The Journey Ahead

I was 54 when I retired. My friends asked, “But what are you going to do? You’re so young.” I always answered with confidence. “Bonnie’s going to paint and I’m going to write.”

Because I had co-authored sixteen English textbooks, taught creative writing and even studied with esteemed Canadian novelist, Timothy Findley – twice – the reaction was most often a nodding of the head and, “Of course.”

My partner, Bonnie always said that in retirement she would pursue her art to excellence, see how good she could become. When we moved to British Columbia from Ontario, she joined two painting groups and created a studio in our spare bedroom.

How had I missed the fact that art is a solitary pursuit? For 16 years, I had been the one cloistered in my study, writing student materials and teachers’ guides, attending editorial meetings and preparing presentations. Now, both retired, Bonnie had artwork to create, but I had no more texts to write.

Without journalism training I had never pitched a project outside the protected environment of educational publishing. Any name I had made for myself was left in Ontario. Unlike Bonnie, who didn’t care if she sold her paintings, I believed publishing was the only way to validate my chosen post-retirement “career.”

Based on my previously published work, I joined three professional writers’ associations. If they accepted me, I convinced myself, I must be a real author.

I answered a call for guest writers in the local paper, submitted a piece on the popularity of coffee shops and it was accepted. The editor praised the writing and the research. Someone thought I was good. I still have that article framed on the wall in my study.

I sent pitches to two other local magazines. They too were accepted. I must be a writer. My name and stories were in print.

When my queries to larger publications were rejected (and rightly so), I assumed everything else had been a fluke. I wasn’t good enough.

Through a friend, I met an editor hiring advertorial writers for a food and wine magazine. What an opportunity. I was assigned restaurants or wineries where I interviewed winemakers, cheese makers and chefs. Summer articles were the best, especially when the research was accompanied by tastings of the new whites. This was the least risky writing I could do. No queries, no rejection. I looked busy and I could talk a good story.

And then, Bonnie had been accepted to an exclusive nine-week art course in Paris.  I  told everyone (and if I repeated it enough times I would also convince myself), that this 61 year old was following in the footsteps of the great literary travel writers: Ernest Hemingway, Adam Gopnik, Alice Steinback. I was going to strike out on my own for the first time, explore the city, and write. That was what I said. But, I knew I would be discovered, found out. “You can’t do it,” whispered that seditious inner voice. The enormity of that admission was compounded by the fear of traveling alone in a city where my knowledge of French was limited to “Do you speak English?” and “Where is the toilet?” My terrible sense of direction and fear of getting lost, both physically and metaphorically, almost paralyzed me.

But Paris seduced me. She made me forget editors and magazines. She introduced me to the person I was when I taught: a person with intellectual curiosity, a hunger for backstory, and a need to bring everything – even something as large as the Louvre – back to the personal.

Through my daily, sometimes purposeful and other times purely accidental meanderings, I saw the grand and the small, the enduring and the ephemeral. And now, I’m capturing the stories I unearthed in my most intimate encounters with the city. They’re stories I wanted to delve into, know more about. They’re stories I want to share.

I knew if I wanted to pursue a writing career, I needed to learn more about the craft. I applied to the MFA program in Creative Non-fiction at Kings College University, not certain I would be accepted. But I was. I was going back to school at 62 years of age.

More than half of all Canadians who have held long-term jobs return to the workforce within ten years of retirement. While money is one reason, it’s not the only one. According to Stats Canada, even those with pension plans and savings are going back to work. When the last guest leaves the retirement party, it seems, many have trouble letting go of something that has defined them all their adult lives. That was me. I wanted to write again.

I’m one year into the course and I’ve never worked as hard. I’m taking a little time from my travel blogs to write about a new journey, the journey toward completing my first travel memoir, Winter in the City of Light: My Late Affair with Paris.