The Year in Writing ... and Contemplation

Here we are at the end of another year -- at the end of another can-you-believe-it year. A year where you could be forgiven for asking, Did that really happen? Except you would be asking it almost every day.

And those of us who write ... tried to write. (Some of us even tried to translate, though not nearly as much as desired).

It seems odd to tally up what's been gained when I am so mindful of what's been lost. Dare I say I was hoping to be a catcher in the rye, not of wayward children but of sick parents?

Last year when I wrote this annual roundup, I talked about not achieving much. But I think that when I wrote it, I admitted as much with the naive idea that 2021 would be different. We'd go back to normal and we'd be logging all kinds of achievements and wins.

Not so much, right? I was shocked a few months back when my doctor said she doesn't think the pandemic will be going away but rather we'll learn to live with it. Maybe this was 100 percent clear to you, and everyone else. But I hadn't gotten that memo. I was thinking at some point I wouldn't have one hand tied behind my back all the time.

I suppose of it's of a piece in a year in which my parents seemed to grow old overnight, and I had the belated realization that they have been the superheroes of my life -- at the exact moment their super powers have begun to wane.

I hope it won't appear unseemly to continue on with this tradition, in light of recent events, and I will be counting on you to join me so we can count our blessings together. I'll start with the year's highlight, then step back to consider the broader picture.

I didn't publish much in the way of translations this year but I did have a wonderful experience that was very much tied to translation: my short fellowship at the New York Public Library. I finally took it, aimed at working on translations and doing research on Italian women authors who have written works about surviving the Holocaust. Clearly the people who built the library's main branch on Fifth Avenue knew that readers and scholars needed a sanctuary -- a church or temple or mosque of books -- and they made it so. Every moment studying in that gorgeous monument to learning sparkled, and besides, simply returning to New York was a gift. I blogged about it, of course, homing in how I now experience Manhattan through my father's eyes, and you can read those posts here and here.

The Rose Main Reading Room dazzles; with a painted and gold-ornamented ceiling, it's as beautiful as some of the churches people visit in Florence (and for the topic I am researching, the library has EVERY book imaginable). If you visit, make a detour to the periodical room on the first floor -- it might just be the most beautiful room in the entire library. The kind of wood-paneled reading nook all of us books-obsessed folks dream about.

Having begun with the pinnacle, I will pause to ask:

What are your writing goals (or creative goals or for my sister, Denise, exercise goals)? I often update my goals -- mid-year adjustments, I call them! -- but really, I have a few permanent ones: 

*Write regularly, and 

*Land work in a new publication. 

I also have what appears to be a pie-in-the-sky goal: land a regular writing gig at a publication (like a column; I always think if I had stayed at the Morning Call, I would have hoped to become one of the newspaper's columnists). Oh and I also would like to meet Bono! But I suppose that is neither here nor there.

Putting the pie-in-the-sky aside, I managed to keep writing regularly and also land work in a new publication. In fact two, though you may think the first doesn't count: CNN. 

Yes, I work there as a contract news editor but getting an essay published by CNN Opinion is totally separate! And now that I've done it once, I see it's not so easy. Here it is:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/03/opinions/family-history-research-pandemic-year-bonner/index.html

I also did a tiny bit of reporting this year for CNN in connection with three stories I pitched -- something I hadn't been doing. Shall I inch my way back to reporting? I do miss it -- it's hard as hell but the contact with people and the process of gathering information is exhilarating. Ex-journos, how do you handle this? I don't mean to wax poetic about the business of journalism -- it's brutal. But there's something about reporting that is elemental. And I think I need to do a little reporting each year, if I can swing it. If you agree, let's chat. Here's one feature story I wrote about libraries doing some rather heroic work during the pandemic:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/us/coronavirus-libraries-pandemic/index.html

As for the other new publication/venue, an essay of mine was published in the Boston Globe's Sunday Ideas section -- which was a thrill. Possibly a new home for future work, and I got the whole back page the week it ran! If you haven't already read it, it's about pocketing small items from my parents' house that will let me hold onto their spirits.

I am especially pleased at these two essays because they allowed me to document the grief I was already feeling about my parents' physical and mental decline, and they continued my work in the memoir genre, plumbing the fertile material of my childhood and my parents. Plus, maybe some readers got to know my father a little bit -- he was someone whose larger-than-life character made an immense impression on me.

I want to also mention the Brevity Nonfiction Blog, which is the closest thing I have to a regular writing gig. I published three pieces with the 'daily' Brevity (distinct from the 'flash prose' Brevity). It's an incredible resource for writers since it often features essays about maintaining your writing practice and working through thorny problems that crop up in the course of writing.

I want this to be an honest reflection of what I accomplished, which means also logging what didn't go well, and the main item under that heading is TEACHING. Which is to say I didn't teach much this year. Much to my chagrin, I must say, because it's something I need to practice if I want to be a good teacher (and I do). But higher ed is in a bit of flux and a course I was meant to teach in the Fall got cancelled (The Literature of Travel -- oh if you could see the reading list! J.M. Synge's Aran Islands and Jamaica Kincaid and Emmanuel Iduma and Jean Rhys and William Least Heat Moon and ... argh!). Plus other opportunities didn't materialize. Folks, I'd like to teach writing so if you have ideas, pass them my way.

But I blogged a lot. I wouldn't necessarily brag about that, except I've long known that I need to write often (almost every day), and I need to write a lot of words; in my newspaper days, it landed me many bylines. Now I channel some of my ideas and energy into this blog. Writers, I use my blog to test out topics -- do I have enough to say about a particular topic to write a blog post? If I do, it makes me consider writing a "real" essay about it. Alternately, something that doesn't reach full essay-level exploration can easily be a blog post like this quick reflection on the death of Jazz scholar and radio host Phil Schaap or this driveby remembrance of Leonardo Sciascia on the centenary of his birth.

(I also read a lot of books this year, but I'll be swapping book suggestions with you in a separate post.) 

So what will we do in this new year ahead? I hope to go back to Italy -- and that's not just a vacation plan, but a bid to revisit the place that inspires me to write and translate. The Motherland in so many ways. I also hope to write a little more about my family -- maybe even something about one of the people we lost in 2021 who won't end up in any of the year-end articles.

In the meantime, how about telling me what you accomplished, dear friend? Write about it here in the comments or on Facebook. You can also share goals for next year.

What will 2022 bring us? Here's hoping the answer is 'lots of togetherness,' in addition to doing whatever work inspires us and produces some good for the world.

Un abbraccio forte forte, my friends (Big hug)

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