Process Journal/September

I began this process journal after working on the memoir for five days. I’ll be adding to it as necessary.

Day 5. September 4, 2007

As on every previous day since beginning the memoir, I sat down at my computer early and got to work immediately. First I re-read yesterday’s writing, making minor revisions, and then I opened the document meant to be the next section, possibly the fourth chapter. I had decided I wanted to explain that my relationshp to my mother was much more intense in adulthood than in childhood, but after something like two or three sentences I was writing about the culture of my family, how it’s adult-centered, how children are to be seen and not heard, and how hard that was for me when my kids were growing up. It meandered all over the place—to Derry, to Charles and Connie, my cousins; it was chaos. After my usual 3+ hours I felt dizzy. I might have to throw all of it out.

It was like I’ve been driving a big mack truck all this time, and had made a wrong turn, and was barrelling downhill, around curves, avoiding trees on all sides.

I have to pull over to the side of the road; or since I’m not even on a road, under a tree. I have to stop, turn off the engine, and get out the map. I have to write an outline.

September 6, 2007
Day 7.

Shit. Who’s gonna wanna read this crap? Who gives a shit about my lousy tenth birthday? See, this is what I hate about memoirs, the whining, the complaints, the persuading people what a terrible life you’ve had. And when I did start, at first I wasn’t putting it in chronological order, this terrible event and then that terrible event…and it seemed much better that way. But it got too chaotic, I needed to get a handle on things, so I drew up a chronology, and I made an outline, and today I wrote about a wonderful birthday, my 28th, when I spontaneously surprised Mommy and Daddy by showing up at their apartment in NY, from Woodstock, I’d gone down on the train w/ Jennifer. As soon as I finished the warm fuzzies, tho, I realized, hey, I’m the girl everyone knows as the miserable birthday person, the kid whose bdays were all so traumatic in one way or another she gets anxious before them, suffers during them and is relieved and also disappointed when they’re over. Nobody will believe this warm fuzzy bullshit. Plus, how can I not put all that in? Well, so that’s the next thing I’ll write. I guess I’ll have to expand it somewhat, or combine more than one bday. I can write about the time the whole family was over, and they did the usual abuse of Linda. I know what I’m going to do, actually; but the point is, as I said, who’s gonna wanna read this crap? It’s not so interesting really, I don’t think it is. What would make it interesting other than big dramatic “dysfunction”? I guess I was hoping for mother/daughter breakthroughs, insights nobody’s yet had.

September 19, 2007

Writing has depressed me today. Maybe it’s significant for me to discover things about my psyche, but how can I seriously contemplate telling the story of my tenth birthday, when I was apparently traumatized by having to choose what to do on it. Terrible things happen to people in this world! In Darfur ten year olds have to choose things like whether to pick up a gun and leave home with the rebels, or stay and take care of their little sisters…or so I imagine. But things like that are going on every moment on this planet. And I am writing about my tenth birthday and how my mother traumatized me. It’s outrageous.

Not only that, but the living room needs to be dusted so badly I can hardly breathe in it, and I’m writing this drivel instead. I have to go to work in a few hours and this is how I’m using my limited time.

And a new pressure: My readers are breathlessly waiting for the next chapter…all 14 of them. Yes, 14 people have thus far read my memoir. Which actually feels like a lot. They’re also going to read this process journal, and will see how neurotic I am. Why am I doing this? Have I compromised the whole writing process by throwing it up online?

I’m not going to post chapter four yet, I’ve barely even written it. They will just have to wait…all 14 of them.

September 22, 2007

Someone on the WELL is reading the memoir, and says it’s very powerful, and also reassured me about the slowness of the process. It’s going very differently from the way I’ve written fiction, when I glue my ass to the chair and just do it. This material is more like poetry, in that it simply has to come. If I wait the way I wait for poetry, tho, I’ll be writing a chapter a year. What I’m going to have to do is create the circumstances that will allow the memoir to come.

I know why I wrote over 100 poems in three years when I lived as a hippie in Woodstock, and I know why I write one poem a year now if I’m lucky: the circumstances of my life aren’t the right circumstances that will allow poetry to come. I don’t think the memoir will take as much quiet and reflection as poems do, but more than other kinds of writing. When I work six days a week doing work other than writing, the circumstances aren’t right. Having two days off in a row this week has already been an improvement. That tells me what I’ll have to do to get this done.

Today I read an interview with Paul Theroux, who wrote a piece of fiction in the New Yorker that seems like memoir to me—he claims he uses his family experience but alters some of it. He said it’s easier to write this stuff the older you get, and that events that you once thought dramatic turn out not to be so significant. That’s what I’m feeling about the birthday stuff I was trying to write last week; I’m shocked at myself, but I might not write that stuff at all.