It’s Only Too Late If You Never Start

From The Pen Woman, Fall 2021

By Maxine Carlson, Iowa City Branch

 

Iowa City Branch member Jan Down celebrated the publication of her first book, “Wind in My Wheels: A Fifty State Odyssey,” a few weeks before her 82nd birthday. Although her education and career as an elementary school teacher did not focus exclusively on creative writing, she explains, “I have written for family, for fun, for work, to remember; to stave off loneliness when (husband) Jim was in Vietnam; to mark beauty, joy, inspiration, and sadness; to mourn the deaths of family, old friends, and new.”

Creativity has healing qualities; it’s best not to discard any too soon. Some of the poetry Down wrote in the late 1960s while her husband was overseas (making her the single parent of their three children under age 10) comforted her then and has been published recently. Her book is the product of at least a decade of incorporating her personal journals with recollections of her family and her bicycle co-riders. Until the book was published, she continued revising.

Creativity is also about sharing and forging connections. In writing about their bike rides across all 50 states, Down describes the varied landscapes, humorous situations, hardships, historical sites, and ways the experience strengthened bonds with family and friends. True to her teaching background, the book was an opportunity to provide information to those who will never have the chance to travel. She shares descriptive details of the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of faraway places that leave the impression of having traveled with her.

Jan Down is an inspiration to anyone who longs to write and assigns it a lower priority while inundated with family and career responsibilities. Age doesn’t matter. Keep dabbling, save your work, revise if necessary, then be brave about sharing, even if it’s decades after creation. It’s only too late if you never start.