Labor Day, Julia Child and Writers

    After the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve legislation that made Labor Day a national holiday, and President Grover Cleveland  signed it into law in  1894, its purpose  was to celebrate the economic and social contributions of workers.  Today,  Labor Day is mostly associated with the end

of summer and retail sales.

    Typically, Labor Day weekend marks the last  three day, care free weekend before the start of school when families go on picnics, to the beach, barbecue in the back yard, and kids play hard. In the late 1970's when I worked for the Los Angeles Times selling retail advertising, I remember  there was always a big push to sell a Display ad to the department store, grocery market or mom and pop business to promote their special Labor Day Sale. 

    As I was preparing to write my blog for today, knowing it coincided with Labor Day, I gave thought to how writers often look upon their work as a Labor of Love - the hard work, perseverance, and dedication it takes to  write, and sometimes rewrite  a story, poem, memoir, composition, compilation of recipes ,  or essay; the writer is  vulnerable to the ridicule and criticism of others, all while putting  forth effort day after day to hone a craft  that will not only please her or himself, but also be pleasing to others in the way of description, plot, dialogue. Sometimes the writers goal is to educate, to help  broaden another's point of  view; Sometimes the writers purpose  is to make us  laugh, or move one  to tears, or share their own personal story. 

    When most folks think of Julia Child they think of the master of French cooking, a PBS superstar who taught cooking lessons to millions via television,  not Julia Child, the accomplished author. Yet, that is exactly  what she was, a storyteller who had a passion for French cooking,  the author  of  one  of the best selling cook books of all time, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, along with  other popular  titles including, Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume Two, From Julia Child's Kitchen, Julia's Kitchen Wisdom, Cooking with Master Chefs and her memoir, My Life in France. 

                                                               

   By all accounts, Julia Child, born Julia  Carolyn McWilliams  in the  idyllic turn of the century  town of Pasadena, California,   August 15, 1912  was a child with  high energy and determination. Traits that would serve her well throughout her life, especially while writing her first book. It took Child  nine years of researching, writing, recipe testing and editing before  Mastering the Art of French Cooking  was finally published in 1961 ,  and not by Houghton Mifflin ,  who sent her a letter rejecting her book  because it was too long, but  by publisher Alfred A. Knopf.  

    And Knopf published only after much back and forth. According to biographer Bob Spritz, author of  Dearie The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, " Getting Knopf to publish it, however, would take considerable effort."

    Today, we can only surmise how lucky Knopf must have felt after their wise decision to publish Child's book led to a best seller.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One, and Mastering Volume Two  - taken together, are considered one of the most influential works in American cookbook history. 

    This Labor Day I salute Julia Child,  and all writers who work so tirelessly to pursue  their goal of writing their passion  - a  novel, memoir,  or book of poems - and yes, even a cookbook !


*** For more information about Julia Child visit  http://www.juliachildfoundation.org/

     

    

   

   

    

    

 

LIfe of Pi -- a Good Movie , a Great book !

  Several weeks ago  friends, Patty and Phyllis  recommended I rent the DVD  movie Life of Pi, both said it was very good and  worth watching. Phyllis said she also read the award winning  book by Yann Martel  and liked it very much.  So, heeding their advice,  I rented Life of Pi .  My husband and I watched the movie last night, and like my friends,  thought it very good.

   Gary and I were immediately  carried along with the narrative of the story - a cargo ship sinking, a young boy who looses his family and is lost at sea with the likes of a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, and a Royal Bengal tiger ! Yikes ! It  seemed almost unbelievable, yet,  I believed this was as it happened - especially when Pi said something about 'Pi's Ark'.  I was totally captivated through it all - it never dawned on me that the author was presenting an allegory, in the Biblical sense. Not until the end of Pi's second account of  his story. It was only then I had my 'ah ha' moment. The animals weren't animals at all, but real life human beings that had to deal with their circumstance in life - challenging, and sorrowful  as it was.

   In 1974 I was travelling in Europe , and had been away from home for some time, I'd often get letters from Phyllis  telling me she thought I was probably spending too much time in churches, an not experiencing real life, and  encouraged me to get out and live, live, live !

    Sadly,  my maternal grandmother died two weeks after I arrived in London. To hear my mother telling me this horrific news over the transcontinental phone  was devastating, and needless to say put a damper on my trip. To know my mother's sorrow,  and not being there to give her comfort was heart wrenching.    I was in complete shock as grandma had not been ill, she was only 57 years old. Without luck I tried to get a flight home in time for Grandma's funeral.  Very kindly,  family and friends said Grandma wouldn't want me to come home, but  continue my stay in Europe as it was something I had dreamed of for so long. I was less certain, and just felt sad.

