Recently, a friend of mine said that she had some good stories in her mind, but that time had passed her by. She was too old to be a writer. Writing was for the young. I didn’t say much, as I suspected that what she meant was that she didn’t have the energy or the will to write. Still, her words got me to thinking: How can the young write anything good? They do, of course; I won’t argue otherwise. However, when I write, I draw on the fund of experience I’ve accumulated throughout a lifetime that is twice that of some of my younger writer friends.
I firmly believe that art and writing can’t be taught. Certainly, writers and artists can be guided in their work; they can learn the craft, but the creative thrust must come from them. I also believe that creation feeds on creation, that is, nothing is cut from whole cloth. Serious artists study other artists, and serious writers read other writers. The process is one of using different perspectives to help us build upon who we are. That implies that we have at least a functional sense of what we are. And to have any real sense of who we are, not who we wish we were, but who we are, experience is extremely useful, and in my case, essential. On the other hand, perhaps some young, sensitive, and hardworking souls can find in their green conscious and unconscious selves the gold they seek.
I think for most of us, though, it’s a matter of using our creative Philosopher’s Stone to transmute the base substance of our lives to the more precious level of art. This alchemy is not easy, but with a storehouse of experience, it is just possible. I don’t know how I would write about something I had never had at least an approximate experience of. Something I have lived that I can shape, shade, and develop to express what I want to the reader. And if I have done my job, perhaps the reader will share the experience with me. So, while I applaud twenty-four-year-old Stephen Crane for writing The Red Badge of Courage, or the twenty-year-old Mary Shelley for writing Frankenstein, I know I couldn’t have done it.