The way we tell our life story is the way we begin to live our life.

              –Maureen Murdock

   

Always, always we were becoming a story.  But I didn’t understand that fusing my life to the narrative, giving myself to the story’s life, would be what would allow me to live.

– Mark Doty

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A week of silence on this blog because of a number of things. First, I was clicking along nicely with my novel – that moment in your writing where you break through to another level and discover a whole lot of new stuff about your main character and what you’re actually writing about.  The heavy lifting is done – the plot, the setting, most of the characters – and now you’re finding out what your story is really about. (I think this can happen no matter what you’re writing – a memoir, an essay, a poem or fiction.) In any event it’s one of the best parts of writing, and writing would be a whole lot more pleasant if you didn’t have to spend months or years to get to this point.

I’d like to end this post right here because it makes my life sound pretty much together  – and don’t we all like to present the surface of our life as being organized and really under control. But if we’re writers it’s the chaos going on underneath that surface that we need to write about, need to be honest about. Sometimes the chaos is desperate, sometimes it’s hilariously funny (sometimes both)  and sometimes it’s just chaos and you can’t figure it out until you write about it.  But it’s all material, remember that.

As I was writing through my great epiphany in my novel, my husband called me in my office and said he was worried, he couldn’t write his name. His speech was also slurred. I raced down to his office (we both work at home) and he said maybe he slept on his arm the wrong way and he’d call the doctor in the morning. I got on the internet and read that his symptoms indicated a stroke and called 911. One fire truck, an ambulance, a paramedics van and eight guys (who qualify for sainthood) showed up. It did turn out to be a very mild stroke and he came home from the hospital yesterday. Which happened to be the day of the WriteGirl retreat, so there were fifty-seven wonderful women writers having a potluck lunch at our house when we got back home. Plus one of my daughters and her family stopping off on their way to her stepson’s wedding. (My son-in-law was thrilled with the unusual opportunity of eating such an amazing lunch at my house). 

In the midst of this one of my cats, Charlotte, was having her own health issues, drinking a lot of water and crying. I have a writing student who’s a veterinarian (another person who qualifies for sainthood) and I called his office and he said to bring Charlotte right in.

What all of this means, I have no idea. But it’s material.   

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