  When I finally wrote  Phyllis,   it was a make believe letter that had the sound of truth, so much so, that she called my mother telling her she was sure I was in some harm. I told  about  my harrowing experience of being  kidnapped by bandits from Albania , dumped into a large wicker basket and thrown into the back of a Citroen bus. I  wrote I was then driven many  miles,  making several turns - first a  left, then right, then left again. I could hear voices talking , but couldn't understand what they were saying as  their language was foreign to me.  My letter went on and on telling Phyl about two big black things standing by my side. When Phyllis read that line to my mother, mom knew then  all was okay, as it was a line I shamefully  clipped  from James Whitcomb Reilly's poem Little Orphant Annie.

  By no means am I attempting to  compare  or associate my letter   to Martel's wonderful , well written, well received  Life of Pi. Not in the slightest. Only  to make the point writers do take real life situation that are hurtful and sad, hard to understand or explain,  and create imagined characters and situations  to help them more easily share their anxiety, worries, fears  - as well as their faith and hope that all will be well.

  I wasn't really kidnapped , but for those few days after learning of my grandmother's death, and not being able to get home, it seemed I was kidnapped by distance and time, and so my story/letter developed the way it did. 

   Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the library and checked out Life of Pi.  I can see why more than seven million copies have been sold - Yann Martel knows how to write a story !

More Words (part 2)

     From the time I first learned to spell, I liked playing word games i.e. Hangman, Boggle, Scribbage, and of course, my very favorite, Scrabble.  I not only like word games, I like words in general - the sound of the word when I speak it out loud, spelling the word, and learning the meaning and origin of the word.

                                                                                                                                                   
      Peter Ackroyd (Vision From An Addiction to Fiction, The Times [London]. March 30, 2002) explains, " There is a disease which consists in loving words too much. Logophilia first manifests itself in childhood and is alas, incurable. " You might say I have logophilia - an infliction that many of us suffer from - a love of words.

     Words are everything to a writer. Especially choosing the best descriptive word when describing person, place or thing. In Wednesday's post for WNI , I highlighted a book titled The Correct Word  by Josephine Turck Baker,  a complete alphabetic list of everyday errors in English,  in which Baker denotes misused words, then gives examples of the word used properly. In today's post, I have another interesting book about words  to tell you about, another out of print  book I discovered at a favorite used book store. This one is titled, The New York Times Everyday Reader's Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, Mispronounced Words , copyright 1972 and edited by Laurence Durang. 

                                                                     

     On back dust jacket the description reads, "Includes words we know until somebody asks us what they mean; words we understand when we read them but not when we hear them (or vice versa); words we are inexplicably unsure of using in conversation; words we can pronounce but not spell (or vice versa)."  And I would add, words for writers.

     While I know equinox n. the time when night and day are of equal length everywhere, occurring about March 21 and September 22, I did not know equipage n. 1. a horse drawn carriage. 2. all of the equipment or furnishings, as of a home or military unit, considered together.   Or rub-ri-cate v. to mark , color, or illuminate (a book, etc) with red.

      As writers we are always on the look out for the right word to use, the best words for the story we're telling. Learning new words and growing our vocabulary is something all writers should  continually   strive for. Reading , and  reference  books like the one I mentioned today are good tools to help us on that journey. And it's also helpful when playing Scrabble !



     

     
      

MAEVE BINCHY

When I went to Maeve Binchy's web site this afternoon , I was sorry to read the following :


It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of Maeve Binchy on 30 July, in Dublin. Her husband Gordon Snell and her sister Joan Ryan were at her side. 


Maeve was a weaver of magic whose stories touched  the hearts of millions. She died far too soon; she had many more stories to tell.


She will be sorely missed by her family, her friends, her publishers and her readers throughout the world.

After reading  Maeve Binchy's debut novel, Light a Penny Candle  in 1982, I quickly added her to my list  of  favorite authors. I admire her gift for story telling, and consider her  best-selling Circle of Friends,  about the intimate story of friendship one of her  best. Perhaps it's because of my Irish ancestry, I like her novels so well, especially the fact they  are set in Ireland, and often deal with the emotional struggle between folks there. How they rise and fall, and rise again.

                                                               
Cindy Shanks writing for Helium describes her novels as a gentle but addictive read. "Her books remind you of an intimate conversation with a close friend."

