The old writer in the hotel

Early in my career circumstances led me to formulate an image of what life as "an old writer" might be like. It happened this way.

My first play, Above the Fire, was one of three winners in the national Tennessee Williams Playwriting Competition sponsored by the Univ of Missouri at Columbia. This is very significant for what happened as a result. At the time I was working on a novel to complete my MFA in fiction at the Univ of Oregon. The writing wasn't going well -- hence trying something new, like a play.

As a winner I was flown from Eugene to Columbia and put up in the Daniel Boone Hotel for a week. We three playwrights were treated like bigshots, visiting classes, giving readings, being on panels, being guests at many faculty parties. It was as if we really mattered. And you couldn't find three more different writers: a slick mod NYC gay man, who brought along his young lover; a businessman-looking Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot kind of writer; and yours truly, in my Paul Bunyon period.

I loved being treated like a bigshot so much that back in Eugene I changed my MFA from fiction to drama. Well, I also was looking for a way to stay in school and take advantage of the new Cold War GI Bill.

Staying at the hotel was an old writer, a permanent resident, of local renown. At 4 each afternoon he came down to the bar for his 2 or 3 martinis before dinner. At the bar was a sign-up sheet to visit with him at his booth! Young writers and students lined up to get their 15 or 20 minutes while he held court.  Observing this, I thought, now that's a cool way to be an old writer!

Needless to say, my own experience as "an old writer" is not holding court and sipping martinis in the hotel bar where I live. But I used to think it might be.