Writing as creative fulfillment
A look back at 50+ years of work as a writer
As previously noted, personal posts on Aging … better are fairly rare, because it is meant as primarily a news and information source. But occasionally, a personal entry with a connection to a recent post seems appropriate. The following is one of those.
Webster’s Dictionary defines “creativity” as “artistic or intellectual inventiveness.” For me, that has always meant inventing things made of words on a page, in a publication career that’s now more than a half century long.
My first published work, a profile of my high school basketball team in a program for a tournament, came when I was 17, or 51 years ago. My most recent work is, well, you’re reading it.
In between have come millions of published words: articles in newspapers, magazines, trade journals, and academic journals; news headlines and photo captions; newsletters; websites; research monographs; blog posts; and even a couple of books — plus probably some things I’m forgetting. And that’s just published text; it doesn’t include an uncountable number of reports, public talks, classroom lectures, and other things that also were written out but not formally “published.”
Over time, writing has become embedded in my sense of self. When I retired from college teaching in 2021, I stayed retired for all of two months before taking a part-time job with a new journalism non-profit organization. (Discussed in an earlier personal post.) It didn’t involve a lot of writing for publication, but did involve research and writing for some behind-the-scenes efforts of the organization.
When that ended in 2023 I put my effort into securing a project with the Fulbright Program, which supports international scholarly work and cultural exchange. That led to a Fulbright project in Prague, Czechia, about a year ago. When that was finished, I was faced with the most major “what’s next?” moment of my retirement.
Just gotta write
As I thought about it, the answer was “Well, it has to be something involving writing.” If I had to go through life without having something worthwhile to write about, I’d feel like there was a huge gap in my life.
Which is how Aging … better was born. As I got older, I found myself reading a lot of news and information about healthier aging. So I figured I could take that to the next level by using some of the things I was learning about to write my own take on them. That is where the content comes from.
Since launching the newsletter/blog last August, I’ve made 85 posts that probably total about 50,000 words. Subscribership isn’t huge, but is growing. Judging from comments, “likes” and restacks, people do seem to like what they’re reading and get new insights from the work.
And, as a post last week said, it’s good for me to work at creating something. The fact that each post requires research that teaches me something new makes the work even more beneficial. Plus, the work adds some structure to my week, as also discussed in a recent post.
A new creative direction
But in line with the research on creativity, and wanting to challenge myself to learn something new and different, I’ve started experimenting with a new creative outlet: drawing.
Some of my work over the years has included visual presentation, notably page layouts for newspapers, newsletters, websites and the occasional publicity flyer. But seeing something and recreating a visual of it on the page was never a part of that. I appreciate visual art, but had never made it.
Nevertheless, in the back of my mind I’ve always wanted to learn to draw. So a few months ago, I decided I would. So far, I haven’t taken a formal class but have read some books and watched a number of online classes that were quite instructive, especially on topics such as perspective, shading/texture, and figure drawing.
Building this skill requires practice, and error, and learning, all of which happen when I pull out my sketchbook to draw something I’ve photographed or something I can see in front of me in the house. It’s been a fun and interesting creative outlet. Challenging, for sure, to make an image I like. I probably should devote more time to it than I do. After all, as I read wrote somewhere recently, creative expression is beneficial for healthy aging.