Prior to her success as a writer of novels and short stories, Binchy was a  teacher, then a journalist for the Irish Times. It's seems unbelievable her first book was rejected five times. Especially since  today her books  outsell those of other top Irish writers, such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Edna O'Brien and Roddy Doyle.

Binchy received many literary awards , including the Irish PEN /AT Cross Award, joining such luminaries as John B. Keane, Brian Friel, Edna O'Brien and William Trevor. In 2010 , she received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Book Awards.

With her characteristic Irish charm Binchy  encourages  writers  in her  book, The Maeve Binchy Writer's Club -  Advice, inspiration and information on writing and getting published.   "The most important thing to realize is that everyone is capable of telling a story. If you scribble story ideas on the back of receipts...if you file away bits of overheard conversation from the coffee shop...if you've already chosen the perfect pen name..well, then the journey has begun."

Maeve leaves   us with  an insight into her character, and what she believed important when  she wrote on her homepage:

The happiest moments of my life are connected with family and friends. There is a great comfort about being with people who knew you way back when. There is a mental shorthand, an easy -going feeling that life doesn't have to be explained or defined; we are all in more or less the same boat. To have a community around you in a changing and unstable world is invaluable and nothing can beat the feeling that there will always be people out for our good.


Maeve Binchy (1940 - 2012)   RIP +

Grandma Cooney & The Dictionary

 The other day I was thinking about my Grandmother Cooney and the dictionary. I was about 14 years old when Grandma and I were visiting another family relative, and remember Grandma, who loved to read, saying  to me, “Whenever staying at someone’s home, and I can’t find a book to my liking, I pick up the dictionary to read through it.”   

I can vividly picture Grandma taking the dictionary from my uncle’s shelf, walking to the small sofa in the family room and randomly opening to the letter R and reading aloud the meaning of   ren-i-tent, Rennes, re-port-age.  Grandma and the dictionary had a lot in common – both were a well spring of information. Grandma was a lover of words, and keen on learning something new every day, a trait she passed on to her grandchildren.

I must confess, while I wasn’t totally engrossed with reading the dictionary then, today I have a great respect and cherish everything the dictionary offers, and like my grandmother, enjoy reading through the pages to learn new words.  In fact, I own several editions, including The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, The Random House Dictionary, The Readers Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, The Dictionary of Difficult Words, Dictionary of Thought, and Biblical Dictionary.  Most recently, I have added a dictionary app to my iPad, and particularly enjoy reading ‘Word of the Day’.  Today, agnate (ag-neyt): a relative whose connection is traceable exclusively through males.  A word I was previously unfamiliar with. My grandmother would be proud – I learned something new today.

                                                          

The first recorded dictionary dates back to Sumerian times, and the Akkadain Empire (2300 B.C.)  where cuneiform tablets with bilingual wordlists were discovered in Ebla (modern Syria). There are early Arabic dictionaries, and European dictionaries, but it wasn’t until Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1775) that a faithful, dependable dictionary was produced.  Previous dictionaries were arranged by topic, which meant all plants, all birds, etc.  would be grouped together. Johnson’s dictionary was arranged alphabetically, and is considered the first modern dictionary. It remained the standard for over 150 years.

In 1806, an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer and English spelling reformer named Noah Webster (1758 – 1843) published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. It took him 27 years to complete. According to Wikipedia, Webster believed that English spelling rules  were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced  American English spellings ,replacing ‘colour’ with ‘color’, ‘wagon’ for ‘waggon’ and  ‘center’ instead of ‘centre’.  Webster sometimes called the ‘Father of American scholarship and education was outspoken in favor of the new constitution. His name, today remains synonymous with ‘dictionary’ – by its own definition  a reference book containing an explanatory alphabetical list of words, as  A book listing  a comprehensive  or restricted  selection of the words of language, identifying  usually the phonetic, grammatical , and semantic value of each word  with etymology, citations , and usage guidance, and other formations.

According to some scholar’s,  writers and poets owe a lot to Webster’s Dictionary citing many have used the dictionary, often drawing upon his (Webster’s) lexicography in order to express their word play.

As a writer, I would be lost without the dictionary, not only in searching a definition of a particular word, but for expanding my vocabulary, and description for a certain character, place or thing.   I encourage all writers to keep a dictionary nearby,  and for all readers to   follow my grandmother's  example, if no other book to your liking,  pick up the dictionary  for the fun of  reading  through it!

