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‘Writing Life’ Category

  1. Mining the Rough

    May 3, 2013 by admin

    This morning, I dredged up the past.

    I sat on the floor in my closet with two shoeboxes full of journals and combed through them, looking for one in particular. In the process, I came across a lot of dusty old memories: boyfriends gone bad, seething insecurities, angry prayers to God.IMG_5138

    I had procrastinated diving into this part of my work. Because I knew it could potentially bring up some long-healed scars, exhibit a glaring reminder of my obvious imperfections. But when we moved to Kansas in January, I had unearthed from a box an essay I wrote 12 years ago – an essay that was good but had gone nowhere. I needed to revive it. And to do that thoroughly, I needed to revisit a particular corner of my past.

    Diving head-first into our own history can be one scary endeavor. Among the nostalgic and forgotten memories quite potentially lurk some dark emotions, deep insecurities, experiences and feelings we’d rather keep deep and buried. It’s risky business to go there.

    But sometimes, we have to. If we want to weave stories that are meaningful and raw with truth, we often have to dig deep. It can be rough. It can be painful. It can downright suck.

    But you know what? I submit that, nine times out of 10, the effort and the risk will be wholly worth it. Sometimes you have to mine to get to the good stuff. Mining is unglamorous work at best. But a diamond never starts out smooth and beautiful.

    We have to believe in our work so much we’re willing to do the hard work, take the big risk.

    What is holding you back from going into that place? If it is fear, acknowledge it. Join the club. But at some point, take a deep breath and dive in. Hold someone’s hand if you have to. Chances are, by visiting those spaces where emotions run raw and deep, you will emerge with something worth holding onto.

    *My interview with writer, colleague and friend Alissa Johnson, in which I share some thoughts about the writing life, balancing motherhood with writing, and the writing process of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, was posted on Writing Strides yesterday. It also includes a beautiful testament to real friendship, and the bond that writing can weave. You can read it here.

    Category Creativity, Family, Family History, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Self-doubt, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  2. How to Eat an Elephant: A Rare Glimpse of an Artist’s Success

    April 23, 2013 by admin

     

    Today I received an email from a writer whose novel will soon be published by the Pronghorn Press, which last year published my Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood.

    To share in this writer’s raw excitement and arrival in hard-earned book publication is nothing short of exhilarating.Spring Mill 035

    Dawn Wink shares her journey to publication with an openness that is entirely beautiful – beautiful because in her tremendous accomplishment she exposes the hard and messy process of writing and her own jagged edges that, in effect, forced her to turn to her craft.

    She is human. She wrestles and tugs to create beautiful art in the midst of an upended life. And when she succeeds at it, she wants her whole world to know.

    How can that not be inspiring?

    “Meadowlark was the book that should never have been written,” she writes. “Too much happened in my life as I wrote. Too much upheaval, too much transition, too much pain. And yet, I couldn’t stop writing. Like Gretel following the bread crumbs, I stumbled through the forest of my life, focusing on that next bread crumb …”

    In Dawn’s journey I am reminded of three things:

    1)      Writing is and can be such an act of discovery.

    2)      A life story can hold tremendous, mind-boggling power. If you have a strong story to tell – be it yours or someone else’s – the words must find their way out. Even when you don’t think you can go on, even when the noise of life is so loud you can hardly think straight, the story wriggles itself free. And, as Wink learned, the power of story can be a writer’s biggest ally during times of personal hardship. “I believed in Grace and her story,” she writes, “when I had lost all faith in my own.”

    3)      Times change, and circumstances change. We are tested by many hardships in this thing called life, moments of intense heat in which we, like hot iron, are bended and shaped. We won’t be in the furnace forever. But those trying times are the nuggets that test our true character. Writers count these times as gold for their craft – moments and emotions that provide foundations for creating riveting stories.

     

    Now, as Wink finds herself “in a place of family, stability and home … a place where I can at last settle in deeply to love, live and write,” she is able to reflect back with a sense of celebration.

