By: Richard D. Hartwell

My Morning Journal opening entry seems to capture an element of my fixation as a writer. Is there really a compulsion to write? For some there must be, but I think my own compulsion is now under control. I no longer must write, regardless of the content, but wish instead to focus and guide my writing, usually towards some purpose: publication, presentation, organization, entertainment, or whatever. I don’t have to write! I can stop whenever I want. I could even stop now . . . if I wanted.

My youngest son walks by and inquires sarcastically, “Are you still writing in your diary?” I stammer for a second or two. Yes! I mean no! It’s not a diary; it’s a jour . . . He is beyond ear range and didn’t really care anyway. Hell, he hasn’t paid any attention to me in at least ten years. You see . . . he smokes. You know, the funny stuff! He’s got this habit, which he says isn’t, and then . . . Well, you know. Where was I now? Oh!

I wonder if there are stages in succumbing to the writing life? Sometimes I think there must be; like the stages of grieving, or those of withdrawal? I don’t mean those elements like the initial acquisition of writing, as with young children. That is already well documented. I don’t mean the steps of writing: brainstorming, drafting, response, revision, editing, or even publication (but oh, how very sweet that high can be!) I mean, instead, the documentation of the actual practice of writing and the continuance of writing through all its various manifestations: the initial scattered attempts to write, the multiple genre attempted, the shared ecstasy of successes and the crushing critiques of failures; acceptances and rejections, ego inflation and editorial deflation, loneliness, and whatever it is when there are just too damn many people around and you can’t concentrate. I could go on and on, refining various shadings from one element to another.

Another of my charming progeny casually inquires, “Are you doin’ that writin’ thing again? Why don’t ya take a vacation? Or teach summer school ‘n make some money?” Although not articulate, this one is at least more goal-oriented than his brother; but then again, he’s moved back in with his five year old and filed for divorce while continuing to look for a job. We all have our compulsions.

I think, at least, that there must be something that could be known as writer’s relapse, whereupon a recovering writer, through no fault of her own, succumbs again to the siren lure of the written word. I know this has occurred to me.

I have a friend from an ill spent adolescence whose father used to make a yearly sojourn to New Orleans and spend a week drinking up the ambiance, or perhaps it was ambrosia. He would return to his family washed out and wasted in appearance, but reinvigorated in spirit. I think I am much like my friend’s father, an annular drunk embarking on my summer. I wonder why I have such a compulsion to write in the middle of the night? Or the middle of the day? Or in the mornings? Or . . .? Perhaps it’s merely a matter of a cleansing of the mind, of purgation. Sometimes that happens when you’ve had too much of the good life! This summer I think I’ll focus on those writers on the fringe, starting with myself. Let’s see, if I remember well, that’s Step 1!

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Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather be still tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com.