Today's Struggle

I am discovering just how painful a daily writing practice can be. I'm revising essays I wrote a decade ago and parsing out what stories to include in this larger piece, what to leave out, what to rearrange and what needs to be newly written. Some pain comes from revisiting the past, and some comes from trying to write something, anything, compelling.

It is both an advantage and a handicap to revisit childhood memories through the lens of time, therapy and maturity. I felt pretty bullied as a kid. But some of the folks I considered to be my nemesis in those early years are now adults I care about a great deal. I even have a level of compassion for those I am not close to because I have done enough work on my own shit to understand that we all had shit as kids. We all had traumas and pain and stories. And I can also see how my issues and behaviors might have aggravated the hell out of the kids around me. I think that I often inadvertently set myself up to be the loser.

So the question becomes how many of these stories to tell, and how much responsibility do I take for the pain or trauma inflicted on me. Do I focus on my truth in the moment, or the truth I have discovered along the way.

Today's struggle is in balancing the need to offer a whole picture within the theme I have chosen for this project with the conflicting realities of current and old memory.

Oh the Planning!

The very first semester that I taught, I was hired less than two weeks before the classes began, so planning was a constant, ongoing, all-consuming task. I had little previous experience to draw from; I had worked as a TA and grader and tutor. I often walked into class sessions with no clear idea of what I was going to teach. I was able to assign readings in advance, but the lessons and assignments that were attached to the readings were most often made up on the spot, seat-of-my-pants style.

This was the norm for quite awhile because we were in the midst of a recession and planning for the department was in flux. Classes were being cut right and left, and several adjuncts already burnt out from a wacky system left the profession and classes behind, and a few landed full-time teaching gigs elsewhere. Then administration would realize at the very last minute that they needed more sections of a course, and I would just happen to be lurking near the department chair's office in time to volunteer to take the class.

Still, these days when I sit down to plan, even with plenty of experience and material to draw on, I get kind of panicky and freak out that I don't have all seventeen weeks in the forefront of my brain. I can't recall every lesson I have ever taught and the nuances for each, so I worry that I will fail. Never mind that I have an entire filing cabinet full of hard copies and multiple electronic copies on multiple computers and clouds. I freak out about having to re-invent the wheel.

Eventually I settle into reviewing past semesters and new ideas and hammer things out with only a few gaps to fill in as I go.

I'm discovering that planning a memoir is really similar to planning a class. I'm kind of panicking. I have told lots of stories over the years, and written lots of essays about my childhood, but deciding what to include and what to leave out is really daunting.

My training focused on the memoir as a piece of pie. The whole circle represents the entire life. The triangular slice represents the material for the memoir.



I really, really don't want to write an autobiography. I really want to spend my time focusing on some piece, some theme, some aspect that is neither overwhelming nor boring nor simply navel gazing. And as with most of us, the various stories overlap in theme, time, and impact.

I struggle with the guilt of incorporating pieces I wrote ten years ago into this new project. I feel overwhelmed about writing new material.

Some moments I really want to stop-- walk away from the project and forget I have aspirations as a writer. But again, as I chip away at the process I am finally discovering where I need to focus, what I need to include and what I can leave out. It's a really messy process sometimes, much like planning a semester.

Right.

I knew this!

:-)

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times

One of the interesting aspects of teaching composition and trying to support my own writing life is that the lessons I so often try to impart on my students are essentially the same that I return to in my own writing year after year.

This morning I'm rereading Judith Barrington's book, Writing the Memoir, and I have come back to the idea, yet again, that my primary struggle is not about the lack of time to write, or the lack of interesting material, or even a lack of training and practice, but that I doubt that I have anything interesting to say or that anyone would care to read it.

This became a huge stumbling block during my first project period in grad school. My mentor gave me some feedback early on that I mis-interpreted. She was asking me to decide exactly what point I wanted to make in an essay, to focus in on that idea and then expand the story around it. But I internalized a different criticism. I heard her saying "So what? Why would we want to read about your life?" I was hearing what Natalia Rachel Singer refers to as "who cares?"

This fear, that no one will care, comes back to me again this summer as I dive into a new memoir project. I have often toyed with the idea of a full-length memoir; it is something I feel a strong pull toward, and something that brings up so much fear that I push myself away. I struggle with structure and focus, much like when I plot the day-to-day plans of an entire 17-week semester that will creatively and academically nourish my students. The questions are never-ending: What should I write? What should I focus on? What voice should I use? What is safe to reveal? What should stay hidden? Why would anyone outside of my circle of family, friends and students want to read this?

The shortened version of a potentially larger memoir has already been published at StoryScape Journal. It's a pretty funny piece. But a full-length memoir likely wouldn't be, and of course I worry that if it's not funny, no one will care.

My students often face a similar struggle. They worry that they won't have anything interesting to say, that they have nothing to offer the conversation, that no reader will be interested in their story. They tip-toe around sensitive or painful ideas or memories. They play with words, allude to some happening then back off and wax philosophical. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: don't dance around the subject, say it. Don't question the validity of the idea, memory, or trauma, write about it honestly.

Yep, teachers and students; we have the same struggles.