    During a recent upheaval of my own – a new book out right alongside my second child being born – I clung to my mom’s persistent wisdom. How do you eat an elephant? she’d say. One bite at a time.

    As writers, we have to keep on keeping on. There will always be too much. Too much going on. Too much to worry about. Too many balls in the air. But we have to put our heads down and charge ahead in the business of artmaking, one bite (or one sentence) at a time.

    At its base, Dawn Wink’s journey is a story of beautiful persistence. If you’re a true writer, you can’t ever give up. You have to want your words to succeed so bad you can’t take your eyes off the prize. You have to obsess over it and sweat over it and cry and pound your fists. And when you break through into the light of a hard-won success, you have to wholly and entirely celebrate it.

    Well done, Dawn. And best of luck as Meadowlark soon finds its way into the hands of readers.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Feel-Good Stories, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 2 Comments

  3. Win a Book – or Just Have a Little Fun

    April 15, 2013 by admin

    Exercise a bit of creativity for your chance to win a copy of my book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood – or just have a little fun with the creative process.9781932636956-Cover

    Either way you look at it, it’s sort of a win-win deal.

    http://www.writingstrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/4.png

    Image courtesy of www.writingstrides.com.

    Today, in celebration of the launch of her new writing business, Writing Strides, a dear friend of mine is asking readers and writers and creative gurus to help her write a story. She’s got the first paragraph already down. (And she warns, it’s a bit dramatic.)

    Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to read the continuing story (posted by other readers in the “Comments” section below the post) and add to it. Participants will be entered to win a free copy of my book (a work which Johnson knows well, as she played a crucial role in critiquing and editing the chapters from the ground up).

    I am so privileged to call Johnson a fellow writer and a close friend. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Mountain Gazette and Green Woman Magazine, among others, and she has won awards from the Colorado Press Association and Funds for Writers. Her mission is to help people take their writing farther, via writing classes, one-on-one coaching and writing prompts. She is full of inspiration and compassion, and I am so excited to share in the beginning of this journey with her.

    So whether you’re ready to start something, need a creative writing prompt or just want to be a bit silly and let loose, head to the Writing Strides blog for some fun and ambition. You won’t regret it!

    Category Books, Creativity, Ideas, Inspiration, News, Social Media, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | No Comments

  4. “Home” Making

    March 12, 2013 by admin

    It has been two months since we rattled back into the Midwest with two vehicles packed to the gills, exactly no place to live and a standing reservation at the Best Western on the southern edge of the Kansas City suburbs. In some respects, it seems like we’ve been back in the Midwest for forever – as if we never left in the first place. In other respects, it seems like we just arrived yesterday.

    Life hasn’t quite slowed down for us yet. And of course with two little boys, a husband whose work schedule is forever fluid and changing and my own gnawing need to put words together and write, I wonder if that time of slow-down will ever come. I consider the word “routine” with longing, craving it like a piece of sweet decadent chocolate. Still, we aren’t quite settled here. Still, the kids wake up in the middle of the night. I drag myself out of my warm bed and go to them, then laugh to myself as I return to my own bed, flicking off the alarm that was (so many hours ago) strategically set for 6 a.m.

    I always feel so blessed when on my blog (or elsewhere) I run into a mother or mother-to-be who “gets it.” You know, that crazy anxiety of trying to do it all and be a champ at it all. I think at its richest, this flux time is fodder for material. I am living the book that’s yet to be written. It can’t be written right now because the story is still unfolding. We can’t very well write the book while it’s happening – because then we’re too focused on the writing to actually be living out those messy and wonderful moments.

    When Eli was still brand new, squinting his fresh eyes at the buzzing world around him, I found that my best writing came on my bed at 2 in the afternoon. There, in a weak attempt at rest while the baby slept, I lay with a legal pad and a pen, my mind too noisy to invite any form of sleep. I scribbled furiously, messily, caring little about handwriting or the neatness of ideas. My desperate goal: to get the words that flew around in my head out, somehow solidified and preserved. The writing may have lasted for just 20 minutes or a sentence. How many one-line prayers did I scribble in the margins? But words came, and they came from the deepest of places. Even after one or two hard sentences, I could look at that long piece of paper and feel good. Somehow cleansed. My world, after those brief moments, made a little more sense.

