My Sister’s Paintings or It’s Never Too Late To Start

One thing about having your own web site is that you can put whatever you want on it.  Right now I’m pretty darn excited about my sister’s newly found talent as an artist. The reason I feel this story can be of interest to those beyond my family is that Liz started painting when she was 46 years old. She’s turning 48 next week, and I think you’ll agree that she’s pretty far along the scale for someone who’s painted for less than two years.

This must be something that runs in my family – at least among the females. My mother was a painter who didn’t find real success in selling her paintings until her early 60s.  She was a trained artist, having gone to the Ringling School of Art when she was a young woman, and then painting when she could while raising four children.  It wasn’t until she was 60 that she started to work in a focused, dedicated fashion and her work took on a whole new look.  More concentrated, meaningful, artful. And her paintings sold like crazy.

I started writing when I turned 50. I’m 53 now and still a beginner when it comes to how much I know and how much I have to learn, but still I’ve thrown myself into it, much as my mother did.  And I’ve had some success so far, enough to keep me going on this path. My mother died before I started writing, but I’d like to think she’d be proud. She admired hard work, even if she wasn’t a fan of lesbian mysteries and romances.

I think there’s no question Mom would be proud of Liz. She too has discovered her passion in middle-age and has made huge progress in such a short time. It’s inspirational, really, and the message I really want to impart is that it is never too late to find that which makes you feel passionate, that which makes the time go by as if it didn’t even exist, that which makes you feel intensely proud and humbled at the same time. And if you do find it, the other part of the message is that it – the craft, the art, the hobby, whatever – doesn’t develop itself.  Like everything else, you get out what you put in, and when you work hard at developing skill, the rewards can be enormous.  The reward, in fact, is the work itself.

I figure I’ll get to be a good novelist about the time I’ll be thinking of retiring from real estate.  And that’s just about perfect.  What better to do with my time? I sometimes wonder what things would be like if I’d discovered writing when I was in my twenties and not so much later. I can’t imagine, but I do know that had I not discovered this love at 50, I’d still be 53 but without a published novel and six or seven stories published in anthologies.  It’s never too late to start.

Back to Reality

It's hard to not feel a little gloomy these days.

After returning to civilization following my month long writing retreat, I’ve found myself strangely unconcerned by the rather horrible state of our economy.  Mind you, I am a real estate agent and my phone has virtually stopped ringing.  By all rights, I should be worried.  The money I put away while real estate was crazy hot has now lost a good deal of its value, but soon I’ll have to sell stock to have cash to live on while the market remains quiet.  My partner is in banking, and though her bank is one of the safest in terms of its overall stability, it’s still banking – a pretty vulnerable place to be.  As a couple, we are a ground zero of the new economy.

Why am I not worried?   I really have no idea.  I still am doing some transactions and there will be some closings along the way.  I’m staying on top of what’s going on in the business, staying in touch with my clients, and ready to be there for them when things pick up again.  And in the meantime, I’m writing.  Maybe that’s why I’m not worried.  I have something else I care passionately about and I can devote myself to that with the time I now have.  When real estate picks up, I’ll flip flop the ratio of time I spend on each.  I guess I feel that somehow I’m being taken care of – not necessarily monetarily, but in a broader sense.  Things are happening as they are supposed to, and I’m going to make the most of the situation as it exists.  This coming year will be a challenge to my bank account, but if I can get another book written, how much richer am I?  Richer in spirit, I mean.  I don’t see myself writing a best seller with the next one.

But you never know.

I was recently interviewed at an on-line lesbian fiction site called Kissed by Venus (kissedbyvenus.ca).  The editor of the site is Alexandra Wolfe, who lives in Quebec City but is a woman of the world.  It’s a great web site and I encourage you to visit it.  My interview can be read here.  Alexandra also published a story of mine on the site, Thirty Days Has September, which can be read here.  The story is about a woman who is bottoming out on alcohol, and the reaction to it has been so interesting.  Recovering alcoholics who read it can instantly relate to the cluelessness of the narrator.  Non-alcoholics who read it are amazed at the cluelessness of the narrator, but it’s my hope they have a little more understanding of the power of denial, and the power of addiction, after they read the story.  I recently heard from someone who took the story into a woman’s prison where she does service work.  Her group of recovering women read the story and had quite a lively discussion about it.  That’s the best feedback I’ve ever gotten.

Have a wonderful holiday season.