Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 30

My Beginnings

A friend of mine has recently decided to read her way through every book I have ever published. I was amazed that she wanted to do it, that anyone would, but, naturally, happy to supply her with reading material. She hasn’t only been making her way through a stack of picture books and novels, however. […]

The Problem with Memoir

I have mentioned several times in the past months that I am working on a memoir in verse. I’ve even announced a title and then, when I returned to talking about the memoir again, found myself announcing a different one. So I’ll start these musings with an announcement of yet another title: When Even Grief […]

A Bride Married to Amazement

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and […]

A Continuing Conversation

Last week, talking further about the effects of aging on my work as a writer, I spoke of now being more successful in “getting out of my own way” when I sit down to write. I said that I find myself far less concerned about what anyone else—friends, agent, editors, reviewers, etc.—will think about what I’m creating and more able simply to let what I find within me flow. And I quoted one of my readers of the previous week’s discussion who referred to the process of aging as being like creating...

Getting Out of My Own Way

One reader had this response to the comments I made last week about the impact of aging—and the inevitable awareness of mortality that accompanies aging—on my work as a writer.

I know exactly what you mean about now being more fully into my work. In the past, juggling all my responsibilities was more of a priority than the actual work itself. Nothing like a few tragedies and setbacks to blow away the dross. I’m not really all that different inside than I was at 20 or 25—but I am more intensely...

While I’m Talking about Aging

I thought of titling this article, “While I’m Talking about Death,” but I changed my mind. Aging is a difficult enough concept in our society, but death is almost an obscenity. Too many might turn away without reading. We all hope to age one day, even though we presume that day to be farther away than it probably is. Who hopes to die?

And yet, the older I grow, the larger death looms. Inevitably. A bout with cancer added to the three-quarters of a century I have been on this earth has brought...

Why I Don’t Want to Die at 75

Recently Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an article published in Atlantic entitled, “Why I Want to Die at 75.” Not surprisingly, it has caused a stir. And being exactly 75 myself I find myself drawn to the fray. In a recent interview on Public Television the author of the article had this to say in justification of his premise: “I look at 75, when I look at all the data on physical disability, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, loss of creativity, slowing down of the mind and the body, and 75 seems lik...

Only Very Happy Animal Stories . . . Period!

Recently, a friend, Martha, has given me the gift of deciding to read all my books. I said, “Really?” and loaded her up with an armful of novels. So now she is giving me the additional and even greater gift of writing her response to each one as she finishes it. And best of all, she tells me what she doesn’t like as well as what she likes. That’s a gift writers don’t often receive from their friends.

Here is part of her response to A Bear Named Trouble:

I’m so glad there was a happy ending. I’m...

No Mystery Greater

A. Powell Davies

There is no mystery greater than our own mystery. We are, to ourselves, unknown. And yet we do know. The thought we cannot quite think is nevertheless somehow a thought, and it lives in us without our being able to think it. We are a mystery, but we are a living mystery. The most alive thing about us is what we are when thought breaks off and our mind can go no further—for that is where our yearning begins, our inconsolable yearning, and the loneliness that begets compassion,...

Boo Hoo

“Boo-hoo!”

That’s what someone said on Facebook in response to one of my recent blogs. Just that. “Boo-hoo!”

Then she—I assume it was a she, though there was no name attached—came back to clarify. “Well, after all, she’s published, isn’t she?”

And I laughed.

How well I remember feeling that way. It was a long time ago, but the memory is clear. If I could get published, if I could only get published I would never complain about anything again as long as I lived. Publication, I was certain, would o...