 ** For more about Noah Webster visit   http://www.lexrex.com/bios/nwebster.htm

Part 2 - New Year's Resolutions, Writing ( & Basketball)

January, 4  2012.  Day  four of the new year, and success in keeping my New Year’s resolution on track by writing every day and  following the 3D’s : Determination, Discipline and Desire  ( Okay, so it’s only four days,  and 361  days to go !)

I don’t know about you, but every  January first  I make  a list of New Year’s resolutions to achieve some goal, or eliminate some bad habit from my life. Each year the same thing happens—about three months into the year I fall off the wagon  (so to speak) and lose sight of whatever my resolution may have been.  But not this year. No, this year I’m committed to  my craft— the practice of writing, and pledge to write something every day—an essay, poem, a letter,  or perhaps  just a few sentences in my journal.

 

* William Faulkner at  his typewriter

                                                    
I look to acclaimed authors to seek their wisdom about  writing.  For many of them ,   to become a writer,  hopefully a better writer is by the practice of writing:

· You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.  Doris Lessing

· The writer’s duty is to keep on writing. William Styron

· You must write every single day of your life. Ray Bradbury

· Writing every day and disciplined editing.  Stephen King

· I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.  Henry David Thoreau

Recognizing the importance of   practice draws my thoughts  back to the days of my youth when not only writing was important to me, but also playing basketball.  It was my passion. I loved playing basketball  at St. Rose of Lima, and strived hard to make first string.  While I  was shorter than other girls on the team— our  coach, Liz Miller (affectionately)  took to calling me ‘Little One’ - I was fast and had quick reflexes. Liz was an excellent coach, and  wonderful role model  who early on believed in the 3 D’s  and passed that on to her young wards. 

It was playing basketball  for Liz  that I first learned about determination, discipline and desire— that through practice I could improve my game. Everyday after school we practiced lay-ups, making free throws, pivoting  to the right, pivoting to the left,  the forward pass, and dribbling the ball down the court—the same drills over and over until we became the  best we could be.   I might add, during  those days we weren’t wearing high tech basketball shoes, but  dollar ninety-nine PF Flyers  and  bad uniforms.

I’m 61 years old, and no longer play basketball (although if I could, I would ) .  My passion now is to become a better writer.  To write stories and poems to lift another’s heart and tell of happy days.   I know I must  practice , like Liz called me to do  on the basketball court  , only now with words of description, character and plot.   And writing every day.

What Books Influenced You ?

In  his book, Unless It Moves the Human Heart  The Craft and Art of Writing, Roger Rosenblatt tells about asking his students , “Where was it for you ?  Every one of you has read something at an early age that made you want to become a writer. Who was it, and why ?”

The response was wide and varied, some recalled  a first book at the library, another said no specific book , but she found stories extremely one sided, and only told stories of the heroes. That after reading books she found the anti-heroes more interesting , and wanted to know more about them, and because of that was inspired to become a writer.

 Rosenblatt posed a good question, I thought,  and like his students ,  pondered  how I might  answer it.  Who was it for me? Which author, which book made me want to become a writer. The  Bobbsey Twins, The Happy Hollisters, Blaze, and Toby Tyler all came to mind.  As did The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women, and Nancy Drew. I recall  that  during my grade school years  some of those  early Whitman books had been birthday  gifts  from childhood friends, and how happy I was to get them.

 I don’t ever remember when books weren't  an important  part of my life.  Authors like Victoria Holt, Taylor Caldwell, Michener, and Rumer Godden filled my imagination with their stories of other places, and people. I think about the  great poets—Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley, Kipling and Longfellow , and how my mother read  me  their poems from the time I was a very little girl, and the positive  impact they still have on me. 

While  contemplating  Rosenblatt’s question, I was about to conclude  it was  impossible to name just one,  there are so many books that have held me captive  late at night,   with just a small reading light to  guide my way across the page.  However, there is one book  , “Pentimento”, and in particular the chapter titled, Julia   that still catches my breath, and causes me to say, I want to write like that.  On the opening page, Lillian Hellman immediately draws me in when she writes,

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent.  When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large  boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter “repented”, changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now. 


While set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, and its evilness,  Julia is really the story of friendship, and what  one  is willing to do  for the other  in time of need. Without ever saying it, Hellman is writing about loyalty and trust. Her memoir ,  perfectly woven,  easily moves along between narration and dialogue, so much so that  when  Julia was made into an award winning movie in 1977, the scriptwriters job was made easy as very little was changed from Hellman's original  written word. 

