MaMoMeMo
May is motherhood memoir month

writing

All Poetry
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The Job You Can Never Quit

Prompts

Fanny Howe never let children get in the way of writing. When I was at UCSD in the late 90s getting a Literature/Writing degree I had the honor of being mentored by the poet and novelist. I interviewed her once for a magazine and she described her writing process as a single mother, children climbing across her feet under the kitchen table as she wrote. The image has always haunted me; children are not an excuse not to write. The condition of motherhood demands that you learn to give birth to someone who won’t last, to love someone who will leave, to teach a person who will suffer anyway, to put a life before your own… To have a job that you can never quit. Fanny Howe, The Pinocchian Ideal. Have you ever felt like quitting? Write about that.

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Set an Extravagant Goal

writing

Sunday is a day I rest, relax, rejoice. Then plan my week. What do you want to do in May? In WA our stay at home order has been extended. Perfect. For writers. I’m thinking of all the writing I can continue, all the things I appreciate about home. And I’m rethinking some of my goals. They seem extravagant. But I feel made for that. Set an extravagant goal, one you’d be stoked to reach. Then reach for it. It could be writing in a journal each day, or writing a letter you’ve been meaning to write, or a number of words each day, or just writing something each day. You know what would make you feel stoked. Decide and Do it. Unlike NanoWriMo who sets the goal for you, you get to decide what works best for you. Maybe it is 15 minutes a day. Or 10. Or 30.…

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MaMoMeMo 2020 is Almost Here

writing

So what are we doing for Motherhood Memoir Month during the coronavirus sequester? Writing of course. Not a mother? No worries. Everyone has a motherhood story to tell, because obviously… where did you come from? Was your mother missing in some or many ways? Absence is a strong theme in many motherhood tales. But wait- I’m not writing memoir at the moment. Perfect- me either. I spent so much time writing about my mother and our manic relationship over the past year-and-a-half since she died that I have put that away. So what am I doing? I’m writing a novel. And the mother-daughter theme, or conundrum, drive a lot of the story. So the prompts this time will be for fiction as well as memoir and journal writing- because if you have a mother, you need a journal- a place to download all those thoughts- the good, the bad, the…

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The Art of the Wasted Day

writing

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hample is “a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude,” and it’s getting many of my allotted reading minutes at the moment. It’s rather perfect for these times of armchair travel and virus inspired daydreaming. Why I like it: I tend to feel bad about not accomplishing much on a given day, but now that I know it’s an art form, I’m all in. I can feel good again. Carry on. A favorite writing inspiration: The author doesn’t believe in the narrative arc, “that fiction of fictions.” I find this more than a bit freeing, along with the idea that the final destination of a novel or story is “the creation of form offering the illusion of inevitability, the denial of chaos.” The author wanders and muses about travel, writing, her lost love, and those musers who have…

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get back on the horse- Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash

Back to the Bones

Memoir

the skeleton of the story- Photo by Danielle MacInnes After a mid-month slump (something I’ve come to expect might happen now, and maybe because of that it just does…), I’m back in the saddle with writing a memoir in a month, at least the bones of the story. I return to the bones, that inner framework; every story has a skeleton it hangs upon. The backbone of this memoir is a series of three trips made in one month to see my dying mother. All flashbacks and side stories hang from this time frame, the central story. But how to stick with just the bones and not get carried off with the flesh at this point- this is the challenging question. I’ve pondered the pantser vs. plotter assessment and know that I’m not as much a plotter as a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer. But I also know that every story, including memoir, has…

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In Over My Head

Memoir

Photo by William Daigneault Ask yourself every once in a while: Am I in over my head? Am I posing questions in my work to which there can never be satisfying, final answers? Am I trying to tackle a project here that is well beyond my capacity as a writer? Am I just a little afraid of the direction that all of this is going? If the answer to each of these questions is yes, then you are heading in the right direction. Steady on. These questions and quote from the The Mindful Writer by Dinty Moore speak directly to where I’m at on Day 8 of Memoir Month.

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Running from Writing

Fitness

Why I run to and from Writing ( photo by nathalie d. mottet) Writing makes me run. Sometimes I sit down to write, get a few sentences in, and want to jump up. Suddenly something seems more important- I’ll be able to work better with more coffee, or water, or a snack, my mind says. This is not my higher calling mind. This is my primitive feed-me-now toddler mind, the one that does not want to work hard. The one who loves pleasure and avoids pain. There is something both painful and pleasurable about writing. But most of the pleasure comes after the work of writing, so I discipline myself to stay on the ball (I sit at my desk on a balance ball) and keep writing for as long as I can. The pleasure, if it comes, is usually later, after I’ve written, maybe when I’m reading over what…

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Permission to Struggle

Memoir

It’s okay to struggle. painting by L.Lyn Greenstone Give yourself permission to struggle, Char, the Pilates instructor says. She also says things like, it’s okay to wobble. I never see her wobble, and none of the HIIT Pilates moves we do seem a struggle for her strong body, but I trust she knows what she’s talking about. As I take in her words, something settles within, allowing me to focus and be okay with weakness. So I take this bit of wisdom home, mull it over as I write this memoir. I’m struggling with organization, structure, and cohesiveness–all things I shouldn’t worry about right now. But I want to name all 31 chapters, know more about where I’m going, what the stops along the way will look like, and how I’m going to get there. It turns out writing isn’t like that for me. It is always a surprise journey.…

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Write a Memoir in May

Memoir

I’m writing a memoir during the 31 days of May- since May is (Motherhood) Memoir Month–I deemed it that–now I have to do it. On Day 1 I decide my memoir will have 31 chapters, a chapter a day. The writing will be lean, maybe just the skeleton of the story. It sounds do-able, yet ambitious. Both impossible and possible. Impossible goals scare me. I hear my mind saying, No, no, no, don’t try that- you’ll fail, And then you’ll feel like a failure. Stay in the cave (as Brooke Castillo, The Life Coach School says; I recently spent a year being coached…). This is the primitive part of my brain talking. But I want to live from my pre-fontal cortex, lean into a higher calling. So here is my new thinking on this: If I know I will most likely fail, why not do it anyway? Trying and failing…

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Untangling the Mess

Memoir

First drafts are messy. We’ve all heard that, but I always think no draft can be as messy as mine. Given enough time, I will restart and restate parts of the story, losing track of what I already wrote. I’ll rethink it until the story swirls around and leaves my head spinning. Finally I have to print it and cross out areas, bracket and draw arrows to new places, cut and paste, with scissors and tape, old school. Actually, I start with my journal, so lots of scratching there too. I wonder how it will ever come together. But if I stay with it, like the bucking horses my mother used to put me on, it finally calms down and becomes something cohesive and wonderful- a great ride, a story readers can inhabit. I live for that. Believe in it. Believing keeps me going. Writing is an act of faith.…

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