Time Enough At Last

I have been working on a piece for a storytelling showcase. I’m on my upteenth round of edits. Even when I think, hey this is good, I’m done, I’m not. The coach’s response email of, “here is the feedback” and “more arc” is a humbling, learning process for me.

I’ll admit, finding the “arc” has never been my strong suit. Dialogue is something I’m good at along with character development. I’m adept at finding comedy in tragedy and unresolved, non-cliffhanger endings with someone frying up a pork chop for dinner.

Those are my go tos. But arc, not so much.

These last few weeks, I’ve had to do much growing, both personally and professionally. I’m learning to put my ego aside and just do me. It’s a fine line walk between confidence and arrogance and to be a writer you have to be confident in your voice and know it matters. You have to be passionate and tenacious, and seek opportunity. It’s called “putting your work out there.”

But maybe, what’s also important is growing and improving even when you’re good. That’s how you get to be great.

People often ask me, how do you do it? You have a more than full-time career as a deputy public defender. I usually respond by saying, “I use my early mornings, weekends, vacations and I don’t have kids.” (Not having kids was not by choice.)

But the truth is, and I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve here friends, I don’t have a choice. I must write. It sustains me and calms the anxiety in my brain, but I am also just listening to the whispers of my father in my head saying my name. Perhaps, it’s the only way for me to bring him back to life.

Or maybe, I have to capture my family, my friends and my life or it won’t mean anything. I know in my head that my life means a lot, I know this, I do, but I need to see it on the page and in the world at large.

There’s that old Twilight Zone episode (the title of this piece) where a man, played by Burgess Meredith, loves to read more than anything and hides at work and home and escapes into his books. I know this feeling well. The H bomb drops and in a post Apocalyptic world, the man is despondent and all alone. He is about to kill himself until he finds a library and he is overjoyed. The man has enough books for a lifetime. Then the rub. He shatters his glasses. The man cries out,

“That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was all the time I needed… It's not fair!"

That’s exactly how I feel most days about writing. I fall into it and could do it forever and I don’t want to run out of time or lose my way (or my glasses). If I wait until I have all the time I need, it might be too late. We are all just blind people looking for a purpose I suppose and this is mine.

Now, it’s “time” to go work on my “arc”.