THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE WRITER

Years ago, when I believed I was destined to be a rock star, one of the guitarists and singers in our band, a sweet guy named Roy, made a comment about Bruce Springsteen. Roy had been a member of Bruce’s original band, and was also enormously talented. But Bruce had made it while Roy and the rest of that band were still hustling gigs at the Jersey shore. He said The Boss deserved to make it (his tremendous talent not withstanding) because he never turned down a gig. Never. Big or small, paying or non-paying, Bruce did the long boring drive from Central Jersey to New York City, back and forth across the river — while the rest of the guys often blew off measly jobs they considered just not worth it. Bruce played weddings, bar mitzvahs, whatever gig came along. He went everywhere and anywhere making a name for himself.

When I finally threw in the towel, gave up rock music, and began writing, Roy’s words kept coming at me — one of those seemingly small bits of trivia that later on become pretty huge to your life.

Keep going, I tell myself all the time now.

That writing can often be a lonely business is no secret to most of us who do it. Certainly it’s solitary. Even if you write in cafes, or on public transportation, surrounded by the madding crowd, it is always just you with you. Of course you can become a character, or many characters, and your inner life can transform into other lives, your personal space into other countries, trains, boats and planes, oceans, mountains, the sky.

At the close of your writing day, or night, it’s yourself once again being discovered in that clear or mottled mirror, in the words that flowed or didn’t, as unpredictable as the weather.

The runner Jim Fixx knew about unpredictability up close and personal. He ran long distances every day in whatever nature or the gods decided to throw at him. I believe that repetitive movement he experienced is similar to what the writer feels, fingers drumming the keyboard or grasping the pen, page after page, saved or crumpled, in all those long hours of weather. Or, whether. All the hard work. And will somebody out there want to publish it?

Sometimes I think about Jim Fixx when I’m walking the mountain road, or down the hill into town, feeling happy or sad, looking at the trees and houses and fences and grass and dogs and phone poles; and whatever else I take in without being aware. It’s that unaware state that propels the writer forward, all those forgotten details, things that surface later in stories and poems as if by magic. But, not really magic.

I believe Jim and Bruce would be pleased to know that I borrowed from their logic of perseverance. It helps me, gives sustenance, and hope, for those days when I get back Thanks, but no thanks on a story or poem or novel I was sure would knock their socks off. Those days that chip off little pieces of our hearts.

And, so, we long distance writers keep crossing that river. We run up the hills and down the ravines, over rock, into the woods, then out in the open where the sunlight warms our backs for discovery.

—Susan Tepper