During my last week in Key West, I’ve been trying to do some of the touristy things I haven’t bothered with before:  conch train ride, shipwrecker’s museum, that sort of thing.  Today I spent several hours wandering through the Hemingway House.  I hadn’t planned on going .  I’ve been on a tight budget and it seemed silly to pay $20.  But as things so often seem to happen in Key West, a new friend down here arranged for me to get in, and this morning I hopped on my bike and rode over. 

And I am so glad I did.  Not only did I get to see original furniture and a well-preserved house, but the tour guide was a wealth of Hemingway facts and gossip.  I learned a great deal about Hemingway and his women, Hemingway and his cats, Hemingway and his pool, Hemingway and his writing.  And I actually got a little chill peeking into the study where he wrote, geek that I am.

So now I’ve seen where he worked, I’ve seen where he slept, and I’ve seen where he drank.  You really can’t go anywhere in Key West without running into some reference to him.  

There are many other writers and artists’ that have made Key West home, at least for a while.  Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Shel Silverstein, and currently Judy Blume.  Even Robert Frost wrote here in the winters.   But Hemingway is the name you most often hear associated with Key West.  And the name tourists associate with the island.  Which sometimes causes debate among the locals.  One night some people I met got into a great discussion over whether Hemingway was as talented a writer as Tennessee Williams.  It was a fun and lively argument, and the men were well read and knowledgeable, much more knowledgeable than I am about either Hemingway or Williams.  As things became more and more heated, I mostly listened.  My horse ain’t in that race, as one of the guys said.   

I don’t remember if anyone conceded victory, but listening to the smart, passionate arguments on either side, I thought, what a wonderful town, where the late night fighting is about the virtues of one (dead) writer over another.  Where but in Key West?

Welcome to my thoughts about writing and life and the writing life.  About finding your passion, no matter how late in life, and following that passion, wherever it takes you.  Oh, yeah, and sometimes about just stuff.    

First, in the interest of full disclosure, let me tell you what I am not.

1.  I am not a travel writer, in spite of title of this blog, though I am a writer, and I may at times talk about my travels.

2.  I am not a graduate of an MFA program.

3.  I am not an expert on craft, or getting published, or how to get Oprah to look at your brilliant but misunderstood unpublished novel.

4.  I am not a self-proclaimed intellectual who will review inaccessible books that only other self-proclaimed intellectuals read and pretend to understand.

5.  I am not really an expert on anything other than perseverance. 

Now, what I am.

1.  I am a struggling writer.  But all writers are struggling in one way or another, so I’m nothing special there.

2.  I am passionate about everything to do with literature: reading it and writing it and talking about it.

3.  I am a late bloomer, only beginning to submit my short stories in my forties.

4.  I am a believer.  I believe that hard work will pay off, that good work will eventually find a home, and that the most important thing we can ever do in our lives is try.

5.  I am a cheerleader.  If you need a push, or encouragement to take the next step, if you need pats on the back or kicks in the butt, I am your girl.   Ask my writing group.  They’ll tell you. I’m the one who’s not interested in excuses.

So now you know.  This is not about teaching you how to write, or how to get published.  It’s just one writer’s journey.  Hopefully I’ll learn something in that journey that will help you along in yours.

My maternal grandfather had a wanderlust and a curiosity that he shared with me from the time I was a toddler.  He’d sit me on his knee and show me pictures and read to me from National Geographic and the World Book Encyclopedia.  In his 80s, he proudly told me that he had seen every river in the United States, many more than once. 

My grandparents were far from rich.  They didn’t fly from one destination to another.  They saw the country in a way few of us do these days:  they drove thousands of miles, staying in campgrounds along the way.  I’m sure my grandmother got tired of it, but my grandfather never did.   

I inherited that wanderlust from my grandfather.  I’ve been lucky enough to be able to travel most of my adult life, seeing a great deal more of the world than he ever did.  And for the past year, I’ve created a life out of my wandering:  I’ve lived in the spare rooms of friends and family (thank you all), in a dorm, and in a cottage under a lush and bountiful mango tree.  I’ve enjoyed fall in New Hampshire, snow in Virginia, and sunset in Key West.  I’ve been blessed to meet incredibly interesting and diverse people, and to learn about kayaking and poetry and art and gravestone carving. I’ve heard Steve Almond read in a Meeting House in a tiny town in New England, read my own work in a coffee shop in the Village, and taken a boat out off the New England coast to see Smuttynose Island, the setting for Anita Shreve’s novel The Weight of Water. 

As readers and writers, we don’t have to travel to Vietnam to know the horrors of war.  We don’t have to travel to Paris to feel the artistic energy that pulsed through the city in the 20s.  Writers are all wanderers, if not in reality, then at least in our imaginations.  But I know that my writing is richer because of the places I’ve been, and the people I’ve met along the way.  To those people, thank you for touching my life (and for giving me some great material).  To my grandfather, thank you for taking the time to read to me and tell me stories of far away magical places.  Having a great time .  Wish you were here.