When first reading Pentimento , I was only in my twenties, and  even then Hellman’s  reflection about  how ‘the paint has aged’  caused  me to think   about my  own age, and the people and events in my life,  and how I wanted to write about them.  But more so  now, when with each day, I move closer to 61, and recall with affection  those times as I remember them to be, but also,  perhaps,   with a slightly new, and different perspective; sometimes seeing them through  crystal clear eyes, other times as  through  misty sky. 

                                                      

Keeping  in mind Roger Rosenblatt's theory,  every one (aspiring writers)  has read  something at an early age that makes them want to become a writer, you might find it helpful, and fun in answering his  question, too , “ Where was it for you ? Who was it , and why?”

More, Reading Like a Writer

Francine Prose says she, like most writers, maybe all, learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.  This should be very encouraging for all of us who want to become better writers - we must read  books - especially literature,  and write, write, write. 

Referring again  to Prose’s  book, Reading Like a Writer A Guide For People Who Love Books And For Those Who Want to Write Them (Monday’s blog,  The Right Word),  she writes,  “In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I read and re-read the authors I most loved. I read for pleasure, first, but also more analytically, conscious of style , of diction, and of how sentences were formed and information was being conveyed, how the writer was structuring  a plot, creating characters, employing detail and dialogue. And as I wrote, I discovered  that writing, like reading was done one word at a time, one punctuation mark at a time. It required what  a friend calls “putting every word on trial for its life”: cutting a phrase, removing a comma, and putting the comma back in.”

Now, there’s the challenge,  isn’t it?   To put  every word on trial for its life. Then,  like a high court   judge making a ruling , the writer  alone must  decide which phrase  or punctuation mark is sent to the scrap pile, and which one gets a reprieve.     And while pondering the judgment to be made , should it go,  or should it stay — must ask the questions Prose  presents, “ Is this the best word I can find ? Is my  meaning clear? Can a word or phrase be cut  from this without sacrificing  anything essential ?  - perhaps the most important question is : Is this grammatical?” 

While Prose  recommends  writers have  a grammar manual, and  favors  Strunk and White’s  The Elements  of Style , she also points out, “ One essential and telling difference  between learning from a style manual and learning from literature is that  any how -to- book will, almost by definition, tell you how not to write.  In that way, manuals of style are a little like writing workshops, and have the same disadvantage—a pedagogy that involves warnings about what might be broken and directions on how to fix it—as opposed to learning from literature, which teaches by positive model.”

The example Prose directs us to is Virginia Woolf :  “We can thank our lucky stars that no one told Virginia Woolf that a sentence as long as the one with which she begins “On Being Ill” might turn out to be hopelessly clumsy or unclear. The marvel , of course, is not how long the sentence is-  181 words!- but how perfectly comprehensible, graceful, witty, intelligent,   and pleasurable we find it to  read.  It’s not the sentence’s gigantism but rather its lucidity that makes it so worth studying and breaking down its component parts. “
                                     

                                                 
                                                              

I read  (and re-read) Woolf’s sentence for the first  time  today,   and can understand why  Prose  describes the reading of it as she does:  “Pausing  to breathe at each comma, we find ourselves amid a series of  dependent clauses that break over us like waves, clauses that increase in length, complexity, and intensity as the aspects of illness that we are invited to consider grow more elaborate and imaginative, whisking us from undiscovered countries to deserts to flowered lawns and down into the abyss from which we are lifted by the voice of the dentist whom we mistake for God welcoming us into heaven. Until at last it all comes together in a single word, this: when we think of this.”

For those of you who have never read Woolf’s introductory sentence to her twenty - five page essay "On Being Ill" —what Prose calls ‘one of the most complex and virtuosic sentences in all of literature’, I  include it now for you to  read, and  consider the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another, and how it captivates and holds our attention, drawing us further into the topic she writes of.

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient  and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above  our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-in-chair and confuse his “Rinse the mouth– rinse the mouth” with the greeting of the Deity stooping  from  the floor of  Heaven to welcome us– when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced  to think of it , it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.


** Note: For more information about Virginia Woolf, and her writing visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf

To purchase On Being Ill  http://www.amazon.com/Being-Ill-Virginia-Woolf/dp/1930464061

On Writing Memoir, and a Mule

Of all the different writing genres to choose from, I don’t know why I’ve chosen memoir.  No great talent do I have, or claim to fame for being inventor, designer, architect ,actor, composer or radio star.  Nor am I an award winning chef, renowned athlete or prosperous philanthropist . I’m just your average 60 year old woman who has enjoyed the times of my life, and want to write about them. I think the description I wrote for my  blog (http://2lanehighway.blogspot.com) sums up my reason for wanting to write memoir best, One woman’s reflections of past and present—people, places and things that contribute to the joy and sweetness; the sorrow and hurt of an everyday, ordinary life.

