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. 🙂