And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~Sylvia Plath
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on my writing and put my writing out there to see if I can really make a go of it here in Canada. I think being a writer is something like being an artist. It’s hard to make a living at it but if you can do it, it’s incredibly satisfying. And frustrating, but with every frustration you overcome you just get better and better so in the end you learn to love the frustration. At least that is how I feel about it.
So to get myself moving in a positive direction, I picked up a book called Writing Creative Nonfiction, edited by Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard. This is the genre I am most interested exploring, since I read nothing but travel stories, I admit it. So far I am picking through the essays one by one, but I’m feeling guilty for blowing through the essays without actually doing the exercises at the end of each chapter. So I am going to blog about my “assignments.” It goes without saying that feedback is welcomed!
Chapter One: “Why I Write” by Terry Tempest Williams.
Assignment: Why do you write?
Good question. I’ve thought about this for a few days and here is my answer.
I grew up in a rural area in the Okanagan Valley. The farming community of my childhood, filled with orchard and orchards of cherries, apricots, peaches and apples has now turned to choc-a-bloc vineyards, and is a roaring place for tourists in the summer. But here in the winter, as it always had been, there is still very little to do.
As a child, Thursday afternoon was my favourite part of the week, because the Regional Library was open late after school and I could exchange my old library books for new ones, since there was nothing to do (in my opinion) but read. I took out on average four books a week, and loved to get lost in stories of far away places, far, far away from where I was spending long winters locked inside.
When I wasn’t reading stories, I was writing them- mostly about kids living in the States. I figured they had everything and were more fun to write about than kids in Canada who just froze to death and had mothers who gave them too many chores. Those American mothers let their kids eat sugary cereals like in the commercials and they all had pools and trampolines and warm weather year round, I was sure of it.
When I wasn’t writing about American kids, I was writing about witches. I loved anything to do with witches, not because I was interested in ever being one, but because I loved the feeling of being scared of them. They were mean, and nasty, but smart and unpredictable. They needed no one and never felt guilty about anything they did, and they could do magic, which was pretty cool. Even now, I am a witch every year for Halloween. The ugliest, nastiest witch I can be.
In Elementary school where I seemed to be half-assed at everything, I excelled at reading and writing. In fact, I became famous in my school for a poem I wrote about myself in grade one and was published in the school anthology:
Melanie
Nice Melanie.
Pretty Melanie.
Sexy Melanie.
I love Melanie.
When my teacher asked what I thought ‘sexy’ meant, I said, “pretty and nice.” She asked me why I thought that and I replied, “Because my Dad always calls my mother sexy, and she’s pretty and nice.” So it just made sense to me that I should be sexy too.
It seemed to make sense to Ms. Barnes who handed it in to the office to be published in teh school anthology along with everyone else's poems. Even though I still haven’t lived it down with my cousin who kept every anthology ever written, I secretly applaud Ms. Barnes for not making me change it, even though I was six years old at the time. (Sadly, my reasoning for choosing to write about myself is that the teacher asked us all to choose different topics to write about- and Mom, Dad, dogs, pizza and Macaroni were all taken. I was pretty sure no one would write a poem about loving me, so I felt I had a pretty safe topic!)
But the real reason I write is simply because I love to tell stories. I come from a family of storytellers and we all have the ability to keep people entertained with tales, family shenanigans and overseas adventures. If anyone should be writing a book about their adventures, it’s my father, who can captivate a room with his stories.
I have inherited the family story telling gene from Dad. When I tell stories, I get caught up in the moment and I swear my mouth is moving but I am up in my head, living the experience all over again. It’s like taking a trip in my head and I love it. It’s kind of like a moving-mouth-meditation, if you will! I think the same happens with my dad. As a kid, I sat and listened to him tell story after story, sometimes the same story, and I was always right there with him, experiencing whatever it was he was living in his own mind.
My Dad, in Super-Storytelling mode. Riveted!
For example: at a youth hostel in Mexico, I shared a beer with two young Japanese men who I’d met climbing temples in the Yucatan that afternoon. They were so quiet that I found myself filling the uncomfortable silent gaps with more of my own "historical conversation". After two and a half hours of me flipping from story to story I said,
“Oh God! I’ve been talking solidly for hours! I must be boring you to death!”
Whereas one of them said,
“It’s true, you talk a lot. But everything you say is interesting. So it's okay. Please, go on!”
Gosh, I hope that’s true.
Having admitted to that, I am working on not dominating conversations with my story telling, though it’s hard with a family like mine where we often have to shout over each other to get a word in edgewise. (If you ever wondered why I do that, I blame it on being raised in a family of exuberant talkers.)
So why do I write?
1. I first began my blogs to let my parents know what was going on in my life overseas. Now I am grateful I started those journals because I visit them from time to time and relive the experience. The blogs fill in the details I have long forgotten.
2. It’s also a creative release for me. I can’t always express what I want to say through painting and printmaking, but I’m lucky in the sense that words and ideas never seem to fail me.
I know I have a lot of work to do. Writing these stories down is work. Learning about how to write a good story as opposed to a blog entry like this one is difficult. But it is exciting, and I am excited about charging into the middle of what it means to be a writer.
Even if it means, for the meantime, I am temporarily living in my parents’ backyard in the camper. But the solitude I once abhorred as a child is a blessing for me now. I’ve nothing to do but focus on my writing and get back into reading books like Writing Creative Nonfiction which otherwise may look interesting on a dusty shelf. I’m considering taking an online course on writing through UBC. And best of all, I am spending my time with my Dad, the man who taught me what story telling is all about.
Next up! Really Bad Poetry.