Beech Tree News Network

What Might Have Been: You’ve probably read the quote by Whittier, For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.  My husband, Garey, has told me, on several occasions, that if I don’t get the books I’ve been writing published before I die, he’s going to get them published after I die, and then live like a king.  This is supposed to serve as motivation to finish said books.  It isn’t working.  My extended, extended family has a history of aneurisms and heart attacks.  If relatives dropping like flies isn’t enough to get my attention, Garey’s threat of wealth without me isn’t going to spur me on.

I think the problem is Grandma Moses and her kind.  Grandma M. didn’t start painting until she was in her eighties.  Then, there’s Colonel Sanders, he was drawing social security before he ever fried his first chicken.  Just last week, there was a story in the news about Jim Henry, the man who didn’t learn to read until age 96.  He published his first book this year at age 98.  (The book is In a Fisherman’s Life.)  I spread these examples out before Garey in my self-justifying way, and add that I’m expecting my best work to happen in our golden years.  (I think he’s just tired of waiting for the gold.)

Even though I defend my procrastination, as far as my writing goes, there’s a place at the back of my mind that remembers the stories of writers like John Kennedy Toole and Stieg Larsson, and the lessons their lives teach us.  John Kennedy Toole wrote the book, A Confederacy of Dunces.  Toole wrote the book when he was in his twenties.  He tried to get the manuscript published, but it was rejected by the major publishers.  The rejection caused him to spiral downward into a depression that ultimately ended in his suicide at age 31.  Toole’s mother believed in her son’s work, and kept pushing forward even after his death until she got the attention of writer, Walker Percy, who saw to it that the book was published in 1981.  (Ms. Toole must be some distant kin of Garey’s)  The book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which was awarded to Toole posthumously.  

Then, there’s Stieg Larsson, author of the trilogy of books that includes The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Larsson was a Swedish investigative journalist who covered the activity of extreme right organizations within the country, subsequently receiving many death threats.  It was a broken elevator and seven flights of stairs that ultimately killed him, though.  He had a heart attack at age 50.  Before he died, he wrote the trilogy that is referred to as the Millennium Series.  (The two books that complete the trilogy are The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.)  He dropped all three completed manuscripts off at the publishers then proceeded to die a short time later.  This was in 2004.  In 2008, Stieg Larsson was the second best-selling author in the world, behind Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner).  He never knew about his success, of course.  His long term love interest, Eva Gabrielsson, holds the synopsis of a fifth and sixth manuscript, which she plans to finish and publish.  (She’s some of Garey’s Scandinavian kin—I’m just sure of it.)

Reading about these two writers’ lives does give me reason to pause, and not because I’m concerned about Garey going to Sandals Resort without me.  It’s that I really hate leaving things undone.  I’m a big fan of finishing.  I should probably get right on that next chapter tonight.  But then, there is that quote by George Elliot that I’m so fond of: It is never too late to be what you might have been.