It was a sunny August afternoon in 2012. I sat with a friend on a relatively empty Denver restaurant patio under a green awning. We drank terrible, sticky-sweet mojitos and talked. My friend, an older man, a cellist, and a retired Merrill Lynch Investment Banker, was planning a trip to Rome, Prague, and Paris. At that time, I was a mom, a wife, and an art critic and journalist based in rural Southwestern Colorado—a freelance writer with a small following.
“You’re very talented, but why are you doing this? Why don’t you get a job? Write fiction. You could do better than that horrible Fifty Shades of Gray,” he said. “I mean nobody reads what you write. Why bother?”
I took a drink of the mojito. Swallowed. What could I say to that? He was partially correct. It wasn’t nobody; a handful of people read, perhaps even a few hundred on occasion. And I did always want to write fiction.
I thought about his words for a long while (obviously, I still do). They were a mirror held up to show me my truth. I have been focused on writing since 2003. My Vitae is solid. I’ve written and published two art books, sixteen exhibition catalogs, sixty magazine articles, and nearly 200 online stories. I’ve also won awards for my writing from Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism, an Andy Warhol Foundation | Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant, and an NEA Fellowship.
I slowly built a following for my blog while freelancing for print magazines, working my way up from regional rags to national publications. But I never earned “a living” doing this. I couldn’t support my family writing $50 reviews or earning a few hundred dollars for articles. I felt like I was spinning my wheels frantically, chasing after the next paying job, churning out material for consumption, and aching to write something more involved, complex, and meaningful. To explore the historical trend of criticism and why it no longer matters—from Clyfford Still and his letters to critics Clement Greenburg and Emily Genauer (the latter including a pair of rubber baby pants) through today and the demise of traditional critical voices in newspapers to the plethora of online bloggers, commentators, and opinion-makers. A memoir. Historical fiction about my fascinating ancestors and a novel about a successful equestrian who is thrown from her horse, losing her career and nearly her life.
Now here it is eleven years later. I never wrote a book about criticism or an essay about Emily Genauer and Clyfford Still. By the end of 2013, I exited stage left with this essay, originally published on adobeairstream.com. I quit writing from assignments and intended to write what moved and inspired me and find a way to do it in a way that felt true, noble, and genuine. I quit, partly because being an arts journalist from the middle of nowhere was hard, and I didn’t believe I could pick up and move my family to an art center. I worked at an olive oil tasting room and managed a jewelry gallery. I wrote some emails and website copy, and the occasional press release. I posted on social media. I piddled with writing anything else. I had a creative crisis. I quit writing because I gave up on myself. I gave up on doing the hard things.
In 2021, I moved from the south side of the San Juan Mountains to the north side of the San Juan Mountains. I committed to sit down and write. I organized all the unfinished books, essays, and articles into folders, then I sat with my pen, opened a blank notebook, and began to journal, write, and see what came. At first, it wasn’t much, but eventually, the novel I put away about the same time I began writing about art earnestly came back into my head. The characters began speaking to me over each other, and I began writing again. I’m on revision four of the novel and think I might finally be making progress. My dear friend and mentor Julie Loar said it’s not ten thousand hours for writers to call themselves writers; it’s ten thousand lives. Sometimes, I think I have something to say and a way to string the words together that is beautiful, powerful, and poignant. And sometimes, I think it is crap and start over. I may even briefly listen to the voice that tells me it’s all horrible and I should give up. But I can’t. I won’t. I’ll keep writing even if no one is reading. I still have to work a real job to pay the bills, but I fill my free time with writing.
I’ve written and published two art books, sixteen exhibition catalogs, sixty magazine articles, and nearly 200 online stories. I’ve also won awards for my writing from Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism, an Andy Warhol Foundation | Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant, and an NEA Fellowship.
I’ve published a few pieces here and there about seniors and retirees doing exciting things with their lives, like traveling, returning to their passion for the violin, reminiscing about Robert Plant blowing them kisses, and a couple who spends their winters sailing around the Caribbean.
But I still yearn to follow my heart and write about what matters to me: compassion, empathy, truth, honesty, and to tell the stories that make up our lives. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and words on my website leannegoebel.com and I was inspired to begin working on another project. (More about that another time). I have a few followers and fewer readers, but perhaps that will change. I’d appreciate your reading this and sharing my website with others. If you’ve read my work before and liked it and want to share it with others, that would be fantastic. The sharing links are at the bottom of each post. If you want to sign up for email newsletters to let you know what I’ve written, then sign up here. And, of course, if you wish to donate, buy a cup of coffee for a writer, or some paper, a notebook, a journal, or a pen, that would be fantastic.
The most important thing for me is to know if something I’ve written has touched you, moved you, inspired you, made you think, or challenged you in any way. If that has happened, please contact me and let me know. Let’s dialogue. Let’s discuss this. Let’s listen to one another.