NaNoWriMo is technically about writing fiction but I’m bending their already flexible rules a bit more and planning an immersion in memoir next month. Last year’s NaNo writing is now novel length and I’ve timed completing its third edit by the end of this month. Just as last year was my first serious novel attempt, this will be a first effort at writing book length memoir. Equally challenging. Twice as scary.
As an essayist, I’ve written scores of autobiographical shorts, seldom intimate, usually relating to isolated events and ideas from recent life, things I can write before the mind’s emotional snapshots dry and fly away. The task of marathon writing about my personal experiences from earliest memory and then carrying that on in the following months, however, is daunting.
I’ve heard a human’s favorite word is their own name. We hear complaints occasionally about those doing nothing but talking about themselves in conversation. You would think, in general, writing about ourselves would be a piece of cake. That we’d welcome the organized opportunity. I think I’d rather be set afire in the middle of a glass eating contest.
There comes a point when you’ve run out of convincing excuses and the fear subsides. My time is now.
I think working from the “what if” of fiction was a helpful preparation. As I chased the slippery fiction of Black Mountain Light through the days I kept over-ending big mental rocks and uncovering my own non-fiction. I couldn’t help working in the occasional personal element, constantly weaving the road between personal truth and entertaining lies, of real and speculated history.
There were cathartic moments when I recovered memories I didn’t know could exist. I would be creating the experiential lives of characters out of thin air and suddenly find myself depending on the real as a tool for seeing. We do this a lot, of course, writing about things of which we have no real knowledge. That’s part of the challenge, to call into this realm a made up thing, a borrowed life, and make it real. Not just believable, but believed. Inevitably we must occasionally fall back on personal experience and empathy, the remembering and imagining.
X is what I remember doing in a similar circumstance. This character is similar to her and she’d react by doing X. If I were in that place I would feel X and then do X. Perhaps our unwritten memoirs are where the answers hide.
In that conversation with the barely real I would have flashes of the true, like vainly trying to speed read but only comprehending small amounts of the story, tantalizing fragments of a puzzle. Real and strangely evolved scenes from my life would come up for a gulp of air after spending my lifetime at the lightless bottom of the sea. That caused chain reactions of other memories. The snapshots were quickly becoming film.
So my memory has rebooted over the last year, energized further by past workshops with George Ella Lyon (Don’t You Remember?) and Karen McElmurray (Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey) and devouring every autobiographical phrase ever penned by Chris Offutt (The Same River Twice and No Heroes) and taking Jason Howard up on his instruction that we “must discover, understand, communicate, preserve.”
Though I’m getting older and my memory isn’t what it used to be, at this mid-life point in life I’m actually remembering me more and more. The novel effort was intended for consumption from the beginning. I’m not so sure about the life story thing. I’m doing this for me. If, in the end, I can take the mundane and semi-exciting chapters of my life and sift them clear and beautiful upon the page, perhaps there’s potential for someone learning from them. In the end, however, it’s about re-meeting me.
From: http://www.writerscommunity.net/
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Act of Writing: A Pleasant Struggle
Writing, for me at least, feels like a tug-of-war you can’t walk away from. The act of writing is the contest, a pleasant struggle, the grappling for more rope, the hope of pulling something valuable in your direction along with all your ideas and characters strung down the line with you. But when the contest is over, the rope relaxes. In life you walk away from the game. In writing you cannot walk away. The rope may slack and whatever mysterious possibility was on the other side of the contest may wander off or just stand there waiting, but you’re still holding the rope, your hands burning from the struggle, at the ready, never mentally letting go of the distraction of coming back.
There was a time when I infrequently picked up rope. It had burnt my hands. The game was too exhausting or frustrating. I didn’t know how to hold on. Now, I’m glad to say, there are very few days when I don’t manage writing at least an hour or more. And when I’m not writing physically, that slacked rope, the thought of getting back to the story, the wonder of what will happen, the pleasure of it, remains in my grip. And I love it. Whether anything comes of what I’ve wrestled, tugged, and fought, I’ve still been doing something I now must do – write.
Writing is difficult work. It’s supposed to be. Students often lament the difficulty of college. I remind them that it is the difficulty of school that gives it value. If it were easy more people would do it and its value would plummet. It will never be easy, but it does get easier. And any relief from writing anxiety and blocks is worth figuring out. I’ve read and been given endless varieties of advice on when and how to write, ranging from the same time everyday to when it hits, in the mornings or in the evenings, on lunch breaks, in the middle of the night, only on weekends, to keep a pad of paper by the bed, to always have pen and paper in the car, carry a recorder, hire a secretary. All of this worked for someone, sometime. The key is to have patience with yourself long enough to figure out what works for you. If a cookie cutter solution works too well we might end up with cookie cutter work.
We can separate being inspired to write from the ability to be in the act of writing. They don’t often coincide, as you’ll all agree. One does not guarantee the other. There are times I’m physically able to be writing but lack inspiration, or I can be inspired mentally and not capable of being in the chair longer than five minutes at a time, or spiritually attuned to something that feels like inspiration but is in a language I cannot translate. It’s like writing biorhythms. When they all mesh up it’s like hitching a ride on a blissful cloud of clarity. But that’s not often. Even then it’s always hard work.
