Another late start: early morning grandchild care duties. That’s OK. Still glad to be eager to get to work, to notice, to be aware of the disappointment when I’m not at it, not writing as soon as I’d like to be. I finally wrote and was glad of it. I finished another Glue Lagoon story, edited a Jerusalem letter, and wrote in my journal.
At some point this morning before getting to work I realized I’m mostly writing memoir, whether the letters from Jerusalem and India or my gardening journal (Garden: A Love Story). I suppose I could call what I write essays, but they are essays of things I’ve done and experienced seasoned with reflection and response. So memoirs they are, and a memoirist I am becoming. I will spend part of my work days studying memoir.
I wonder, with more humor than alarm, if giving this writing the dignified name of memoir is a sanitized way of describing self-absorption, making an acceptable excuse for egotism. Maybe. I don’t care. For now, I want to believe, or at least pretend to believe, I have something valuable to say along with an interesting way of saying it.
Maybe writers are people who walk a narrow line between self-absorption and sharing something engaging and worth knowing with the world.
At least I’m also writing children’s stories.
