At This Point

I'm back to working on the memoir and realizing once again that I truly have no idea how to pull this off.

How am I going to avoid telling this story without appearing to whine about all that happened, without making myself out to be a victim of circumstance? Because while things happened—awful things, painful things, confusing things—and I was, of course, affected by those things, I was not (am not) a victim. The fact is I made my choices about how to respond to what life presented and I want that to get on the page.

The section I'm writing now is pivotal in that sense so I am slowing down, coaxing memory to reveal myself—the self I was at that point—to me so I can see how the person I was, the child I was really reacted to the events of the time.

How do I do justice to the story? How do I make art out of the stuff of life?


The only thing to do, I suppose, is to keep writing.