Stories Can Be a Kind of Purpose
Snow in Dallas, a surprise daylong writing retreat & a two-week prelaunch
I’d been trying to get to Dallas for a year. The first time around, no one was interested in hearing me speak. Not that they didn’t want me, but I think it was the timing. Anyway, when I tried again last summer, synagogues and writing groups were eager to invite me in, and so I booked a week in January in Texas.
Now, I’m a northerner, born of snow and bland skies. I know how to huddle into down and trudge along ice-strewn streets. I am made of hardy stock with ancestry from the unforgiving gray of Eastern Europe. But I expected sunny skies and warm earth in Texas, a welcome break from the harsh cold of my home.
So I was amused to land in Dallas to a fearful frenzy of schools closing, classes canceled and a general lockdown over several days because of weather. Mind you, Thursday was yucky—ice and sleet and snow—so I guess it was a good thing that my first speaking engagement was canceled.
But on Friday, when there was a thin layer of slush on the ground and warming temps, why was everything still closed? No matter. I was staying with a friend in the warm hug of her home, and we spent a good 36 hours in quiet conversation and contemplative writing and copious cups of coffee and pleasant words on a page.
I hadn’t planned for a writers retreat but that’s what I came to and it was divine. An island of time with creativity overflowing and air to breathe and the quiet tap of precipitation. Yes, it was all good, even if the people who live there were scurrying in and out of fear for what the weather would bring.
And then the ice melted and the green of the ground peeked through and the sun warmed everything.
My friend asked me why I’d given up on purpose. I haven’t quite, I said, not exactly. Just redefined my lifelong insistence that there must be reasons for things. I’d long agonized over whether anything I was doing made a difference in the end. My therapist told me once that in two generations, I’ll be forgotten, and maybe that’s true, but then why are we here? It can’t be coincidence, and it can’t be mere circumstance, either, or dumb luck. I must be in this life to do something memorable.
Do you agree? Maybe writing a good story is enough. Or helping someone else write one, too.
But in my redefinition is the idea that purpose can be small and meaningful and still enough.
Before I taught a class to 18 people on the Saturday where I met Shaq (!!!), I went to a public library branch. The doors opened at noon instead of the typical 9 a.m. (Dallas & weather—come on!). A young woman waited for the doors to open. “Because of the weather,” she said, smiling.
“I’m from Detroit. This isn’t weather,” I said, smiling back.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m an author, and I came to teach a writing class and speak about my books.”
She asked what I write. She’d never met a real author before, she said. I gave her my card and asked her name. “Write me,” I said. “I’m so glad we met.” We sat opposite one another in the quiet library with the sun shining down outside the plate-glass windows. The grass fluttered in a warming wind and there were occasional dandelions popping through the green.
My 11th book and first collection of essays comes out in 2 weeks. It’s called FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY: Essays on love, home and finding my voice at midlife. I’m a little nervous about this book, perhaps because all the stories are true. At least to me.
When I write fiction, I create whole new worlds and people that have no impact on me or what people think of me. But in this book, there are moments I’ve lived and things I’ve said and mistakes I’ve admitted to. Maybe you’ll like the stories, and maybe you won’t, and maybe you’ll read them and think differently of me, and I’ll have to live with that.
I’m proud of the book, and also of the fact that it’s one of two new books I’ll be releasing this year. This and a novel, coming in May. I write to make sense of the world, to figure out what I think, to process, and this book is 28 examples of moments processed, experiences lived, feelings come and gone.
It includes stories about my journey into Orthodox Judaism and also away from it. Love stories that were movie-like and eventually ended and one that has lasted and grown stronger with each year. Nature stories and food stories and stories of family and ancestry and the messy business of being a parent and trying to be a good one and only sometimes succeeding.
I hope you’ll read it. If you’re available, please join me for the virtual launch on January 30th at 11 a.m. ET. You can register here. You can also preorder the book wherever books are sold, and I’d be so honored if you bought a copy and told me what you think.
At the launch four amazing writers—Jessica Fein, ML Liebler, Danny Hankner and Kim Kozlowski (and we’ll miss Elizabeth Gowing)—who endorsed this book will be in conversation with me about writing personal essays, and I’ll be raffling off some of their books and also a copy of my new one, in paperback, ebook and audiobook. So join us.
Some people wonder why I write so many books, why my goal is a book a year (or two in 2025). First, I am having so much fun writing books and producing them and sharing them with the world. And also, I am building a body of work. A platform of creativity. A community around words. Someone asked me recently if I’ll quit at some point if they don’t eventually generate a sustainable income. I said I’ll do it as long as it continues to be fun.
Just another word before I close for today. I’ve been writing essays for a really long time. In the mid-1990s, I met Barbara Jones at the Iowa Summer Writers Workshop. She was an editor at Harper’s Magazine, and though I was there for poetry, I attended her lecture and approached her on the stage after she finished and asked if I could pay her to edit my essays. I wanted to get them to a publishable place.
Back then, I had to mail off a thick envelope with extra postage. She charged me $10/page, and red-penned the heck out of my writing, then stuffed them back into an envelope and mailed it off to Michigan. She was the first of several mentors who’ve given honest feedback on my writing and helped me get to this place.
Because of them, because of the generosity of kind people who took the time to read my words and tell me honestly how to make them better, this book meets the world. Barbara has been in publishing ever since, as an editor at a big publisher and now as a literary agent. I had breakfast with her in New York last month, and it was a coming home of sorts. Good friends are like that. We talked about everything; nothing was off-limits. Decades build the kind of friendship that lasts.
Join me on the 30th, please. Buy the book on the 28th when it releases. Tell me your stories, too. Perhaps this exchange of how we see things, of how we feel deeply and urgently, is its own kind of purpose.
With love, Lynne
Thanks for reading Lynne Golodner’s newsletter. During the month of May, anyone who becomes a year-long paid subscriber will receive a FREE copy of Lynne’s essay collection, FOREST WALK ON A FRIDAY. If you’re already a paid subscriber, buy a gift subscription for someone else and you’ll receive a free copy of the new book!
You inspire me. I love how you went to Dallas for a speaking engagement and it became a writing retreat. You embraced it! That is a way to live. Thank you, Lynne, for your positivity…I look forward to reading your new book!
Thank you for my blissful morning coffee!