    The writing is becoming more regular these days, but still the routine emerges slowly, like cold molasses. Still I am mother first. Then wife. Then writer. But (and I know this will be true as long as I live) the need to write won’t let go. Even when I am covered in toddler pee and am holding a fussy baby in one arm while I clean up the mess. Even when I am pushing mashed sweet potatoes into a tiny bird-like mouth. Even when the piles of dirty laundry are stacked so high and there is dinner to get on the table and from upstairs a little voice hollers “Mom!” and my husband walks through the front door and wants a little love. Even then, that urge, that innate need to write, will stubbornly persist. And my self will not re-encounter its equilibrium until that need has been acknowledged, satisfied.

    How do you do it? Whether you’re a mother, a student, male or female, you, too, wear a lot of hats. How do you make time for your art? How do you prioritize the need and make it somehow align with your myriad other roles?

    Around here, we live one day (and yes, sometimes one moment) at a time. And, slowly, the story is being written, the masterpiece in its own time taking shape.

     

    PS: The next post, on Thursday 3/14, will pay some small reverence to the December shootings in Newtown, CT, exactly three months after the young gunman opened fire at an elementary school. It’s one writer’s way of processing tragedy the best way she knows how, via silent words. Come with a somber heart, or not at all.

    PPS – A much-delayed announcement: Thanks to your support, my readers, via new Facebook page “Likes” and new followers on my blog, $30 was donated to cleanup efforts following Super Storm Sandy. Thank you, for supporting my work and the power of communicating our life stories. You rock.

     

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  5. To Write Again: A Return to the Sweet Life of Art Making

    February 21, 2013 by admin

    So. Days melt into days, and weeks into weeks. Across five states and two time zones, from a place that perpetually feels like summer back to a place where winter is in full force and (amen) the weather comes and goes in seasons. It has been a long road from southern California back to Kansas City, the challenges of moving with two young kids fierce and at times unrelenting. Yet we have pulled through it, and in all the chaos, things are beginning to make sense again.

    Finally, we are emerging into a new normal. We are putting down roots here fast and hard. Desperately, we want them to stick because if we’re honest, this life of mobility, of pulling up our lives every one to two years to begin again in a new place, is just plain tough. It was the life of adventure five years ago, when we were still relatively newly married and without kids. Now, with two little boys in tow, we simply crave to be settled. For the wellbeing of our kids. For the wellbeing of our family.

    As I write, the wind outside is fierce, hurling hard snow against the upstairs windows. My little Eli, who was born in sunny California just seven months ago, can’t take his eyes off of the mean white stuff. I finished nursing him this morning, and he lay his head on my shoulder and snuggled into me, quiet. That’s odd, I thought. And I said out loud, ”Why are you so quiet?”

    Then I saw why. His eyes were wide open, staring intently out the window at the onslaught of blizzard.

    Snow. Something completely new to him.

    As I ease myself back into these waters of a writing life, I feel more and more at home. To be honest, I don’t know where my work will take me next. We have started over yet again, in a new community, a new place. Ideas throw themselves at me ruthlessly, and I snatch at them as if trying to catch beautiful butterflies in a net, wanting to keep them, study them, turn them over in my hands and then release them into the world again.

    I revisit old essays, wonder why some of them have remained untouched deep in a folder for so long. But the answer comes quickly. Mothering. Family. Life.

    Most important right now is that we have weathered a stretch of tremendous transition and upheaval. In this new normal, this new place we so much long to call “home” for the long haul, I am writing again. And dang, it feels good.

    Category Creativity, Family, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Travel, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  6. Seeking Story in Tradition

    November 21, 2012 by admin

    Tradition.