One thing that helps is feeling choked off now when I’m not writing. Not myself. I like that place. Something percolates – some conversation between characters, some interpretation of a scene that looks like poetry, some attempt at drawing a metaphor – in every waking hour. And I couldn’t be happier; or more distracted. That’s the painful part, when the mind races faster than your world allows opportunities to act. It works as long as the distraction doesn’t turn to resentment.
I think aspiring writers sometimes mislead themselves into thinking great writing is easy. They’ll read something so incredibly good, so naturally flowing, so convincing and shaking, inspirational, that they mistake that enjoyed perfection as ease on the part of the author. I can say that when I’m “not in the mood” (whatever that means), I find myself getting energized while reading something I consider great. That usually works. Go back to the things that made you want to write in the first place. The root of your inspiration.
From: http://www.writerscommunity.net/page/3
There was a time when I infrequently picked up rope. It had burnt my hands. The game was too exhausting or frustrating. I didn’t know how to hold on. Now, I’m glad to say, there are very few days when I don’t manage writing at least an hour or more. And when I’m not writing physically, that slacked rope, the thought of getting back to the story, the wonder of what will happen, the pleasure of it, remains in my grip. And I love it. Whether anything comes of what I’ve wrestled, tugged, and fought, I’ve still been doing something I now must do – write.
Writing is difficult work. It’s supposed to be. Students often lament the difficulty of college. I remind them that it is the difficulty of school that gives it value. If it were easy more people would do it and its value would plummet. It will never be easy, but it does get easier. And any relief from writing anxiety and blocks is worth figuring out. I’ve read and been given endless varieties of advice on when and how to write, ranging from the same time everyday to when it hits, in the mornings or in the evenings, on lunch breaks, in the middle of the night, only on weekends, to keep a pad of paper by the bed, to always have pen and paper in the car, carry a recorder, hire a secretary. All of this worked for someone, sometime. The key is to have patience with yourself long enough to figure out what works for you. If a cookie cutter solution works too well we might end up with cookie cutter work.
We can separate being inspired to write from the ability to be in the act of writing. They don’t often coincide, as you’ll all agree. One does not guarantee the other. There are times I’m physically able to be writing but lack inspiration, or I can be inspired mentally and not capable of being in the chair longer than five minutes at a time, or spiritually attuned to something that feels like inspiration but is in a language I cannot translate. It’s like writing biorhythms. When they all mesh up it’s like hitching a ride on a blissful cloud of clarity. But that’s not often. Even then it’s always hard work.
One thing that helps is feeling choked off now when I’m not writing. Not myself. I like that place. Something percolates – some conversation between characters, some interpretation of a scene that looks like poetry, some attempt at drawing a metaphor – in every waking hour. And I couldn’t be happier; or more distracted. That’s the painful part, when the mind races faster than your world allows opportunities to act. It works as long as the distraction doesn’t turn to resentment.
I think aspiring writers sometimes mislead themselves into thinking great writing is easy. They’ll read something so incredibly good, so naturally flowing, so convincing and shaking, inspirational, that they mistake that enjoyed perfection as ease on the part of the author. I can say that when I’m “not in the mood” (whatever that means), I find myself getting energized while reading something I consider great. That usually works. Go back to the things that made you want to write in the first place. The root of your inspiration.
From: http://www.writerscommunity.net/page/3
Monday, January 24, 2011
Wal-"Mall" Concept Pitched to Big Coal
…this just in from The Turnip…
Wal-"Mall" Concept Pitched to Big Coal
Southeast Kentucky --- Top-ranked Fortune 500 company Wal*Mart announced plans today for piloting a new concept for stores – the residential Wal*Mall. “We’re particularly interested in trying the concept in rural Appalachia, and equally excited to be partnering with the coal industry – after all, coal keeps our lights on,” head spokesperson, Amy Bettering told a press conference at the state capitol today. “We can think of no better way of assisting in the responsible managing of past mining sites in these beautiful mountains. The people deserve what Wal*Mart can bring them.”
“The idea makes sense,” Brent Samuelson with the Center for Rural Re-Structuring, commented. “Especially with the declining popularity of rural malls due to Wal*Mart’s unfortunate impact on local economies, combining the indoor store-to-store mall concept with the company’s supply capability gives consumers the best of both worlds.”
The concept includes establishing Wal*Malls on prior mountaintop removal sites. Harding Leighton, manager of three Legion Acres surface mines in Kentucky, thinks the idea will fly. “This gives us just another opportunity to continue the wonderful reclamation work we’ve respected for so long,” Leighton said.
Rather than one large store, which can often frustrate shoppers in their search for items, there will be indoor open walkways, similar to malls, leading to item specific mini-stores. For example, personal hygiene items will be in one store, similar grocery items in another, and bathroom and kitchen supplies in another, all within a pleasant park-like atmosphere protected from the environment. Additionally, residential units, ranging from one-bedroom studio apartments to three-bedroom condos, will line the outer perimeter of the property and be located at limited spots within the mall itself, giving shoppers Wal*Mart access within walking distance 24-hours per day. Due to the possibility of protests, several stores may even opt for gated community status.
The first pilot location is scheduled for groundbreaking this summer on the Lone Tree Mountain site above Emptyheaded Hollow, Kentucky. Official say the published time allotment for public comment has passed.
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