Since I returned in January from seeing my mom in the rest home, my OCD has acted up. This has been both good and bad. Luckily, I don’t have it severely. It expresses itself in redundant thoughts and fixations that get truly annoying. I had a good dose of seeing my parents on the decline and so most of my obsessive thoughts are geared towards mortality and death. Not uplifting!
It’s not all bad. Six months ago I started work on my first creative writing project. It’s a memoir essay entitled, “Three September Fires.” I’ve always been an extremely sensitive person but I’ve never had a good outlet for all my sensitivity’s angst. For example, I always thought it would help me express feelings if I could sing. If I could sing like Whitney Houston or Celine Dion, I'd sing all the good and bad feelings out of me with terrific, ear-splitting high notes and facial contortions. I took voice lessons a couple of times and I suck. I have a talking singing voice; the kind where I sing from my throat instead of my diaphragm. Musical instruments would be good so it’s too bad I have no rhythm. Jogging worked well for awhile until tendinitis found its way into my right hamstring. I’ve never considered myself a writer. Sadly, I don’t think my colleagues considered me much of one either when I started my first job as a technical writer after graduating college in English. It got better. By the time I stopped writing professionally a few years ago, I could write good boring stuff like telephone switch user manuals. My creative writing was non-existent.
Suddenly, in the last few months, there has been “Three September Fires.” My only training has been Judith Barrington’s, Writing the Memoir and reading oodles of actual memoirs. I don't have time to do any classes at this point. I love the genre because it is beautiful prose writing mixed with reality. I feel experiences and stories inside me and they are sort of like music and when I write, I can say it just how it feels. If it doesn’t sound right the next time I read it, I can change the words around until it says exactly what I mean. The only problem is the OCD. I can’t seem to think of anything else except my essay and I don’t have a lot of time to work on it. Therefore, I am writing sentences, changing words, and thinking of my next move all day long without a break. I'd rather go shopping for words in Annie Dillard instead of real grocery shopping. Sometimes I can't sleep thinking of my essay so I work on it instead of resting. Then I feel tired in the day. I guess it is a nice escape and I'd rather think of the essay than all the dying and heaven thoughts but I wish I could settle down so I could live in the real world a little easier.
Anyway, I’m hoping to get my essay done in a few months so I can have a few writer friends read it and help me fix problems. Then, I may try to submit it so I can join the San Diego Ink’s writing group. (You have to try out.) Maybe someday I’ll be gutsy enough to submit this little nugget to a publication. I’m a little nervous. Sometimes when I am writing I feel all in love with myself and just know I’m going to win a Pulitzer Prize. In the next moment, I’ll read someone else’s memoir and decide mine is dog crap. I’m sure my writing is somewhere in the between. I may never win a Pulitzer Prize but hopefully I don’t come across as the veritable fraud that I think I am. Does it all really matter? Not so much.
3 comments:
You are a very talented writer. I am sure that someday I will see your works at the front of a Barnes and Noble store right when you walk in.
I love your writing. It speaks to my soul.
When someone says "writer" I always think of you. I don't know if it's always been that way...but it just feels right. I think you have a gift of using words to express so many things that we all feel at times. Keep writing and keep us all updated on your progress. I come to your blog frequently to see what else you have written. From my own blog...I don't write, just post pictures with small blurps. My talent isn't in writing, BUT it is in reading.
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