears to my eyes, Barbara. Today was no exception.
Hi, Barbara:
Like Tom, I will be at the LA conference. I was already very much looking forward to meeting you, but after this post, especially so.
I tend to think we live in a state of suspended adolescence until we have suffered a life-altering loss. There is certainly a line drawn in the sand of time between before and after such a loss.
Then, as the losses accumulate, the mountain of mortality looms ever closer. More time behind than ahead. If only we could turn around …
It does tend to focus the mind.
In my post last week I mentioned Heidegger’s contention that our awareness of death creates the measure of our authenticity. This post reminded me of that. Bigly, as a certain candidate might say.
As for grief and time, I wonder if you experienced the following, as I did after my late wife died. It’s from Donald Hall’s collection of poems written while his wife, Jane Kenyon, was dying of cancer, and then the year afterward. This particular line is from the poem he wrote on the one-year anniversary of her passing:
… The year of days
without you and your body swept by
as quick as an afternoon,
but each afternoon took a year.
I very much look forward to meeting you at last. Thank you for this reflective, heartfelt post and the reminder to pick up Leonard Cohen’s latest. (I might, in return, recommend the recently released film “Christine.”)
P.S. You might find this piece from the NYT on Patton Oswalt and his grief for his wife (who died in April) touching. I sure did:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/patton-oswalt-ill-never-be-at-100-percent-again.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Trending&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
David, your response brought on a fresh wave of tears, but they’re very healing and I’m grateful for it. I missed your post last week thanks to the chaos in my life, but will go back and read it now.
I’ll look forward to meeting you, very much.
P.S. I’ll have my Wheaten terrier, Hamley, with me, in case you need a shot of dog love.
Oh, yes, please.
Lovely post, Barbara. I’m so sorry for all the grief you’ve been through.
I felt the ticking clock most acutely after my mom died in 2007 at age 58. It wasn’t exactly a wakeup call to change, since I’ve always had an acute awareness of time’s fragility (not sure why), but losing her kicked it up a notch. And hastened my plans.
Time’s precious nature hit hard again this summer when my youngest left for college (much as it did with my oldest, but worse). Like Ron, my husband and I prepared for this time, kept a great relationship apart from being parents, made plans beyond children, and are mostly enjoying our empty nest. But the realization that 18 years had gone so quickly, that my baby was now a man and the day I’d been preparing him for had abruptly arrived… A joyous pain.
And definitely a reminder of how quickly the time passes.
Whenever I start to lose my way–frittering time that could be spent writing/working or doing things I love with people I love–I eventually force myself to sit down and reevaluate my personal and professional goals. And then I create a weekly schedule and keep it front and center to hold myself accountable. Sounds boring and restrictive, but it’s actually very freeing (and flexible) and I feel so much better when I’m attending to what matters to me. My own version of Franklin Covey. ;-)
I have loved all of your emotion-inducing, thought-provoking posts. I wish I could make it down to Los Angeles this year to meet you and everyone else who’ll be there. Hopefully I’ll see you at a future conference/signing! Hugs.
I feel like I knew Jack, even though I never met him. I’m so sorry for your loss, Barbara.
But this:
Yes and yes and yes. And I’m so glad we are wading through these minutes at the same time. See you very soon. xo
Can’t wait to see you, my friend.
This post is very timely. Tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. I conclude my relationship with the employer from hell, which has cost me virtually everything, including even a passion to write, never mind the time.
Next week, not only do I embark upon a much better employment journey, but I’m catapulting right into turning my life around starting with participation in Nanowrimo to find my passion again and also to enjoy this beautiful state I live in now that I’ll have the time to do so.
Time is most certainly fleeting. I too fall into the not young but not old category and I want to make sure to make the best of the years I’ve got left. I’m ready to LIVE!
That is the best news–congratulations!
I’m practicing my dear ol pa’s philosophy- don’t stop moving so the devil doesn’t catch up with you
Beautiful and moving. Yes and yes again. Thank you for sharing your feelings and your hope.
This is a wonderful post from one of my favorite writers, and a powerful reminder to live NOW, while we can.
But I want to clarify that any tears I might have shed while reading this post and the comments it generated were very rugged, manly tears. You know, the kind a lumberjack might cry when his favorite axe breaks.
You make me laugh, Keith. I also can’t wait to actually meet you in person very soon.
Thank you for this wonderful essay, Barbara. This subject has been a strong one in my writing live at this time. If it’s worth doing, do it now!
loved this post! And my sympathy for the loss of your dog. Animals teach us so many lessons, don’t they? Loss is so universal, but when it happens to you, it feels so unbearably unique. My current work in progress has one of the main characters dying of cancer, andi know when I finish the book I will have a sense of closure regarding my own grief. Writing heals.
Warmest of hugs Barbara… and thank you for a much needed reminder…and something else… you were a shiny gift in my world some years ago when I completed your ‘finding your voice’ course… I imagine it brings you little comfort right now, but you changed my life (the fruition of those changes emerging now) with your encouragement and advice… so biggest of thank you’s to you for the essence of you that you shared, that trickled in, and left sparkles in me….
Oh, no–it brings me a ton of happiness and comfort. I’m so delighted to hear that you’re doing so well.
Thank you so much for such a poignant and personal post. You captured so many of my own thoughts and fears. Sometimes it seems the floodgate of grief and bad news is neverending, but it eventually does. I don’t consider myself old either; in fact, in my mind, I’m as young as ever. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t always agree and at times betray us – reminding us of time more loudly than a grandfather clock chiming.
I’m facing surgery at the beginning of December that will put me down, literally and away from writing for six months and I’m terrified. Time is one of those things we forget to treasure. Thanks again, for this well-written reminder.
This brought tears to my eyes. It really, truly hit home. Absolutely beautiful, Barbara. I’m sorry for your losses, and thank you for sharing.