the well of providence is deep ... it is the buckets we bring to it that are small ... Mary Webb



Thursday, May 6, 2010

i've been writing

I think I may have found my genre.

And perhaps my voice.

Each week as I attend this new memoir writing class, as I listen to the stories of others, and as I write my own stories, I feel more and more settled, content, directed, home.

I think that it is entirely possible that the reason I have been struggling so much with writing fiction is because what I really want to write about is me.

I find this revelation a little funny and slightly egotistial.

Am I that self-absorbed?  Is my ego so large that I think others might be interested in reading about my life?  Do these questions come as truth?  Or do they come from the "one" who has haunted my every pursuit with taunts of "Who Do You Think You Are?".

Well, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and the "proof" is that since I've started this class I have rewritten two stories and written first drafts of two new stories.  This is a watershed experience compared to the laborious albeit dedicated progress I was making before discovering this genre.

And my writing group's response to my first story was that it was "poetic".

I like this. 

I like the writing.  I like the encouragement.  I appreciate my teacher, Tonya McGue, who has given her time to nurture small voices like mine.

Selah ...