Riding The Fence

As an author and a Creative Writing Instructor, I know what life is like on both sides of the fence. Writers typically spend years, if not a lifetime, learning and honing their skills, often working alone with only their thoughts and a keyboard for company, telling their tales to an invisible audience.

Like trying to talk to a neighbor on the other side of a privacy fence, peering through the slats once in a while to gauge their reaction to a particular insight they have shared and hoping they see a knowing nod of the head and a wry smile of recognition of the irony of life.

Written in 1914, Robert Frost's, Mending Wall, talks about two neighbors who meet in the Spring to set the stones that have fallen to each back onto the wall between them; when he asks his neighbor why they need the wall, he is answered only by the response, "Good fences make good neighbours."

One hundred years and four later, the wisdom of Frost's poem-a statement of the things that divide people, has never been truer, as a short time on some Social Media sites will attest to.

Five years ago, my wife and I decided to adopt a dog; and having a large back yard and many four-legged neighbors, we invested in a six-foot high, shadowbox privacy fence and had it painted to match the trim on our house. Several months ago, a fierce wind conspired with a few of the posts that had rotted away at ground level and 16 feet of our very expensive fence crashed to the ground.

Repairs being rather costly, I undertook the process myself, learning the hard way what went into the building of a good fence. After months of work I completed the project and proudly posted the proof of my success in pictures on Facebook.

And here we come full circle; I received more responses, both positive and negative, to those pictures of my repaired fence than many of the books I had labored years to write and market! And all the while the fence was down, I saw my neighbors neither more or less than before it fell.

By the hour, the money I had saved was not enough to justify the time and energy for the result-I would have been better served building my writing platform and scheduling book signings or completing my "Great American Novel."

Society has always been divided and likely always will, and our job as writers is to find the common ground, ride the fences, and mend the walls-not the ones that divide us, but the ones that unite us; for good fences show respect for our neighbor's lives, privacy and opinions and the truth of the statement made in Frost's poem.