ElderChicks

In the mid-eighties, after a thirty-year’s skirmish writing advertising copy in Chicago and New York, it was time for an exit strategy.  I’d work five more years and stash a buffer of cash for the future.

My innards, having had all the fiesta they could metabolize, however, had their own timetable.  Two-and-a-half years into the plan, I began cleaning out my desk.  The day after the Agency lost two major accounts (not my fault, I swear, but it was a sign), with a mystical hand at my back urging me forward, I walked into the corner office and tearfully resigned.

The creative chief issued a memo saying I was retiring to write “articles, fiction, maybe poetry.”  Poetry?  It was news to me.  Looking back though, perhaps decades of writing columns of TV copy were an apprenticeship.

I declined a Bon Voyage party; I was too spooked to celebrate.  Who would I be if not who I had been?  What would I do all day?  What would I wear?  What about lunch?  What about the paycheck?

Cicero answered the last one.  “Man does not realize what an income thrift is.”  And from me to me:  S.O.O.S.  (Stay Out Of Stores.)

Day One at home.  You have to confront the silence, a friend warned.  But this was awful.  (See my poem, April 2010 Elderchicks.com:    This Is Not Working by Lucia Blinn).  I got my head out of the fridge long enough to answer the phone.  From serendipity herself, my first  freelance client.  Advertising without committees and competition, yea!

A poetry weekend with two Santa Fe writers led to workshops with writing guru, Natalie Goldberg, a hands-on session with novelist, Dorothy Allison, three aborted writing classes, and a women’s group who met weekly for cinnamon rolls and timed writing.

The freelance business evaporated just as my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer; and the next two years’ focus was caretaking, dealing with the shrouded one and capturing the journey on paper.  Much of that appears in Leaving Marty, the Story of a Marriage. Unpublished as yet.

There is a goddess.  Publisher Lorelei Bendinger heard me read my poems at a party, told her partner, Bruce, about them, and the result was my first volume of poems and stories  — Passing for Normal and a sequel, Lucia, Navigating the Night  has just been published.  

In what has become a surprising and gratifying career-after-the-career, I have shared my work at public and private gatherings in Chicago, Boulder, and Dallas and continue to do so in Longboat Key and Sarasota.