Writer | Teacher | Editor | Publisher
This one from the Winter 2015, Lost Truths & Family Legends issue of Creative Nonfiction, which I (for some odd reason) kept under piles of papers for two seasons. No one knows why, but we discover (or rediscover) what we need when the time is right.
Like poetry. #AmWriting
Read Doyle’s entire essay HERE on Creative Nonfiction. Better yet, buy the issue; after all, it’s about holding the paper in hand, reading the words out loud, underlining your own favorite parts.
I write for several reasons. Some days I write because I’ve stepped into a place, and my heart has stopped. My breathing turns short and shallow and I know there is a story to be told.
And some days I write for a few of the same reasons Margaret Atwood has said she writes:
To set down the past before it is forgotten.
To excavate the past because it has been forgotten.
I am forgetful. Painfully so. I often call one of my sisters or my best-friend-for-ages and start the conversation with, “Do you remember…?” Both my children were born on the 22nd day of their respective months, I am sure, because some power in the Universe knew I would have trouble keeping track of birthdays. On a given day, I cannot recall what I had for dinner the night before.
I accept my cloudy memory. But this past weekend, while on a trip with my sisters and my cousins, it became clear just how insufficient the brain can be when storing and recalling events.
When you’re in the thick of immediate family, conversations turn intimate. One night, we talked about my mother, her death, those days when we went through her things. I brought up how my sisters and I discovered cash in her linen cabinet buried under the towels, waved my hands and talked about it with complete confidence. But then my sister stopped me and said, “No, that didn’t happened at her house. We were at the bank. It was hidden inside her will. In her safe deposit box.” Until then, I could see–plain as day–the three of us standing in her bathroom, a hand lifting the towels, and someone saying, “Look.”
Both my sisters agreed we were at the bank, and of course it makes more sense. As they described their own recollections, my brain began to put the pieces in the right order (and place) again.
Still, it was strange. I kept asking, why when I remember that moment would I put us in the bathroom instead of at the bank?
Today, I’m asking: Does it matter?
Last summer, I took a one-week workshop on writing creative nonfiction with Lisa Romeo, in which she talked about that exact aspect of writing nonfiction: our fallible minds and why some details don’t matter. In her lesson, she asks:
Are you — when you are writing memoir, personal essay and other forms of creative nonfiction — creating an official document, meant to preserve in perpetuity the accuracy of a specific event down to the last detail? …what matters and what doesn’t to the story you are telling?
I’ve written the beginnings to an essay about those weeks after my mother died, partly to “set down the past” and partly to “excavate the past.” Now, when I go back to that piece for rewrites, I will have to ask what helps or halts the story (meaning what do I need to include or what can I leave out). Would it matter to a reader where I stood more than what I saw? More importantly, what is the story I really want to tell? Sometimes in a personal essay, the when and where matter much less than the why.
What do you do when memory fails?
Last Sunday, I wrote about cleaning out and clearing out and making way for all things new. Part of that process includes a giveaway: gifts from my shelves to yours.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about, “hey, I just cleaned out my closet and wouldn’t you love a few of my pill-ridden, old 
sweaters….” And, no I won’t raffle off those doc martin wannabe shoes, the ones with monster heels and rounded toes that oozed “cool” ten years ago but now holler “red nose, balloon animals, and Lucky the Clown.” Those things, I will toss or burn, thank you.
What I am giving away is a book near and dear to my heart, On the Fly: Stories in Eight Minutes or Less.
This book represents my writing journey in many ways. Some of my early pieces appear on the pages and signify my willingness to put myself out there.
The book’s premise is based on writing prompts, which is a technique I depend on, often, to urge me forward into creating new pieces.
And, the book as a whole is the product of a collaborative effort between an amazing group of women writers. We called ourselves the Lit Star Collective.
We published this book not for profit, but in order to document our time together, to showcase the work we had done, and to spread the word about the kind of writing that can happen in a very short time — well-formed images and prose can emerge, like tiny treasures, from a flurry of words when you let go of inhibitions and dive into the work.
On the Fly is a book of flash fiction, flash narratives (a term coined by Lisa Rivero), and creative nonfiction. Each piece originated from a prompt (given by our instructor, Ariel Gore), was written in eight minutes of timed writing, and is presented in either its raw form or a peer-edited version. Sometimes the prompts were one word; sometimes they were a phrase. Always, they inspired great writing.
As a teaser, here’s an excerpt of a piece by Catherine Anderson, a devoted Mother and a prolific Writer. She blogs, at Mama C and the Boys, about raising multi racial families (by birth or adoption), single parenting, and the writing that evolves from those life experiences. In On the Fly, Catherine expands on the prompt, “Where I’m From.”
Inheritance
Where I’m from, is mapped out all over my nose. Bulbous, just like Pepe’s. Loved that man. As grandparents go, he mapped that out pretty well too; if I live to be old enough to see these boys have children of their own. The French-by way of Guadeloupe-sailor and storyteller with chocolates and exotic perfume samples hidden in his silk robe for me to find in his suitcase every other December when he came to visit. You have to forgive a few things, like how he espoused that black people were beneath him, and Jewish people were, too. It becomes tricky to understand how come his mistress of twenty-five years was half black and half Jewish. Look deeper inside my cells and you will see his wife, my Meme, curled up in a little ball in my abdomen abandoned over and over her entire life. First, by her mother who died of typhoid when she was three, then by her father who left her in a hotel room with a cousin he didn’t know so he could remarry. And then every day she waited for Pepe to come back to the marriage he had consummated on land….
…There’s more. Of this narrative and of other amazing short pieces.
On the Fly includes several other writing prompts, too, that will stir your muse. If you’re a writing prompt junkie, or if you’d like a peek into the works of sixteen women writers, leave a comment. On Sunday, May 1st, my pals at Random.org will choose three lucky winners who will each receive a copy.
To read more of Catherine’s work, you can visit her blog or follow her on Twitter.