Nearly a year ago I started writing and posting an essay each week on the site Substack as a way to commit to my writing practice. A couple of weeks ago I completed work on my 2nd book (I think…we’ll see what the editor says) and I’ve submitted essays to a couple of contests (which I didn’t win) and at least one anthology (being published in March). I’ve finally planned and will hopefully get enough registrations for a writing workshop that starts next month with the hopes of continuing with a regular schedule of workshops and retreats. I continue to write a column each month with Angelo, and though our consistency fell off a bit, after a meeting with our editor, we’re newly committed. All of this rather bland information raises the question: So what?
Why would the casual reader be even remotely interested in my To-Do list? Maybe they wouldn’t, but the reason I continue to explore the means by which I view my work is the same reason I’ve written about before:
“For those of us who struggle to make our writing important in our daily lives, I think it is equally important to stay connected with our body of work. Our past efforts--stories, journal entries, submissions--inform our present efforts; we build on our successes and mistakes, over and over again.”
Yes, I just quoted myself. The above is from a post on SheWrites.com where I used to write a column ambitiously titled, “The Writer’s Life.” That post came about because of a small wooden box of floppy disks I discovered. Not all of them were labeled, so I ended up going through the lot of them to see if there was anything interesting within. There wasn’t much, but it gave me the insight above. It also gave me this:
“Some of these disks are from twenty years ago or more and the emotion is still there, as if magnetically recorded along with the keystrokes. I was drawn right into those emotions; they are stored in my brain and easily accessed.”
As much as I encourage digging into one’s old and newly discovered work, it is true that it can bring up ancient memories and feelings, either long forgotten or securely tucked away. This comes up in my memoir classes all the time; a writer will eagerly dive into documenting his or her conscious memories, when all of a sudden, something completely unexpected will pop up on the page and require some pause in re-understanding it again. One example that I can share is when a woman wrote about a move her family made when she was a child, one she initially recalled as exciting. Once she began writing about it, she recalled that they hadn’t chosen to move…they were forced out due to an eminent domain situation in their town. They had to move…and fast. I remember it stunned her when she remembered that detail—her memory had left that part out all those years.
My own recent rabbit-hole tumble came when Angelo directed me to “take a look at” some old boxes he had unearthed in a pile of even more boxes he was trying to clear out of the basement. Everyone knows that “take a look at” in Husband is translated as “Please get rid of these.” To my surprise, the banker’s box full of what I expected were old Newtown Savings bank statements also contained a half a dozen folders containing 30-year-old short stories, equally-as-old magazine submissions (and rejections) and a couple of journals from my first 2 years of college. It was difficult and amusing to go through the journals. I found the page where I mused that I might be falling in love with my first husband. In fact, it looks like I spent a lot of time writing about love; falling in love, being in love, disdaining love, longing for love—all of the love-turmoil a 19-year-old girl can muster. This particular plunge into the past wasn’t as difficult as others have been; others have required more time to process and the results can be uncomfortable.
This work is not just a writer’s; summoning up the past can be tricky for everyone. It can happen stumbling across a childhood diary, finding a stack of carefully kept letters or having your husband ask you to “take a look at” a box of 20-year-old bank statements. The past doesn’t go away, and sometimes we get the opportunity to understand it differently—even more objectively—when we’re older, wiser or at least several years removed.
I am driven to impart the desire to write in others and that is the reason I continue to explore the phenomenon of coming across old or forgotten work. It is the reason I write about my writing, report on my writing, offer writing classes. Because even if there isn’t a box of old journals holding the words of your past, a past still exists that informs your present. Our past, in all it’s tangible forms, is a record of our lives. It’s our dreams and disasters; happiness and heartbreaks. The thoughts and feelings and words we had in any past situation are not restricted to what they meant then; they can evolve with us and inform our understanding of our world as we move forward—or sideways or even sometimes backwards. We are continually evolving. That’s why I love finding old writing; because it’s a timestamp of a place in my life that made me who I am today. In another post about revisiting old work, I found this:
“Writers are not consigned to a finite number of words--we seek out new words every day to coax into other stories, essays, and poems. This pursuit, I think, is the writer’s charge and our early ephemera is groundwork for a creative path. One that I, for one, will always be on.”
Won’t we all?
A lovely “record” of a truth: Your path will always lead to the writer’s life.
“Our dreams and disasters, happiness and heartbreaks. . .” A memorable line and a takeaway for this moment. After a year of sorting, evaluating, and finally discarding the detritus caught in the historic currents of my life, I’ve learned the value of memory and how it blooms into words on the page and screen. Nostalgia is at best a trigger for reflection. As we get older and mortality walks alongside us, the door to memory is often a keepsake, a postcard or hair ribbon, a Memento Mori.