All my life, I wanted to be writer.
But it never happened.
Oh, I published things here and there, and even earned a living for a while as a technical writer, but mostly I remained a drinker with writing problems, a NY barfly with immodest literary ambitions, one who deludely thought he would write when it was time to show the bastards how it’s done.
All I needed was to live a little.
Then I would have something to write about.
Well, I lived a little, then a lot, over a ten year period; but still… nothing.
So then I thought, well, first let me make some money.
Once I am more comfortably well off, or rather, no longer wasting my penurious life in dive bars on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, then I can start writing for real.
I eventually became flush and no longer had to bother with the insignificant things — like closely monitoring my checking account balance.
But alas, still no writing.
Then I thought, well, maybe if I got married, I’d have stability and structure in my life, especially now that my drunkspeare* days were over.
That’s the ticket, I thought.
So I got married.
Still nothing.
Then I thought, I know what the problem is.
Writers need privacy.
Writers need a great view.
All I needed was a view to put everything into perspective and get this writing thing going.
So I bought a big house on a secluded lane abutting a backwood scrub pine forest in Florida.
Great view, eh?
Almost inspirational.
But no.
Still no measly first novel.
Well, now I’m pushing 72, at an age when a real writer is kicking back and admiring the view of his or her many published books, the work of a litetime, their magnificent spines satisfyingly lined up on a shelf somewhere prominent.
Me, I got nothing.
I’m still trying to get started.
Soon I’ll be pushing up the daisies.
I don’t know.
Do you actually have to written something before you can say you have writer’s block?
*RIP, old friend
Leaving Amerika 