Writing about My Life

On the At Goal and Maintaining daily check team thread, our leader, Maree, talked today about writing, particularly writing memoir. It got me thinking about the place of writing in my life and I am sharing here, some of my reflections. If anyone reading this also writes, I’d love to hear your ‘take’ on writing as a personal practice.

When I first had more discretionary time—after our son moved away from early childhood—I wrote quite a bit and went to many writing workshops and classes. I loved writing, what I learned from critiques, and hearing others’ stories.

In workshops the few people I met who tackled full length memoirs were usually writing about or for others—children, husbands, parents. I knew that wasn’t for me. But I’ve enjoyed writing personal essays about particular parts of my life and found it both therapeutic and satisfying. And I’ve found an audience at times in sharing stories with family, friends and even had some small publication success,

I I think about writing like someone might think about using a camera. It helps me see and recapture some things that are important or have been important to me. An author I cannot recall once said writing is like ‘living twice.’ I agree. I have learned to write about things I want or needed to ‘live twice,’ sometimes not knowing when I set out if my subject was important and discovering it was—at least to me personally. And sometimes tossing out what I wrote too!

In the end I’ve written a lot more than I wanted so send out for publication. But for me it is a wonderful practice that makes my life better when I am doing it.