Writing, and Other Magic

About Learning How…

Little kids love monsters — love them, or love to hate them. When I was little, my beloved ‘monster’ was a monstrously huge, black-&-silver, shiny typewriter named Remington Rand that lived on the tiny desk in my room.

It was definitely love at first sight. One touch, of just the right force, was enough to create the most astonishing miracles — letters, symbols, words, poems, stories — the only limit was my imagination! And my touch.

As soon as I was old enough, 6 or 7, I started writing stories. Half the fun of creating them was getting the touch just right, hearing the authoritative clack of each metal key as it struck the platen, smelling the oil and metal and new paper, fresh out of its box.

The ribbon was the star. Everything depended on it. As I struck a key, the small cage-like metal square that held the cloth ribbon would rise like a hiccup, just a smidgen, barely visibly, and the long metal bar with a letter or symbol at the end would strike up and pound the ribbon onto the platen, around which I’d rolled a beautiful, clean sheet of paper by twisting it slowly, one click at a time, until it was placed just perfectly to receive my words.

It was magic!

Writing has never ceased to be magic. As the years, the decades whirled past, filled with kids, jobs, houses, yards and countless other obligations, it got harder and harder to squeeze in the writing.

While I was still teaching — at various points in my life, in several countries and at many different levels, I taught French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese or EFL (English as a Foreign Language) — I also wrote for newspapers, magazines, publishers, local, domestic and international. But as any language teacher can tell you, teaching someone to speak a foreign language is more than a full-time job. (In fact, a teacher of just about anything can corroborate that.) So for decades, I never had a moment to myself. Any time I complained about my frenetic schedule, my mother-in-law was always quick to remind me that if I didn’t write, I’d have lots of free time!

She was right, of course — except that if you’re a writer, you can’t not write. A climber climbs, a runner has to run. A writer has to write. It’s not a choice. I’ll go to my grave editing in my head.

While I was growing up, I loved to listen to my mother talk about her dream of writing a book. Talking about it always made her face light up. Her gaze would go to that place where our eyes go when we’re looking inward, at something no one else can see.

As I got older, I would get impatient if she began talking about her book. Even then, as a kid, I knew that if you were going to be a writer, you had to WRITE.

She never did. And her book died with her. How I longed to read my mother’s story! But she never figured out how to make her dream happen.

Over the decades of my life, I’ve worn many hats. Followed many dreams. And each one required learning how. I was never trained as an orchestra conductor, but when life presented me with the opportunity, I learned how and created the West Sacramento Community Orchestra, which I conducted for four years (for more on that, see The Sharp End of Life, from Mountaineers Publishers, 2019). I had no clue what the job of a publisher consisted of — but after 10 years as an independent publisher, my little company had produced seven books and won several international contracts and various awards.

That’s what these thoughtletters are about — learning how. Whatever dream lurks in the back of your mind, in the recesses of your longing heart, these stories here might help you make it real. That secret “I wish I could —” that you’ve never told anyone, the longing you’ve had since you were a kid — it’s all possible. You just need to learn how (we’re heading there in these thoughtletters).

As mentioned in a previous thoughtletter, I started climbing when I was almost 60. But before that, so many more cerebral passions had filled my life! Languages took over really early in my life, followed closely by music. I learned to play the piano by ear when I was 5, but once I started learning to read music, at 7, I discovered that those old guys — Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn and all the others whose company I enjoy — all wrote down secret messages to me! Okay, not only to me — but they tell me, in their own words written on their music, their own notations, how to play the notes they wrote. Their suggestions in this secret language come to me over the centuries, and help me understand how it should sound.

More magic!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say, usually with a wistful sigh, “I wish I’d learned to play the piano.” (or whatever instrument). But learning to play any instrument requires dedication, time, and continual work.

And over and over, I’ve heard the same excuse: “I just never had time.”

Have you ever said that about something you wanted to learn, or do?

We all have the same number of hours in a day. But what we do with them varies wildly. I’d like to put this thought out there:

Whatever you want to learn / to master / to become / to experience / to accomplish, if you haven’t done it yet, it’s because you didn’t want it badly enough.

Badly enough to learn how.

Once you decide that you really want something — really, deeply want it, in the part of your heart that knows you best and that you can’t lie to — you will be open to learning how to make it happen. Once you acknowledge your authentic self, and listen to what it truly wants (go back to some of my older thoughtletters and read about journaling), there will be no doubt. The feasibility, the possibility of your dream will become clear.

Here, together, among other explorations we’ll make, we’re going to go to a place where you can learn to make anything possible. Whether you dream about learning an instrument, writing a book, climbing a mountain, learning to free dive, exploring a foreign country, starting your own business, opening a flower shop — whatever you dream of is within your reach.

That’s a heady statement — and an amazing, empowering thing to realize. You are in control. Only you. Not the media. Not other people. Not some world-renowned expert. Only you. Once you internalize that, once you fully, heartily accept and embrace that concept, that responsibility, that control, with all that it entails, you’re well on your way to accomplishing the thing you dream of.

Do you have a dream, something you’ve always wanted to do in life but didn’t know how to start?

Keep reading. I’ve proven over and over that my method works — and little by little, I’ll be sharing it with you, here. Let’s call it Wolownick’s Way — the way I’ve achieved all my diverse goals over the last 72 years.

How about commenting below and telling me a bit about your dream. Have you started learning all you can about it yet? For any dream, any goal, there’s so much to learn!…and that has to happen before you can even think about moving forward with any tangible steps to make it real. Category 1 (see 4/15/24) must precede the other Categories. It’s only logic.

But you’ve already learned the first and maybe the single most important rule for accomplishing anything:

You have to really, really want it.

Everything else can be learned.