Personal Narrative « Piecemeal

I am thinking about the personal essay, whose story I tell. My own and, tangentially, others’. I am thinking about how to write my family. I am thinking about how to write an experience from my perspective while respecting personal and professional relationships.

Years ago I had a conversation with Tara, a friend and writer, about what to do with all of our writing. She remembered telling a boyfriend the creative process was enough, that she didn’t need to share the finished poem or essay, and he said, Bullshit. Tara and I had this conversation when she was midway through an MFA in poetry and I was writing (generating, generating), sharing with a small circle of friends or posting to Piecemeal. And I wanted to believe that making a story or essay was plenty. I explore genre. I make up exercises with arbitrary deadlines. For a decade I have steadily developed my craft and now I agree with that old boyfriend: the creative process is awesome, but I write to share. This is now the direction I will go.

I am not afraid of sharing my fiction. I pull from my life. I imagine other. The fiction I share with few qualms. I am not afraid of sharing personal essay either, but I am more aware an obligation I have to the people who show up alongside my thoughts. So when I see other writers wrestle these questions, I am heartened.

This weekend I read “Great Draft, Dad. I Have Some Notes” by Dan Kois. He and his wife took their two daughters around the world for a year, learning to navigate new cultures as a family. Along the way Kois drafted a memoir. His twelve year old daughter asked to read and edit passages involving herself. Kois was hesitant. But I like how his position evolved as a writer, allowing his daughter a voice in the process too. And I also like that Kois is not making an absolute rule about how he writes personal narrative, or who is involved in the editorial process.

It’s day three hundred and seventeen of winter. We’re halfway to spring!

I underestimated the work of just getting through a transition year. This week I nearly missed the bus home from school. I sat in my seat, whispered a gentle fuck and then quietly cried for most of the commute. Three nearby colleagues noticed, patted my shoulder or said a kind word when they stood for their stop, offered a little commiseration, sympathy. Later in the week when Claire stood in front of me on the sidewalk and declared, You don’t get it! I am having a tough week! All week I am sad! You don’t understand! I thought of being the grown up who two days earlier cried on the bus ride home from school.

Because rants are allowed transitionless tangents:

I spent the week thinking about one essay I am revising. I worked on this essay a little each day. I thought about this essay on my morning runs. I dreamed this essay. I actually dreamed a paragraph to add, woke up and made a note.

Personal narrative is exhausting. This particular essay is a challenge because it centers on the years following the death of my friend’s infant and after two years of drafting and revising it is near completion though, as I added in a line, the conclusion I reach is that I will continue to ponder these things for years to come. There is no neat, tidy or uplifting package for the initial loss or grief and what I saw as I allowed time to write and think about that summer and my intersection with the event and lives involved – what I saw is that a first grief can open other griefs.

This must be true at any tragedy. We think we are sad for one thing because we are sad for that one thing, but then we are also sad for this other thing and soon our grief for the two entwines.

I was angry for three years after this infant died. I thought I was angry at the loss or the situation or even certain people present then, but the anger may also have been for the way this one grief made me see another, different sorrow I was holding.

If I didn’t keep a notebook or draft personal narrative, I might be better at sitting on a bus and pretending everything was fine.

This essay. I might have ruined it with the latest revisions. At the least I have taken the term personal literally and explored desires and fears circling motherhood, desires and fears I was already examining when my friend’s infant died and, in the years since, I linked those desires and fears with that summer’s grief.

One afternoon I took the kids to a small cafe for hot chocolate. I sat with my laptop open, adding to this essay, and Claire asked why I like to write. I said I want to make art. But when I consider why I write personal narrative, I have no good answer. A couple of weeks ago I was out to coffee with my friend Erin and I found a way to say why personal narrative is difficult: there is a pressure to really get it right. Especially the tough parts. I often start writing about something just because I need to write about that something but when I decide to turn the idea into a (someday) shared essay, there is terrible dread I won’t say what I need to say in a way that translates to understanding.

Early in the week my friend Sarah messaged me a quote from Australian author John Clarke.

“Writing another draft” sounds exhausting. “Having a bit of a tinker” sounds delightful.

And a day or two later Erin messaged me a link to a Reading My Tea Leaves post about writing or creating while also being a mother, a thoughtful reminder that what I am doing piecemeal adds to my craft. More, that motherhood adds to my craft.

Yesterday Grant looked at my engagement ring and asked if it is a real gem. I said yes. He asked, A diamond? A real diamond? Yes. His eyes got big. He said, We’re so rich! We are, in so many ways.

Well, this rant wound down nicely. It is still cold. We are trading coughs. Strawberries cost as much as a dollar apiece. And it is still cold.