I've been writing alot recently. I am taking 2 writing classes, one in creative nonfiction and memoir, and the other called 'Writers as Readers". Both are fun, lots of reading and lots of writing. At times, the assignments begin to overlap a little. I've written several peices now about my childhood and growing up. It is astounding how the memories keep coming once I've tugged at the thread. I had never thought much about writing nonfiction and am now finding that I am really enjoying it. This is good, since I have another 2 months of classes left, and quite a bit more writing to do for them. This is a peice I wrote to describe my relationship with reading and writing.
The first book I remember
reading had a main character
named Nell.
She was a farm horse,
I was not amused.
I read everything I could get my hands on.
I read everywhere.
I read in the bathroom,
I read when I was supposed to be doing dishes,
I read hidden under my bed,
I took books out past the flowerbeds
into the wild plum brush and read.
Whatever I read,
I lived, breathed, played and dreamed.
Books were portals into other worlds
that I could escape into.
Books took me places that I had never
imagined existed.
Then, I began to write.
I wrote poems, stories, plays, books, newspapers
I wrote journals and diaries.
I wrote things that I could never say to anyone.
I wrote words that I didn’t know I knew.
I wrote about people I had never known
and places I had never been.
I wrote about worlds and art and love and living
and passion.
I wrote because I couldn’t NOT write.
Most of my childhood, my writing
and reading were seen as frivolous
and relatively unimportant by those
around me.
When I decided to be a writer
I felt as though I were staking my flag
on an undiscovered planet.
I also felt as though I had only a limited
amount of oxygen to survive.
In my early twenties,
a dream came true,
I began work at a small
publishing press.
I spent my days reading terrible
poetry sent in by 90 year old women
and ex-truck driving men.
I had to write back to them and tell them
we would not be publishing their
precious poems.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to tell them how
awful they were.
I spent my evenings trying to keep up with
alcoholic poets and writers twice my age
and tangled in the dysfunctional lives of
blocked artists.
I became a sounding board and a mirror.
I became a shadow self to diseased writers.
Eventually, I began to disappear.
During the peak of this craziness,
as I split up with my boyfriend and all
sanity fell away,
I announced to anyone who would listen that there was no future
for the printed word
and I quit my job and went to
film school.
I stopped writing.
I began to work and think and dream in visual images
and sound.
I felt as though I were swimming, submerged, drowning
and reborn.
I took photographs, made films and
created sound pieces.
I continued only to write in my notebooks.
Years passed,
I married,
had 2 children,
divorced, remarried, had 2 more children,
worked in the commercial film industry
and then
when the crossroads of Hollywood
and family appeared,
I chose my family.
I handed my camera to my husband
(who became a professional photographer in 6 months)
and juggled children and a job in a food co-op.
I stopped thinking of image making
as creative expression, it had
become a way to earn a living.
Eventually, I returned to the commercial photography
industry as a producer and stylist
and made more money than I had ever made before.
I spent this money
on books, notebooks and pens.
I began to lust after words, to yearn
for stories. I tried to write a novel
in a month,
and failed.
I tried again and failed again.
In between, I began to dabble in characters
and settings,
I began to imagine in words instead
of visual images.
I felt as though I were 75 years old
and trying to roller skate again. I could remember
the sensation of flying through a short story or poem,
of gliding through notebook after notebook of imaginative
writing,
but I needed to relearn
the craft, the effort, the work
involved in the process.
Now, I have managed to write
4 rough drafts of novels,
I have tacked a creative writing minor
onto the tail end of my filmmaking degree.
I am writing everyday.
I think my wings
are getting stronger.
We stand today at the end of the calendar year, tomorrow is the beginning of 2011. I think of this time of year as a portal from where and who I have been to who I am becoming. There is intention and conscious decision making involved, but also there is the Mystery to engage. We can aim at our future, and participate willingly, but we do not control it, there are so many factors involved. That is what makes it so fun!
