writing memoir

I began a class on writing memoir yesterday.

The best part of this is that for the first time, I have "gone public".  I have joined a group of writers, most of whom thank goodness have about the same amount of writing experience. 

It felt good.  It felt good to meet others who yearn to express through the written word as I do.  It felt good to think about hearing their stories and perhaps to share a few of my own.  It feels good and scary to know that I am now on a timetable with a certain amount of accountability to others.

We are assigned the task of writing one story each of the eight weeks of class. 

This is really going to pick up my pace.

This means I am going to have to put my inner critic in timeout while I write.  I wonder about this as it seems to be my biggest obstacle to writing - the steel rod that holds me captive.

So far I have managed to waste my entire first day, thinking furiously about all of the things I could write without writing the first word.  I am feeling somewhat courageous at this point that I am here at least, that I am confessing.

But thinking about writing is not writing

Margaret Atwood says that "writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light."

I certainly understand the darkness - the fear, the resistance.  I also understand the compulsion - the obsessive thinking, the circling, the short plunges into the darkness only to dart away again. 

Illumination is the hope, is my hope.

the snowflake method - step three, sort of

I started using The Snowflake Method with the usual exuberance that often comes with my new ideas.  I thought, "I will chronicle my use of The Snowflake Method, sort of like the movie Julie and Julia, and then I can build up a strong base of interested readers and eventually this will become a novel which can then become a movie, and ..."

As a writer, I am certain you are quite familiar with the fantasy, yes?

However ... by Step Two, I realized that I don't really like this kind of structure so much, and so I skipped it.

This morning, I determinedly decided to try Step Three which is to answer a series of questions regarding the motive, goal, conflict and epiphany of each character and then write a short one paragraph summary of each character.

I found the process somewhat painful, BUT it was also quite helpful.

I completely changed the motive and epiphany of my heroine.

I began to understand other main characters more completely.

I began imagining scenes and dialogues as I thought through the motives and conflicts of the characters.  These I wrote quick notes about as I am certain they will be explored later, in full detail, as part of this process.

I did NOT write a one paragraph summary of each character yet.  My mind began moving too fast to slow down and think with full sentences.  This is okay, because Step Four is to expand each sentence in the summary paragraph to a full paragraph.  I can do both of these at the same time, which I will do ... eventually.

I worry that I am being contrary and even worse, disrespectful to Mr. Ingermanson's Snowflake Method.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

I don't mean to be.

I'm guessing that other writers maybe struggle with structure also, even though we all know it is important.  It is the same quirky resistance that often keeps me from befriending the unwritten page at all.  My way of getting through it is to bargain with myself, and in this case, Mr. Ingermanson. 

I wonder how others do it?

rejection

I received my first rejection.

I immediately called my good friend who is a poet, and her response was, "YAY!"

"Huh?"

"Your first one is over," she said.  "Make a file.  There will be more, a lot more."

She told me about a well-known author in the area who proudly displayed a whole box of rejection notices as a teaching tool in his creative writing class.  His point being that as writers, we must learn to be thick-skinned about rejection.

"Yes," I responded, thinking there is something very odd about this.

I wonder about a writing community that has learned to wear rejection like a badge of honor.  Is there some defense mechanism in this?  Display proudly so as not to be sad?  Cry?  Doubt?  Give up?

I feel disappointed.  I poured my heart into those 1200 hundred words, so much so that I wondered if there were any words left in the universe when I was finished.  Which of course I have since learned there are - plenty more - but that's another post.

I want to cry.  I am entertaining a certain amount of doubt ... actually a great deal of doubt.

But give up?

This is not an option.  I am beginning to understand after all of these years that a writer simply writes.  This is why after so many times of "quitting" for various reasons, I keep PICKING UP MY PEN AGAIN.

Later when I relayed the news to my husband. he said "GREAT!  You should frame it."

"Yes," I said but with less confusion.

I will frame it but not as a badge of honor.

I will frame it as a reminder that a writer writes, not because she wants to be published (though honestly she does ... so VERY much) but because she must write.