Writing About Our Lives
This post is not about writing your memoir. So, if you find this personal vent while looking for advice, there's no need to be disappointed. Just go take a class.
Today, I'm talking about my recent fascination with time. I've been reading a lot lately: research for stories and pitches, current events, looking for Panties stories, etc - and I'm taking particular note to how writers are referencing time. I think this phase started when I was reading Sarah Macdonald's Holy Cow! She started a paragraph that summarized a whole summer, and I loved it. Whoa, lesson learned right there. In fact, I wish I had the book so I could quote it right now. It worked, and I wanted to do it. Just summarize my winter with something profound.
So, as I've been monitoring my growth and attributing it to this season in my life, I find that I continue to be amazed and humbled. At so many things. Stronger senses of patience, but still overreacting instantaneously. Rediscovering that I should never use the word "never" (Hey, I eat olives and red peppers now! ) Living one week that feels like two or three, and then turning around in wonder at how the past 48 hours disappeared in thought. Watching my body change throughout the course of six months, and remembering that it can change again in the next six, too.
I've reminisced about a letter I wrote on Christmas Eve when I was dreadfully sad over nothing, and then proceeded to dig up 2-3 unsent letters to the same person since telling him about the improved state of my mood. So much can happen in just a wink.
Sometimes it's trivial. How often do we, or should we, rethink our lives and the paths that we are walking down? There is a lot of food for thought in Dominick Dunne's article, "A Death in the Family," in the March issue of Vanity Fair.
In this diary piece, Dunne reflects on the tumultuous relationship with his brother. He tells of their successes and about some of his own weaknesses. When I read a paragraph that talks about divorce or death, I am awestruck at how an event that is probably packed with tremendous emotion, and could take years to recover from, can be reduced to a few sentences.
"After his funeral, I began to rethink my life. In 1980, I left Hollywood for good and moved to New York. Even when John and I weren't speaking, we would meet up at family funerals. Our sisters, Harriet and Virginia, both died of breast cancer. Our nephew Richard Dunne Jr. was killed when his plane crashed in the airport at Hyannis, Massachusetts. His two daughters survived. The major experience in my life has been the murder of my daughter. I never truly understood the meaning of the word "devastation" until I lost her."Time, is mind boggling. And who are the people in our lives that are teaching us we have to do something with it? I didn't take that class. Or didn't listen to that advice. But I want to be conscious of the history that I am building, the people I choose to walk with. Even if I'm only starting now. And of course, someday, I want to have a regular restaurant that I dine at with my sweet. Has anyone read this article? It'd be fun to discuss what you got from it. I noticed it was snowing, poured a glass of Diet Coke, and left the bottle away from the table so I'd have to make an extra effort to go get a second glass. Rethink everything. Know how you feel. PS. All that effort and emotion you're putting into your book? In twenty years it'll just be a sentence. It might even end up in the same sentence as your next two works of art.
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