Domestic haiku #18

please pretty please

please pretty Mum pretty please

can I watch TV

September 30th, 2009 - Posted in haiku | | 0 Comments

Why I write

picture by James Nash

Somehow weeks have gone by and I haven’t turned to this blog for self-expression.  I’ve certainly had a few brainwaves, and even started a few separate posts over that time.  I began one about the clutter that’s creeping back into our house, one about things my kids say (Miss Almost Four had a particularly juicy offering at the dinner table last night) and I even have a few first lines about old friendships, party planning, protest rallies and juggling night classes with my husband’s travel commitments, but nothing begun has come to anything I feel compelled to publish.  I miss that feeling of having extracted something from deep within myself and made it public.  I feel guilty for neglecting this blog for so long.  What’s going on with me?

Could be that fiction writing is sucking my creative energy dry.  Instead of spending my reflection time thinking about a contribution to HERevolution, something intrinsically rewarding, I’m figuring out the perfect short story premise and trying to weave a genre fiction story out of artificial components - for the extrinsic reward that I might obtain a good grade.  In gratitude: I’m learning plenty and I am stretching my comfort zone, but good grades alone are not an especially good motive for writing fiction.  Really mediocre fiction at that.

Which leads me to ask myself, why do I write?  It began as a means to document my life.  And, I suppose there is an element of self-psychoanalysis in doing that.  Looking back, I realise that I have been journalling, in the form of letter-writing or keeping a diary, since I was a girl.  I have unburdened my psyche on page after page of notebook after notebook; one in particular I intend to burn before my children get to read it!  As much fun as it is to make up a story, I’m yet to discover how convincingly I can do it.

So what is it I’m actually setting out to learn here?  Am I learning to write fictional stories?  Am I interesting (and interested) enough to do that?  Is this how I become a better writer?  Is being a better writer making me a better person?  Why make up stories when there are so many truly extra-ordinary things happening to real people every day?  Aren’t real stories more powerful?

What I really like to write, and have always written, is my own personal narrative.  Memoir is still what intrigues me most.  Know thyself, as Plato said.  Still doesn’t mean I have to inflict my inner turmoil on the rest of the world by publishing this entry.  And yet that’s what I’m about to do.  If I don’t, another however many weeks will pass with no progress here.

September 16th, 2009 - Posted in personal growth, gratitude, nostalgia, beliefs | | 6 Comments