    It’s an idea we all find ourselves coming back to this time of year. Be it falling into the comfort and warmth of old traditions or seeking joy in starting new ones, we all crave the same thing: something to celebrate.

    I find it intriguing the way years come and go, how some holidays are busy and exuberant and bouncing with life while, in other years, they are quiet and mellow, low-key. One only has to map the ups and downs of life through a single holiday to see how time works: how people come and go, how places transform, how we, ourselves, grow up.

    My strongest Thanksgiving memories will always center around my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Wyoming, the place where, for so long, Thanksgiving took place with no questions asked. I write about it in Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, this way:

    “Thanksgiving has happened at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s every year for as long as I can remember. The tradition runs so long and deep that no one questions it, even with the family tensions that ripple quietly just beneath the surface: Grandpa’s reckless ways and Grandma’s bitterness – driven, I think, by loneliness – the way he and she seem to like each other less every year, the fact that neither one of them has ever shown up for a school play or a band concert.

    Grandma and Grandpa sit at opposite ends of the table, paying no attention to one another, while my parents and I and my great uncle John fill the spaces between them. I scoop up big helpings of my mom’s turkey and her Swedish corn pudding. I pass on Grandma’s mashed potatoes and gravy because the gravy is an awful brown, and like every other year, I fear she has salted it with a rabbit carcass. She served fried rabbit on the first Thanksgiving my mom spent with them – no turkey. Mom, a wholesome girl from the Midwest, cried.”

    The memories are rich, but so, too, is the story.

    This is a story of tradition. What is yours?

    Later on in this piece, I share what still hangs on as one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories:

    “A cozy quiet hangs in the Thanksgiving afternoon: the ancient dishwasher hums through its cycle, the coffee percolator brews weak Folgers coffee for my mom. Soon, my grandmother will call for a game of hearts and we will gather around the Formica table, pie in hand, for a long game of steering clear of the Old Biddy.”

    I want people to see themselves here. I want them to resonate: with the tension, with the details of tradition, with the desire to bring the familiar to life.

    This Thanksgiving, we will celebrate in a new way, with a family that is not ours in a state where our roots are only temporary. It will be my oldest son’s fourth Thanksgiving, my youngest son’s first. Still, I will make Mom’s Swedish corn pudding in the CorningWare dish. I will bring it to the house we have visited only a few times, an act of both sharing an old tradition with new friends and hanging on to something familiar for the holiday. Will we eat cranberries out of the can? Will there be sweet potatoes? A card game after the meal?

    I don’t know. But I do know there is plenty to celebrate, from the warm memories of the past and the people who are no longer with us to the new friends we’ve made, the new life we’ve created and the new traditions that will blossom from it.

    This holiday season, I encourage you to seek the story in tradition, whatever that means for you.

     

    Category Family, Family History, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,,,,, | 1 Comment

  7. Cans and Can’ts

    November 8, 2012 by admin

    I probably shouldn’t admit it here, but promotional efforts for my new book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood have more or less come to a standstill since I returned to California from my home state of Wyoming last month.

    For two solid weeks in Wyoming, I was out, reading and putting on writing workshops, engaging people in glorious conversation about the significance of telling our life stories. I met people of all ages with raw, captivating life experiences to share. I shared bits of my own life experience, exposing the wonderful, the challenging and the pivotal moments of growing up as an only child in rural Wyoming. Strangers and acquaintances came to know the strong and unforgettable characters who shaped my childhood: Great Uncle John, Grandpa Bucky, Mountain Man Chuck and that lady up in the Hoback who once danced naked. For two weeks, I was in author heaven.

    Then I returned with my family to California, and the realities of being a full time mom quickly settled back in. This is certainly not a bad thing – it is simply fact. My husband, an engineer who diligently worked while his wife and two sons were away in Wyoming, transitioned from a day shift to a night shift while we were gone. And that meant that upon our return to California, we had some major adjusting to do.

    For a while, all rhythm in our household was lost. Family dinner time was out the door, replaced with family time mid-morning and, if we were lucky, lunch together around the kitchen table.

