All my life people have been telling me I should write a book.
This may have something to do with my ability to weave a story: be observant, emphasize the right parts, draw out the anticipation.
But it probably has more to do with the cast of colorful characters I have known.
My charismatic great-grandmother: who thought the cartoon cats on David Letterman were possessed and made us turn off the television after screaming at us, "DON'T LOOK IN THEIR EYES!"
My children: who offer endless humor and opportunities for patience every day. Along with wildly misremembered Bible stories.
My friends, especially in college: who gave me such experiences as vandalizing college property, and road trips across the country, and late nights of talks and You Tube cat videos, and counting down to the Counting Crows where the ratio of drinks we had consumed to minutes until the cd was played was, somehow, a very confusing math equation.
My family: who have given me, among other things, many a story.
Today I read this by Anne Lamott:
Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born
So here's to writing more often. Some days I think: I should write that memoir I've always thought about. And then I remember that I am very pregnant with a third little boy and that I will probably be "busy" for the next 20 years. And then I think about how my feelings and my memories might hurt people and I am torn between wanting to be nice and another piece of advice by Ms. Lamott: "If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."
I see truth in both.
But I still want to write more often, and that will probably include writing memories. It's good for me. It's therapeutic. It helps me to take a moment and make sense of things, or at least try to give them an order.
So I am not committing that this will be the year I will finally write a book. But hopefully this will be a year of writing more often. We'll see.
This may have something to do with my ability to weave a story: be observant, emphasize the right parts, draw out the anticipation.
But it probably has more to do with the cast of colorful characters I have known.
My charismatic great-grandmother: who thought the cartoon cats on David Letterman were possessed and made us turn off the television after screaming at us, "DON'T LOOK IN THEIR EYES!"
My children: who offer endless humor and opportunities for patience every day. Along with wildly misremembered Bible stories.
My friends, especially in college: who gave me such experiences as vandalizing college property, and road trips across the country, and late nights of talks and You Tube cat videos, and counting down to the Counting Crows where the ratio of drinks we had consumed to minutes until the cd was played was, somehow, a very confusing math equation.
My family: who have given me, among other things, many a story.
Today I read this by Anne Lamott:
Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born
So here's to writing more often. Some days I think: I should write that memoir I've always thought about. And then I remember that I am very pregnant with a third little boy and that I will probably be "busy" for the next 20 years. And then I think about how my feelings and my memories might hurt people and I am torn between wanting to be nice and another piece of advice by Ms. Lamott: "If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."
I see truth in both.
But I still want to write more often, and that will probably include writing memories. It's good for me. It's therapeutic. It helps me to take a moment and make sense of things, or at least try to give them an order.
So I am not committing that this will be the year I will finally write a book. But hopefully this will be a year of writing more often. We'll see.
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