I was reading a book on writing memoir earlier today and the author said she recommended starting out with a small section. Forget about everything leading up to the section. Assume your reader already knows the people, places and things they’ll need to know. Then dive right into the action, into the heart of the scene or story. If someone’s falling off a cliff, start where they fall and pretend like your reader already knows how they got there, etc..

So I tried her idea. There was a scene that I’ve known I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, but I would get all bogged down in leading up to it, introducing the people, setting the scene, explaining things. This time I started right into the action. I wrote three long-hand pages with no trouble at all. And it was powerful to write! It’s a very disturbing thing that happened when I was in Junior High. And I finally have the core of it out on paper! The rest of the details can be filled in later.

Wow. I really learned something today. Oh, and the author also said to take about twenty minutes prior to writing, basically sitting quietly and meditating on what it is you want to write. I felt very clear-headed about how I wanted to approach it after I sat with it for a while.

She also said that hitting an important scene like this can cause a lot of emotion. I felt tears, I felt angry, I felt empowered. And I still feel kind of shaky and breathless.

Diving into the heart and heat of it. Then fill in the details later. Wow. So simple. But perhaps proving to be so effective.

When I think of writing, I tend to think in terms of book-length projects. Or the other extreme of short little blog posts.

I just had an “ah ha!” moment while doing my morning journaling. What about working on something in between? Like short stories or essays?

For example, I have a memoir in mind but it’s such a big project, it overwhelms me and I don’t even start. But what if I took one element or one scene and wrote it out as a personal essay? A collection of those could become a book later, but even if they just stand alone, it might be a way to break through the writer’s block that seems to have hit with the memoir idea.

Maybe I’ll go back through past issues of The New Yorker and read their personal essays to get a better sense of what that looks like. I feel encouraged and maybe even a little inspired.

On the topic of memoir, I’m reading the classic memoir A Childhood: A Biography of a Place by Harry Crews. It was recommended to me by someone who claimed it’s the “greatest memoir ever written!” Well, I don’t know about that yet, but it’s definitely good so far. 🙂

My dad asked me to wash his sleeping bag in my new washing machine. It doesn’t have a center post, so it can wash large items like blankets, etc. My dryer didn’t want to dry the sleeping bag so I have the bag flung over a chair.

They let me off work early today (which is weird that it was so slow in the middle of a sale). So, what did I do with my sudden day free?

More laundry.

Blankets, sheets, and more sheets. Now I have another blanket flopped over another chair. I feel like I’m living in a laundry.

And all I want to do is nap. But my bed is torn apart and being laundered.

So that’s my day. Laundry. And no nap. Although the couch is starting to look inviting.

I’ve gotten a lot of work done–between laundry loads–on an outline for the writing class I’m going to teach next month. Did some research, read some of my favorite authors on writing. And it’s amazing how often they all disagree with each other. There definitely isn’t one right way to write.

I’m preparing my notes for a beginning writing class I’ll be teaching next month. I want to share Anne Lamott’s idea of writing really bad first drafts. She calls them sh*tty first drafts. Notice how I didn’t use the “s” word? Yeah, that’s what I decided to write about just now.

Not long ago, a friend told me, “I noticed that you never swear. Why is that?”

Wow. I hadn’t realized I didn’t swear. I’m not particularly prudish about swearing. Other people swearing doesn’t offend me. All I could say in response was, “Sometimes I do.” Or I think I do, anyway. I definitely think swear words. But maybe they don’t come out of my mouth. lol

It gave me food for thought. Had I always been a non-swearer? Was there a time when I stopped swearing? I didn’t know.

To the best of my knowledge, I think I stopped swearing when I became a mother. Setting a good example for the kiddos was a high priority to me. I was surrounded by kids. My own. My kids’ friends. The 4-H Club. The neighbors. Everyone came to my house to play because we had the biggest front yard and the best snacks.

Swearing just wasn’t an option for me with all those impressionable little people running around. And once the non-swearing habit was firmly set, it never became an option again.

So here I sit, a full-grown adult teaching a writing class who can’t type the word sh*tty. I wonder if I’ll be able to say it in the class? Probably not without a bunch of apologizes and excuses and embarrassment.

There’s something that amuses me in this situation. 😃

I’d been reading a book about finding more direction and purpose to your life. Identifying your dreams or discovering the path opening to personal fulfillment. I was at a crossroads—would I move to a new location with all the stresses that come with a move to a new community, or would I stay put with all the stresses I was currently experiencing. But at least those present stresses were known and familiar.

I’d taken some time for a personal retreat to mull over the possible changes I may be facing. A new house, new people, even things as mundane as new grocery stores. So much change is involved with a move.

My personal retreat took place at a former horse camp I’d attended as a child. Over the years, it’d been refurbished and reimagined into a guest ranch for all ages. There were still horses in the field and trails on the hill. I found that so many memories were triggered from the familiar buildings and by talking with the family members of the original owners.

My childhood memories of trail rides, barn dances, and campfires combined with my grownup musings about choices I needed to make. What choices would Horse Camp Girl have made in the current situation? Would her dreams fit in with any of my thoughts or life transitions today?

What were Horse Camp Girl’s dreams? Well, for one thing, she wanted to write. I remember girlhood dreams of the writer’s life. She imagined a room of her own, a typewriter by the window, the room decorated with things she loved, there was at least one cat, a view of something green and relaxing out the window, peace and quiet. My girlhood dreams were pretty simple.

Fast forward to now. I live in a small home all my own with two cats, a view out my writing window of a greenbelt, my grandma’s piano and my grandfather’s rocking chair in places of honor, a table strewn with notebooks, pens, books, and Post-it notes. No typewriter, but more than one computer. Times and writerly equipment change.

I made the choice to move. And suddenly one day I realized that although the details are different, I’d made a choice which actually aligned with my childhood dreams. Writing, housing, cats, a view. While my current house may not be my Dream House, I think it’s a living situation of my dreams.

Making the choice to move rather than stay put was made not just for sensible, logical reasons, but also through meditative, intuitive, thoughtful, prayerful steps. And, also, it was a decision to make the best of the choices I’ve made, realizing that all choices are a mixed bag of good and bad. Of joys and challenges. Although I’m living a life with heartbreak and challenges, in many ways, I am living the dreams of my life. And that’s important to remember during the dark times.