I can hardly believe how my life as a writer has changed in the last few years. Like so many people in our country, a personal and idiosyncratic and yet somehow nurturing and secure a world was upended. I am blessed to remain a writer, but I live in a different writer’s world, sometimes I am just dizzy thinking about it.

I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, and I have been a writer just about my whole life. There is nothing more important than being fulfilled, and I have been fulfilled for most, if not all, of my life. I’m not sure what more I could ask for, except love, and I found that as well.

And yes, sometimes I am sad about some of the things I have lost in my writing life, I am all too very human.

As a life-long book writer with a big New York publisher, I had one editor for much of my career, and our time together was marked by dramas, conversations, lunches, victories and defeats, and a contract with kept with one another. I was a best-selling author, I made a lot of money, my publisher always worried about me and took care of. My editor was my champion and protector. We made books together.

He was my guide, my defender, soother and champion. He shaped my voice and put his mark on my every book.

That was a strong bond.  If I was in trouble, he was the one I turned to, and I loved going into New York City to meet with the editorial staff, people who talked to me about covers, titles, books tours, publicity. I felt like John Updike, even though I had no illusions that I was like John Updike.  I don’t know if I was important or not, but I always felt that I was.

I loved the life of the book writer, holing up in my attic or basement for years slaving over a work of passion, then sailing out around the country to talk to people about it. Nobody would dream of giving me advice, sending nasty messages,  or telling me how to run my life.

I made a lot of money, being a writer was the only thing I ever wanted to be, and that is what I am.

I am still a writer, I still have a publisher, but it is very different. That world is gone. Like most of the people reading this, I live in a sometimes dehumanized world, I talk to messages, rarely to people. I would hardly recognize a single person in the offices of my publishing company if I ran into them on the street. And I understand that I am only as important as the books I sell. Or don’t.

My new editors are very gifted, as editors tend to be,  harried, distracted and pressured. When we do speak, it is almost always by e-mail or text messages.  It would be odd to even suggest lunch or a face-to-face meeting. I suppose I was always on my own, but it never felt like it.  I had few interactions with my readers.

I still work with an editor, but now,  and closely,  also with a free-lance editor, a former New York publishing executive named Rosemary Ahern.

She, like me, has moved upstate to forge a different kind of life for herself than the one she had in New York.

This search for human connection is not just my story, this is almost everyone’s story. We live in a Corporate Nation, we rarely get to work with people who know us or love us. Few of us have callings, most of us have jobs.

We are only as valuable as the money we generate.  We sometimes feel discarded. We sometimes are.  Discarded people are a nation unto themselves in our time. I think so many people are angry and upset about it, you can see it in the political stories and divisions sweeping the country. Everybody seems angry about something, there are demons and villains everywhere..

There seems to be so much space between us and the rest of humanity in the new culture, this new economy. Our leaders don’t seem to be aware of it, they never talk about this new and cold idea of work, the loss of humanity in favor of profit.

Rosemary Ahern has kept her close connection to New York, and has a new batch of devoted and fortunate clients. We have become close and valued friends. Every couple of months I go to her small town diner a couple of  hours from me, or she comes up to visit the farm – she is a passionate animal lover. We talk easily and openly, we catch up.

I love Rosemary as a person and a friend, she has been so supportive of me and my work, but I also love the connection we have to that other world, when writers were seen in a different way, as something beyond profit and sales statistics. I do not ever think the old days are better than the new ones, but I am called upon to change and grow without end.

The world around me has changed, and why should writers be exempt? In 25 years, my descendants will be fondly remembering 2016, that is the way the world works.

I am grateful for my blog, which has given me new identity as a writer, and prompted a wondrous and complex, sometimes difficult dialogue with my writers thanks to so many new tools for communicating. I am growing, learning, writing better than ever.

Rosemary loves writers and respects writers in the other way, perhaps I should say that old way. She connects me to the world I lived in for so long, and which suited me so well. I am pretty happy in the new world as well.

I am very wary of nostalgia, I see it as such a trap, but I also see the disconnection that technology has sometimes placed between people and ideas spawns so much anger and confusion. It is easier than ever before to talk to people, harder than ever before to know or understand them.

Rosemary and I have a powerful friendship, a treasured relationship, it would simply not be possible if we did not take the trouble to see each other, meet each other, look each other in the eye, give each other a hug, come to understand the meaning of this look or that. I know about Molly,  her new cat and she knows about Fate and her adventures. She has witnessed the life Maria and I are working to build. She understands my strengths and weaknesses, and accepts them both.

Rosemary understands me as a writer in a way  that very few people do any longer, she believes in me and my work. That is nourishing beyond description. Writers, by nature of their work, are often insecure.  They never feel that what they do is good enough. Editors, by nature of their work, inspire and motivate them.  I think only editors can really see into the heart and soul of a writer, and not too many have the time any longer.

I know Rosemary as one of those tough, difficult and yet empathetic editors who bring out the very best in writers, challenging them to think harder, dig deeper and polish more.  And that has become a friendship.

I do not care to be one of those people lamenting the old days, that is a quagmire of resentment and lament.  I don’t bitch about the price of gas or taxes either. We have to live in the world we live in, not the one we had or wish or hope to have. Without new and disconnecting technology, I would probably no longer be a writer, not really worth the trouble of a big corporate publisher any longer.

Without the magic of human contact, my life would be cold and barren and empty. I have come to embrace the creed called radical acceptance.

Sometimes there are problems that cannot be  solved, simply lived with. Radical acceptance is about accepting life’s terms and not resisting or lamenting what I cannot change. Radical acceptance is about saying yes to life.

I accept the new life of the writer, I embrace it. But I will not ever give up the idea that the relationship between an editor and a writer is precious, sacred to me. And I will keep driving to that diner as long as Rosemary can put up with me. I guess it’s radical acceptance with a flip.