Last Saturday, I attended a wedding renewal. I have known the couple my entire life, and they are even my brother’s godparents. They were celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. (This year is certainly wedding season for that family. Both of their daughters from their first marriage are currently engaged and are slated to get married this year.)
After the church ceremony, the twenty or so of us were then invited to the dinner reception. It was at an upscale restaurant that I hadn’t stepped foot into in a decade, so while we had time to kill, waiting for the banquet room to finish getting decorated, I enjoyed looking at the interior design.
Once we were gained entrance, my dad and I settled into a seat at one of the two tables. Randomly chose a spot in the middle, our backs against the wall. My eyes instantly admired the pretty floral arrangements and the candy sitting in tiny dishes right in front of me.
As people began filing in, the celebrated couple and their immediate family were placed on the opposite table. Which contained all the people I knew. I’m not one for small talk, so I hoped my dad would do enough talking to make it seem like I was engaged in conversations while I was really just eating my meals.
The first round of food that arrived was a bread/pita basket, along with hummus and a plate of various pickled vegetables. As I was delicately eating my buttered bread, my dad turned to the man sitting across from him and asked him something about his job. The man, who was probably about my dad’s age, replied that he had changed his career since they had last spoke, and he was now getting into real estate. But before that, he was more of a writer.
Of course, my dad then made a point to mention that I was, too, and then left me to talk with him while he turned to the person to his right to converse with them.
I explained to Ben* that I have a degree in Creative Writing, which was then immediately followed by him asking where I had gotten it. So I told him. And it turns out, he was once a Creative Writing professor at my college. He taught for 12-13 years before he got burnt out and switched jobs.
He didn’t specifically say what kind of creative writing he taught, but seeing how he mentioned he once volunteered to teach a summer poetry class to 12-year-olds, I’m going to assume that he leaned toward poetry. The crazy part was that I knew two of the professors that he was good friends with back when he was teaching. One was a poetry professor who taught my class for a month while my real teacher was out on maternity leave; we were his last class before he officially retired. As for the other professor, I knew quite well. I visited her office a handful of times to talk about my schedule (because she was Head of the Creative Writing department at the time) and was even my professor for two classes during my last semester.
I think I disappointed Ben a little when I admitted I didn’t keep up with the latter professor. The college had just hired her when Ben left. (She was an eccentric woman but always had a way of critiquing your material without making you feel terrible about yourself. To this day, she wins for giving me the weirdest compliment about my writing. But I’ll take any kind of praise regarding my writing, haha.)
Needless to say, I spent quite some time throughout the evening talking with Ben about writing and books. The woman sitting next to me – who was his daughter-in-law – even jumped into the conversation at one point to chat about her own sister and brother-in-law, who live over in England. The sister had self-published a book on Amazon, and the brother-in-law was an editor for something. I asked if her sister wrote British-English or American-English, which I don’t think was something the woman had ever thought about, so she guessed it must be British-English because her sister had been living there for over ten years.
As expected, Ben asked me at one point what kind of things I liked to write about. We also talked about Barbara Kingsolver and Ursula K. Le Guin. What threw me off, though, was when he asked me who my writing influences were. No one had ever given me that question before, and I was utterly stumped. I could tell him what my Top 5 Favorite Authors and Top 5 Favorite Books (which is a completely different list) were if he were to ask me, but I never really aspired to replica a certain author’s writing style.
Once the reception was over, I wondered when was the last time I had verbally talked with someone about books or writing in general. And honestly, I think it may have been while I was in a classroom setting, trying to earn that Creative Writing degree.
Writers really are elusive creatures. Or maybe we’re all too introverted. Or maybe there would be more of us if the job market was more stable.
I did meet a guy last summer who is a Staff Writer at a community newspaper (which is the competitor of where I was once an intern at…oops), but we only briefly talked about the craft of writing.
Where are all the writers? And I don’t mean the casual hobbyist, either.
I mean, I know they must be out there. I guess we’re just really good at hiding. Hopefully I can find them one day. After all, I know some nice hideouts too.
*Ben is not his real name.
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