I did an interview this morning at the station which has helped me better understand why I find myself compelled to write this blog on a nearly-daily basis. . . despite the fact that it takes time and for what? It earns me no money. It occasionally irritates my wife (who understandably does not like me spending hours on end in front of the computer.) There’s no way of knowing who’s reading it, outside of the occasional (and always appreciated) emails. (I hope someday to figure out how to follow JD Strauss’s request that I make the blog interactive.) And I almost always have something more pressing that I could and should be doing; if nothing else, I would be accomplishing a whole lot more if I were to spend my blog-writing time keeping my car clean or playing with the dogs or any number of things.
Why write?
This morning, I interviewed a best-selling author named Abigail Thomas, who has written a wonderful little book called “Thinking about Memoir.” Because it’s such a small book (right around 100 pages and small enough to slip into a coat pocket) it was one of the books I brought with me to NYC and which I perused whenever I was standing in line or sitting on a bus with time to kill. In this book, the author is helping ordinary people like you and me think about ways in which they might engage in memoir-writing. . . something which tend to think as fair game only for the famous. She says that it’s wise for all of us to engage in the writing of our memoirs, even if it just means thinking about events in our past and writing about them. And by no means is this something which can or should or would lead to something like a full=fledged book. Rather it’s simply a way in which all of us can focus some time and attention on remembering where we’ve been and what we’ve experienced and, in her words, “how we got from here to there.”
One of the things she says is that it’s important to get into the habit of writing everyday- and of writing without any intention of having others read what we’ve written. And towards that end, she suggests not calling it a ‘journal’ because she thinks that makes it sound too high-falutin’ (sp?). She suggests that people just write about whatever happens to them – “note taking” is actually what she likes to call it – and do so in rather casual fashion. I love her image of such writing being the equivalent of ‘Singing in the Shower.’ There should be a sense of abandon and freedom about it. And of course that means that a blog like mine does not in any way accomplish quite the same thing- unless one blogged without any thought of someone else reading it. I certainly do not subscribe to that- I write this blog very much aware that students, faculty colleagues, listeners, parishoners, relatives, and President Bush might all blunder their way into my blog and read something there. So it’s not quite ‘singing in the shower’- but at least it’s writing that happens nearly every day and which gets me thinking about my life- my successes- my failures- and especially all that I should be thankful for.
A lot of her book consists of neat little exercises- which might serve more than anything as ways to get started on something which might intimidate you. Some might easily line up with something in your past more than others, so it’s important to choose exercises that work well for you. A few of my favorites:
Write two pages about feeling homesick.
Write two pages on a useless sentence that stays in your head.
Write two pages about the things you wanted to be.
Write two pages on how you spent your allowance.
Write two pages about something you had to have.
Write two pages about a time when you felt compassion unexpectedly.
She said that two pages is good because it’s substantial without being so much writing that it would be scary. You can really say something in two pages.
And maybe most importantly, she said that our writing does not have to be good. We just must write.
Let me end with my favorite: Write two pages about a fading memory – something you have to squint to see. We do not do that enough in our lives- and that is something I want to do TODAY before I go to bed. Maybe you’ll do it too.
pictured: cookies at the NYC macy’s store. What they have to do with memoir-writing, I have no idea!