When I was a girl I loved to read biographies and journals. The Outermost House by Henry Beston, Journal of Solitude by May Sarton, and The Starship and The Canoe by Kenneth Brower, were three of my favorites. The first two resonated with my identity as a New Englander and want-to-be writer. The last, as a unique structure to write about family, nature and science.
As I've written in earlier posts, I've kept journals most of my life, prefer to be outdoors - at one with nature, and as an agent and teacher have represented and taught science literature. I've just never dared to write about myself, my family & friends, my observations, my choices and my inner truth until now.
Since I entered college, at the age of 20, people have been asking me to write my life story. I thought that was a bit young then and that I had nothing to say. As a Student Senator in college, I was a part of the task force for all of the U Maine campus's to develop a Common Curriculum. At the end of the process, the philosopher Mortimer Adler was a keynote speaker at an intimate dinner held for us at The Portland Club. I was lucky to have some undivided attention with him that evening. One thing he said to me was that he believed that we didn't truly learn how to think until we were 50. He said it takes that long for the skills and experiences to come together to have anything useful to say. So, since I was 24 years old, I've been telling everyone that when I'm 50 I'd start writing.
And just prior to turning 50, I started practicing. Little vignettes, much like what I'm doing now, only trying to find the slice or slices of life's timeline to which I would set a frame and narrative. Only as I started to write, and my thoughts grew clearer about myself, I realized I had to be truthful to my life first, before I could be truthful to anyone else, in writing or otherwise.
I realized my marriage was over in those first 6 months of writing in 2012. For the last three years, I've been getting up the courage to come out with my truths, as I know them to be at this age and stage of my life.
As an agent, I would encourage my writers to get naked with their innermost lives on the page, and roll up my sleeves as a midwife while they gave birth to an intellectual infant. Now as the writer, I feel the pains of labor and realizing that the writer is both mother and father to their work.
I also know that what connects with the readers are these two things: fear and advice (or desire).
I think when people say writers are being brave or vulnerable, they are actually doing their best to be honest and it's reverberating with the reader at a soulful level. Deepak Chopra (with whom I took a 4 day seminar, the summer I stopped writing, separated from my wasband, and started reflecting on my own practice) would say that when we really connect with others it can go all the way to the cellular level. I happen to think that is true; both the soul and cellular level. I might even take it a bit deeper and say energy level (which are the foundations of the soul and cell in my book).
Fear of alienating the reader, family member, friend or colleague is real at one level and absent on another. Again, Mr. Adler was on to something about producing meaningful work, and if we're lucky art, in your 50's. You are finally at the age where you don't just say you don't care what others think of you, you really just don't. It's a state of being.
So I guess this is my way of saying that I'm going to be getting naked with my thoughts. I'm not going to hold anything back. Some of it may be ugly, uncomfortable, ancient history and other's of it joyous, and full of fresh prognostications for the future. What it won't be, if I can help it, is salacious, disingenuous, hateful or hurtful. It will just be my truth, to the best of my ability and that will be limited at the beginning.
You are my perfect imaginary readers. When asked "who is your audience"? I'll answer, "You".
Good Night, from this no-holds-barred blogger, G'night!
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