Writing the third act

BY WENDY BURTON

Our third act, “old age,” has taken on the lustre only Boomers could give it. The third act of a classic Western story is where “all the things” come to their satisfying conclusion. All must be resolved. The third act is not supposed to contain the beginning of another story.

What then of me? What of the woman whose plot reached an apparent ending with the death of her lover, yet life went on? What of me, who came to publishing late as a result of familial duties and the pressure of work, years of never finding the time, and then five years spent walking my beloved home?

Is it too late? Should I give up? For my own mental health, the answer has to be no. I am adding new plot to my third act, breaking all the rules.

I have written the beginning. My fictionalized account of my greatgreat-grandmother Millicent earned a letter of distinction from Humber College in April 2020. I was invited to post a synopsis and sample chapters in a special place on their website where agents and editors can have a look. Millicent waits. When I was seventy-one, my debut novel, Ivy’s Tree, was published. The books arrived from Thistledown Press in September 2020, in time for the well-planned launch in October. My book launch featured twenty-one people seated in six-foot bubbles, and I read behind a Plexiglas screen nine feet from the first row.

Two weeks later, all public and private events and gatherings were prohibited. The reading events I had planned were cancelled. I sold books from the trunk of my car, offering change at arm’s length along with sanitized inscriptions. I read over Zoom, my halting internet matching my inexperience with the medium. I, who was a public speaker for forty years, had stage fright. In January 2021, I finished a solid seventh draft of a novel that began in 2019 as a short story that wouldn’t shut up. Words cascaded onto paper.

Amid twenty-five rejections in 2020 and 2021, four pieces were published, one the Gold Winner in Alberta Magazine Association’s British Columbia Story of the Year.

I learned most Canadian publishing houses won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. One needs an agent. I sent out packages. I received responses: “We are not interested in representing you.” I was told, most piercingly, “We don’t see much of a career here.”

I was jealous. Sick with envy. Resentful. Bitterness stalked me the way pileated woodpeckers stalk bugs in fir trees.

I attended virtual events, and many thumbnail images showed people half the age of my older son. I was invisible in Zoom calls where my age was apparent. Who wants to network with someone older than dirt?

I turned to social media. It is a prickly environment. I experienced the futility of claiming a nanosecond of attention there.

I’ve heard of younger writers who finish, triumphantly, a draft and send it off to their agents and magically a publishing date appears: 2023. I will be seventy-four by then.

While I admire writers of all sorts, I especially admire those writing the third act, who write as if their life depends on it.

As it does.

I am an old woman. I am not trying to become a writer. I am a writer.

I write.

Wendy Burton lives on Hornby Island. Her debut novel is Ivy’s Tree. Her essay “Swimming in the Dark” (Folklife, October 2020) won Gold BC Story of the Year from the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. She is currently engaged in the “100 Rejections” challenge.