Writers who didn't "want" to write

Thirty Years Ago
Sunday, country music figurehead Johnny Cash makes his annual visit to San Diego at the Civic Theatre with his perennial partners, June Carter and the Carter family. Cash has long been the most persistent “back to the roots” C&W artist of notoriety and has managed to survive the silly “outlaw” period quite nicely.
— THIS WEEK’S CONCERTS, Steve Esmedina, March 9, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Definitely Gandhi. Cinematographically it’s very well done. The direction is, how shall I put it...it’s masterful. Ben Kingsley’s performance is excellent, his character is well developed. It’s an emotional film that carries a message we all need today. Let’s face it, we’re living with the constant possibility of crisis, of war.
— OFF THE CUFF, “WHAT MOVIE WOULD YOU GIVE AN ACADEMY AWARD TO?” Roger Shields, Poet, La Mesa, March 10, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Mrs. Winter tells us how wonderful the Sandinista leaders are, but she omits the horror of their leadership. While my father fought for the Sandinistas in 1979 and died for the cause of Democracy, the Sandinista comandantes corrupted their own revolution by stealing from the people and spending all government funds on military buildups.
In 1984 my brother was murdered in front of me by a Sandinista comandante, and his only crime...his only error...he sold four chickens to a contra platoon commander. My family is now mostly in Honduras, as almost one million Nicaraguans have voted with their feet and fled the Sandinista barbarism.
— LETTERS: “CONSISTENCY,” Anji Garcia Hegerochea, Friends of the Nicaraguan Resistance, March 10, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
Would you like to know me better? Do you wanna know me better? ’Tain’t likely, like why the hell should you, and I’m not sure I want ya to anyway. More writeboy confession shit — I know — I wouldn’t wanna read it either. Nothing could make me read past this sentence, or even the last sentence, and I sure as heck don’t “want” to write it. No way. But want — wish — choice — has got so little to do with it, even writing goodstuff — masterworks — is hardly something I desire. You write Crime and Punishment, okay? But I owe a piece, I owe many pieces, I’m two years behind and it’s just kind of spilling out of me.
— “END WITHOUT END,” Richard Meltzer, March 11, 1993

Ten Years Ago
I consulted the above-mentioned psychiatrist in 1990 for what I could only describe as a kind of “teary incontinence.” In other words, I could not control when I would break down in short fits of weeping — sometimes it would occur at the most inappropriate and even light moments.

Forward to 1990. I was tending bar and would have to duck out past the service end, into the men’s room. It would last about two minutes, but it happened several times a day. I heard a lot of jokes from the regulars about my bladder.

The shrink told me it was natural, that I was grieving. I had just been dumped by my girlfriend. I told him I didn’t think that was it.
— “WET MISERY,” John Brizzolara, March 5, 1998

Five Years Ago
Last Sunday afternoon I spoke with Reverend Tom Horton of National City’s Church of God of Prophecy about how Pentecostals thought of John Ashcroft. At the beginning of the morning’s service, the gentleman who first led us in prayer asked that, in addition to remembering our soldiers overseas, we keep the attorney general in mind....

“Well, Ashcroft is Assemblies of God, which is probably the Pentecostal denomination closest to our own, the Church of God of Prophecy. If we had a sister denomination, the Assemblies would be it. The other nice thing about Ashcroft is that he’s not ashamed of his faith.”
— SHEEP AND GOATS, Abe Opincar, March 6, 2003