In 2015, I finished working full-time as a Technical Writer and Editor, a job that has taken me to many cities, introduced me to clever software developers and business analysts, and given me financial security since the early 1980s. Now, I have settled into a routine of ad hoc freelance editing work for two clients. Free time to read, study and participate in community groups are some of the bonuses from working less.
For many years, when we could squeeze in a block of time off together, my husband and I would travel to places we wanted to see and to places where we have friends and family. Working less was to mean we could travel more often and for more extended periods. Our intention has been to travel more during this transition phase as we finally retire. Of course, the year 2020 changed many things for many people, and it has undoubtedly stopped our wandering ways. And now 2021 is doing the same.
After 18 months of pandemic-induced waiting around, I decided to join Substack and make something happen. I resolved to:
Read some of my accumulated books.
Dust off and refresh old blog posts about our travels.
Continue learning Latvian (yes, the language of a small Baltic country spoken by less than 2 million people in the world).
Keep practising Italian so I don’t forget how to speak it.
Write something every day, be it a journal entry, a blog post or a list of achievements.
So, this is my Substack. A new start. Like every new project, I’m a little nervous and a lot excited. Actually, it scares the crap out of me. This writing is not about a software update or a quality standard or a user interface. This is about me and the contents of my head.
Here I hope to remember how I accidentally fell into my career, record the goings-on around me, reflect on past experiences and just write regularly.
Unlike the rigour and structure that guided my life as a Technical Writer, I don’t have a roadmap for this new way of writing. I’ll let it develop organically and see where it takes me. Hopefully, I’ll learn more about myself in the process.
My writing history
Aided by two older siblings (all close in age), I learned to read young. Our parents were given a lifetime subscription to National Geographic Magazine as a wedding gift in 1951. Frequently, I would sit on the lower bunk bed in the dark with a pillow propped between me and the wall, immersed in a National Geographic or a book.
I was attracted to foreign places and the natural world. Two of my favourite books were ‘Myths and Legends’, an illustrated compendium of Greek gods and Viking heroes, and ‘Minn of the Mississippi’ a lushly illustrated volume about a snapping turtle (called Minn) and her journey the length of the Mississippi River. My sister Annie reminded me recently that ‘Myths and Legends’ is her book, but somehow it has ended up with me here in faraway Australia.
National Geographic gave me a taste for the exotic. A world where women wore layers of colourful, heavy woollen skirts, where grass huts sat upon floating reed islands in the world’s highest navigable lake, and where the men wore pointy, tasselled caps that they had knitted themselves.
I don’t recall writing anything as a child, nor did I imagine that I would have a career in writing. In my youth, though, I loved words and made stories up in my head based on snippets of reality and family conversation. Our mother was Louise and her parents Anna and Giovanni (John) were Italian. Without really understanding what it meant to be Italian, I created an imaginary life in a place called ‘Abrutz’. This is how I heard of the family’s pronunciation of ‘Abruzzo’, a region in central Italy that runs from the spine of the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea.
Louise had an old pair of green plastic reading glasses that she kept on her nightstand. I would put them on, look cross-eyed in the mirror, and have imaginary conversations as I checked out books from the reflected librarian. I can’t remember all the books I read, but there were no fairytales to check out from our home library.
Our mother Louise was a practical person and a nurse. She was the first person in her family to study after high school when she joined a hospital nurses training program during WWII. She wanted us girls to grow up to be able to support ourselves. Even in the 50s when I was born, she knew not everyone was married and ‘kept’ by a husband in a traditional family. She saw the increasing divorce rate around her. She had hopes for our education and choice of career.
Years later, I told my mother that I didn’t know any of the traditional fairy tales that friends’ children seemed to be reading. Louise said she didn’t bring them into the house because she wanted us to understand that fairytales were not ‘real’. She didn’t want us to sit around waiting for Prince Charming.
While I didn’t write much as a child, or at least nothing I remember, I did win a spelling bee in 5th grade. Soon I was armed with a vast vocabulary, valuable for jokes and wordplay. It was no surprise that in my teens, I was dubbed ‘The Pun Princess’ by friends.
At school, I’d frequently be caught daydreaming. The teacher (usually a catholic nun) would ask that I share my thoughts on what the class was discussing. I would go beet-red and sink into my chair. My grades were just okay and the teacher’s summary comment usually said, “Mary Louise can do better; she just needs to try harder”, or words to that effect.
Our childhood home was alive with personalities: grandparents, great aunts and uncles, assorted second cousins, and colleagues of our parents. And always food and good-natured conversation. I was the third child (of six eventually). It was hard to get a word in, but once I did start speaking, it was hard to stop me — at home. But outside my comfort zone, a look from a stranger sent a shiver through my belly as I lowered my eyes to the floor to avoid being asked a question.
Among my family, I was comfortable and happy enough. My older sister was obsessed with drawing, and while she was on the floor drawing horses, I had no qualms about slipping away on the bicycle that she had received for her birthday. At this stage, we were four children; there wasn’t money for every child to have a bike. I realised I could go further and see more on a bike. I was hooked and have not been without a bike since childhood.
During high school, we studied literature and creative writing as part of the English curriculum. I spent hours reading during summer under the protective shade of an enormous Tulip Poplar tree in our backyard. I had selected titles from a required reading list for the following school year. My specialty was writing book reports, and I was keen to get ahead in at least one subject. It was never going to be mathematics.
A classmate of mine was brilliant at writing essays. In one I still recall, she created a portrait of an old couple seated on a park bench sharing a sandwich. I was struck by how she painted a picture of the couple’s tenderness towards one another with her words. I aspired to emulate that ability to make the reader feel something.
At the end of each school year, our high school put on a play, a musical comedy, like ‘The King and I’ or ‘South Pacific’. I still shied away from the spotlight when among strangers, but the opportunity to temporarily be someone else appealed to me. I was willing to get up on stage once realising that my singing voice was an asset. High school can be a painful experience for many (I’m not saying it was all rosy for me). I began to shrug off some of that shyness as I achieved social goals, if not top grades.
My university days were immersed in reading and writing. I started out pursuing a BA in Theatre Arts. By the end of my second year, I had no delusions of making it big in the theatre or being a Drama teacher. Having already completed many of the required credits through my play-reading courses, it was a natural path to add a minor in English.
It didn’t really concern me much what I would do for a job post-graduation. The joke with many BA students was that an Arts degree was a sure path to waiting on tables. But I knew I could write. What could possibly go wrong?
The joke with many BA students was that an Arts degree was a sure path to waiting on tables.
Working either part- or full-time in catering and retail jobs throughout my student years was my norm. I was determined to not have too much debt when I graduated. So while most of my friends graduated in four years, it took me six. My last semester worked out to be light on coursework, making it possible to work full-time. When a proofreading role came up at a small publishing company, I applied. The year was 1979, and this job was to be pivotal to my future.