A few very bright sunny days had arrived in the middle of ‘The Lockdown Winter’ as I refer to it. I’ve had trouble focusing on writing since December 26th. I can’t imagine what is worth writing about, as I am only conscious of the things I am not allowed to do at the moment. The way my brain works this thought took me scurrying down the familiar rabbit hole of “why am I so stuck?”
In that warren I find myself immersed in yet another course with <Creative Non Fiction.org> which means my memoire is being written, albeit slowly. Then I start wondering where the need to mark our passages in time originates in the first place. Memoirists, such as myself, seem constantly drawn to recording things (both big and small) that happen in most lives: starting school, finishing school, first jobs, followed by first ‘real’ job, possibly a career of some sort, then marriage, children, parenting and grandchildren (if the gods are willing). The list goes on and on.
This pandemic reminds me that while we people are busy living, major world events continue to colour our lives and effect the way we mark things. For me, the following spring to mind: President Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam war, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, 9/11, this pandemic, and the recent debacle in the USA (now being referred to as the least democratic country in North America). Add to this recent volcanic explosions, tsunamis, wild fires in Fort McMurray, drought in California, flooding (everywhere it seems), and we deny climate change at our peril. I am intrigued how these truths weave themselves into the tapestry of our lives whether we are aware of it or not.
This is also true with our writing. The worlds we show in our creations, the people we imagine, the events we conjure up, in various fiction genres as well as memoire, are all composed of the truths we have lived internally as well as the ones we are subject to externally by being present on earth. It has always been this way and as history shows us it will always be this way.
Meanwhile we inhabit the MIDDLE: remembering, recalling, reflecting and reporting. All done in an effort make sense of what each of us has lived. No matter the genre, writers seem fascinated with the following questions:
What happened?
Where it happened?
When it happened?
How it happened?
Who it happened to?
WHY any of it happened at all is buried in the words on the page. This is the question that most writers never completely answer because if they did their compulsion to write might vanish.
Writing for me is the most solitary thing that I do. It fills my brain constantly, sometimes consciously but much of the time subconsciously. It reminds me of a stew bubbling away on a back burner that I am constantly sampling, adding in more ingredients, enhancing the flavours with exotic spices while despairing that it will ever be worth eating.
Until one day it’s done! Then time passes and even though I have vowed never to eat stew again, I put a pot on the stove and the whole process repeats.
Such is the grip that writing has on me as I struggle to make sense of life itself.
