We all struggle with the challenges of the dirty day-to-day. Some of us have a drink at the end of the day. Some of us grind through a grueling Peloton session. Some even ~gasp~ read. But there is also a time-tested tradition of writing as a form of escape.
Anne Rice turned to writing to combat both generational alcoholism and the staggering loss of her child. But as with Poe, the tragedies of Rice’s life predate the horror of a child’s death. Her mother literally drank herself into an early grave when Rice was 14. Her father placed Anne and her sister in a girl’s school in New Orleans which Rice referred to as something out of Jane Eyre.
Later, her family moved from New Orleans to the cultural desert of Richardson, Texas. You only think you know misery until you’ve been to north Texas. Anne struggled to complete her education while dealing with emotional desolation.
Once free of family constraints, (and Texas) Rice fled to school and the cultural cynosure of California. There she found a place in academia. She found love and marriage. Yet, the misery seemed to stalk her, all the way to San Francisco.
"After my daughter’s death I had no identity. I wasn’t a mother, I wasn’t a scholar, I wasn’t even a writer."
But she could write. Rice began by expanding a short story just for something to do. Then she found that through writing she could delay the point in the day in which she started drinking.
It should be news to no one that many people turn to print to escape difficult times. The majority are content to escape through reading other folks’ work. But a select few of us decide things are not hard enough and we should also attempt to write a story. Kidding. Mostly.
Many are familiar with Poe’s themes of loss, chiefly in his seminal poem, The Raven. However Poe losses predated the death of his wife by several decades. His father abandoned the family when Poe was scarcely a year old. Within the year his mother died. Poe’s foster parents were in turns indulgent and draconian. While never diagnosed, his behavior, (near-pathological lying, gambling, and alcoholism) suggest clinical depression, at least.
Poe failed as a scholar, a soldier, and a gambler. But he succeeded as a writer. Indeed, he relied on writing, first as employment and ultimately for social stability.The 1830s were a difficult time for writers, (is there ever an easy time?) as publishers and periodical editors regularly shunned American writers while stealing from English authors. Others simply refused to pay once the work was delivered. Through this, Poe managed to support himself as a writer, one of the first to do so in the states. He worked consistently until his wife’s death.
Like many in the trade, I knew early on that I wanted to tell stories and (to steal blatantly) I didn’t want to make eye contact to do it. So, I’ve been noodling around one thing or another since I was 15, through desperate familial dysfunction, cyclical homelessness, and the baggage that comes gratis with both. Those (really bad) abortive efforts at creation gave me something to do that wasn’t illegal or self-destructive. I created worlds that I could control and in the process worked through the things that were (seemingly) out of my hands.
Of course I’m a bit north of 15, now. Still, writing remains both my reward and my detox from work, study, and the damn kitchen that simply will NOT stay clean.
I don’t have the time or concentration to fu—ool around with my WIP, a multi-POV crime/thriller set in 1977. If I’m opening two screens for research and writing, I need a couple of uninterrupted hours and I kinda need it daily. That’s simply not happening right now.
So, I noodle around with stuff I NEVER write. To date, I’ve written an erotic short story of 7K words. I’m working on another that is currently around 6K words and thinking of a part two. Neither require a great deal of research or plotting. Neither will EVER be read. This is just an exercise. One part can I write this? and one part engage imagination, turn off thinky-thoughty thingy. Scribbling away for an hour or thirty minutes or even ten minutes has helped me clear my anxiety and “first-thing in the morning” lists enough to unwind and sleep.
Make no mistake, writing is NOT a substitute for conversations with friends, (if you’re into that sort of thing). Nor is writing a substitute for professional help. It certainly does not “cure” you of your problems.
But as Anne demonstrated, writing can be a way forward.
Writing did NOT cure Anne Rice of alcoholism. With the birth of another child, she stopped drinking to spare that child from growing up, as she had, with an alcoholic mother. She continued to struggle with mental health issues for the remainder of her life.
But curatives were never the point of writing. The point is telling a story. Taking the reader with you when you go somewhere else and do something else. Anne Rice gave us that with great flourish and drama. She helped us escape, for a time, from the doldrums of our lives.
Goodbye Anne. Thank you for the magic.
The photo above is from the author's website and is in the public domain.
