Writing the third act BY WENDY BURTON
Our third act, “old age,” has taken launch featured twenty-one people on the lustre only Boomers could seated in six-foot bubbles, and give it. The third act of a classic I read behind a Plexiglas screen Western story is where “all the nine feet from the first row. things” come to their satisfying Two weeks later, all public and conclusion. All must be private events and gatherings resolved. The third were prohibited. The act is not supposed reading events I to contain the I am had planned were beginning of cancelled. I sold adding new plot another story. books from the
to my third act, What then of trunk of my car, me? What of the offering change breaking all woman whose plot at arm’s length the rules. reached an apparent along with sanitized ending with the death inscriptions. I read over of her lover, yet life Zoom, my halting internet went on? What of me, who matching my inexperience came to publishing late as a result with the medium. I, who was a of familial duties and the pressure public speaker for forty years, of work, years of never finding the had stage fright. In January 2021, time, and then five years spent I finished a solid seventh draft walking my beloved home? of a novel that began in 2019 as a short story that wouldn’t shut Is it too late? Should I give up? up. Words cascaded onto paper. 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 20
wordworks | 2021 Volume III September
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.
