WRITE A BOOK, THEY SAID, IT’LL BE FUN

via thoughtco.com

Long form writing is like a walk in the woods with no map. In the dark. With animal noises. And cliffs on both sides of the trail.

If that isn’t a picture of adventure, what is? And all you need to do is sit down and write. And stay down. For a long time.

And focus. Don’t forget to focus. If you lose focus you’ll write stuff in the middle that’s the same as the beginning without showing any change. Don’t be a bad writer.

A bad book finds few readers. What do you do when you find typos and bad punctuation? Let me guess, you put it down and regret you ever started reading it, curse the author for laziness, for being cheap, and hope you never hear their name again.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I’m writing a memoir, a story about my life that isn’t my whole life, just a section that informs many parts of life. So it’s not an autobiography, and since it’s about me, not a biography to write either.

My story begins soon after my mother in law died from a stroke. From headache to final breath: two days. If the choice is lingering misery, or two days on a morphine drip, which to choose if there’s any choice to be made?

I like to think the rest of the world outside Oregon, outside Portland, beyond Tigard, has a good handle on end of life issues. Truth is, who really has a good handle on that stuff? Don’t we just react to events as they occur?

And write about it?

My mom in law searched for things worth her time. She wanted to go to Africa on safari since she’d been on so many adventures. She never made it to her last destination but made up for it.

It was hard going through her things and finding more about her than she ever revealed. She came over from England in the mid-fifties with her Englishman husband and one son. Her daughter was born after they moved from Canada to America. Instead of life as a busy wife and mother, she applied to grad school at UCLA.

Her work took her away from continuing education, the sort of work that empowered women through the YWCA and British Airways.

My ma in law found ways to connect with people, ways to connect people to a better life. She was comfortable on the water, in the air, and on land. She would have been wonderful to see in action when I came down with a case of cancer, but she was a few months too late.

Because she was a huge force in my life for the past sixteen years when we all joined the Sandwich Generation with me as the meat, she a big part of my story in my book.

After her life of achievement I would have been her crowning moment after I recovered from cancer and gave her all the credit. I still give her credit in my memoir. She would have been a manuscript reader and probably said I was giving her too much attention.

But I’m not.

If you’ve ever been on the dark side of life and pushed yourself forward, you do what it takes. I followed a light out of my chemo and radiation tunnel vision and didn’t care where it was coming from.

Once in the clear I saw the light source. It was my wife and kids reflecting the power of Judy, the history of persevering, the idea of holding things together. My light was their light and they kept them on bright.

In the shadows that accompany a good memoir, I’m seeing just enough to get it done.