A few weeks ago my mother and I were travelling from my house  to hers,  and stopped  at The Sage Bakery in Union Town  for an afternoon Cappuccino and cinnamon roll treat.  In the corner of the store was a double sized shelf lined with books for sale.  To my delight I found one title  that  peeked my interest, and I quickly purchased it:  The Autobiographer’s Handbook , The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir,   edited by Jennifer Traig.

 In the introduction  David Eggers writes: The reasons for writing a memoir are many, but one reason in particular, because it trumps all others, I think, and it will, I hope,  give fuel to would-be memoirists  of any stripe: You should write your story because you will someday die, and without your story on paper, most of it will be forgotten.

Grim as it may sound, I must admit, that’s a good reason, too for writing memoir.  So our  own , personal story  won’t be forgotten after our demise.

I’ve written other blogs and essays about everybody having a story  to tell. It might be something sad or funny, unique, unusual, memorable or mundane; Extraordinary, and yes, even ordinary.  Whatever our story  is, it’s part of who we are, what we are and why we are.  Stories help us learn about life, and one another. Stories are meant to be shared.

 I don’t believe lack of desire  is the reason we don’t  write our story, I think it’s because we don’t  know how to get started . Perhaps we’re intimated by what we perceive to be such a lofty goal, or  maybe we procrastinate, and continually put off putting words to paper. Or maybe we’re afraid someone will mock our efforts.  I know, because I’ve been there—and sometimes still am.  Afraid the story I have to share , what I write won’t be good enough, won’t be interesting to someone else.

One way to overcome  such obstacles is to  join a writers group.  Another is to read what other storytellers write, and what published authors have to say.

Frank McCourt , quoted in The Autobiographer’s Handbook,  encourages  writers  to get started  with writing their memoir this way : Scribble. That’s what I tell all the writers I meet. Don’t sit down to write a book, just start to scribble. Get your material down on paper. Then something will emerge. It will demand to be told. Then you get going. It’s like a sculptor chipping away at a block of granite—something emerges.

You don’t just sit and write. You have to scribble. You have to sketch if you’re a painter. I think there’s great value in scribbling. I scribbled for years, and I would listen to my high school students tell me, you should  write a book, you should write a book.  I always had the itch to write; I didn’t have the itch to write a memoir until my students started telling me to.

I didn’t procrastinate. Once I started Angela’s Ashes, I finished in thirteen months. ‘Tis took a little longer.  Teacher Man took the longest. It was harder to write about teaching than about a miserable childhood.

Maxine Hong Kingston offers this: I always begin writing by jotting down notes about feelings and happenings which matter a lot to me. I am gathering clay. Then in about twenty drafts, shape and form become clear. An emotion , an image, a sound takes place in a scene. A scene is the basic unit of drama. Write a series of scenes, connect them with transitions—viola !  You have your book. For me , this process works writing both fiction and nonfiction.

For me ,  Elizabeth Gilbert’s reason  why we procrastinate strikes a cord; Because we judge our work too much – we write one sentence and think, “This is horrible”, and then we quit in frustration.  I think procrastination is not laziness, but disappointment.  We wish we wrote better, and our inability to translate our dreams to the page can be crushing.  But mules ( I like this analogy) - when they are plowing  fields—do not stop, turn their heads, and contemplate whether or not they’re doing a good job.  When you’re working on your first draft, you should no more look backwards at a sentence you’ve just written than a mule would wonder, “ Gee, am I doing a good enough job plowing this field?” Later when the first draft is finished , you can come back and mess around with your work, but not until you’ve got the field plowed completely—whether the job was done well or not. That model is the only way I’ve ever been able to  get my work done. And when the inevitable voices rise , as I’m writing, saying, “This isn’t good enough, “ I just answer back in my mule’s voice: “That’s  not my problem.  I was only hired to plow the field.”

So, dear reader, next time you get an  itching to tell your story, do some scribbling or  write a series of scenes,  just remember that mule !

*** Postscript: 826 National  is a network of youth tutoring, writng and publishing centers around the country. Once a month at 826 Valencia a panel of published authors gather before an audience of aspiring writers and for three hours answer questions about their work.  The  Autobiographer's Handbook referenced  in this blog is an outcome of those meetings.  For more information visit  http://www.826national.org/