    Settling back in to life as mom and wife proved harder than I’d expected, coming off of an exhilarating two weeks in my home state where Grandma and Grandpa were always around to help with the boys and where I had plenty of time to wear my writer’s hat. I felt like life as a writer had no choice but to take a backseat for a while. I fought it. I cried. I wondered what the fate of my first published book would ultimately be, if I was not out in the world pushing it for all I was worth.

    I am both a mother and a writer. This means that very often, something’s gotta give.

    The writer Hope Edelman acknowledged her realities as a writer and mother in a blog post on Brevity, sharing a list of what she can and cannot do as a wearer of multiple hats. The advantages? She is really good at budgeting time, and says she has experienced a whole range of emotions that have enhanced her writing. The disadvantages? In her own words, she can’t “spend three months at a writer’s colony … stay at literary events past 9:15 on a weeknight … shower every day … be a foreign correspondent.”

    Because I am a mother and a writer, I can snatch quiet moments as they come. I can multi-task – say, make an important phone call while I’m nursing my three-month-old, jot down an idea for a new essay on the back of a receipt in my three-year-old son’s preschool parking lot, confirm a book sale via email while kids catch five more minutes of TV. I can make two solid, blessed hours of work time pass in the blink of an eye. And, like Edelman, I can garnish loads of heartfelt material from the range of emotions that come with being a mom. Believe me, I have stories to tell.

    And because I am a mother and a writer, I can’t give readings or host writing workshops every day of the week. I can’t tackle my list of marketing ideas fast enough. I can’t blog as much as I want to nor be in conversation with fellow writers and readers as much as I’d like.

    For now, I just have to trust that, as mom and as writer, I am right where I need to be. My book is out. People are reading it, and the feedback is just heartwarming. I am so grateful and so humbled to all of those who have picked up a copy and have taken the time to read it. I hope there will be many more readers to come.

    Seasons come and go in our lives, and I think to some degree a level of chaos is always present. Finally, I feel like I am working my way back into a rhythm where I can wear the hats of both mother and writer, as family woman and book promoter. There’s a lot of work to do. But then again, there always is.

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Home, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | 3 Comments

  8. Beacons

    October 17, 2012 by admin

    There is something beautiful about a power plant lit up at night. A fixture so strong and sure. We fly past the Long Beach plant – solid stacks straddling a canal that leads to the ocean. Yellow light glows from high up, like halos overlooking the city.

    So much about this place feels foreign to me, I have thought time and again in the 15 months that we have lived in California. The coast and the sandy beaches. The lack of seasons. Freeways that never sleep. That feeling of foreignness is heightened now, having returned from a two-week stay in my Wyoming Rockies. That age-old question arises like a deep yawn: What is home? And where?

    But then there are moments like this: pure, raw beauty that tussles us up, reminds us to treasure the present even as we wait on God to direct our future. We know we don’t want to be in California forever. But what gifts are here that we can live in and enjoy while we do call this place home?

    That beckoning light glows. The waves crash against the shore, and I ask a friend who lives on the beach if he sleeps with his windows open at night.

    “You bet,” he says, and I can only imagine.

    When I pull my three-year-old son out of the car at the end of the day, we turn west to a flaming pink sky. “Look at the pretty sun,” I say, and he agrees: it is pretty.

    A new baby and a changed-up work schedule on my husband’s part means we have lost our rhythm for a while. A schedule of any sort is hard to come by, and in the listlessness I have to remind myself of what truly matters: happy and healthy kids, a happy and healthy family. That rhythm will return. This is only a season.

    I watch those sure lights glowing high in the air. It is a beacon of sorts, a landmark by which to stay grounded, oriented. And in my prayers I ask for a beacon for myself, a guiding light to keep me pressing on: as mom, as wife, as writer.

    Like that light, I want to glow, too, strong and sure and unwavering.

    Category Creativity, Inspiration, Life, Motherhood, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,, | No Comments

  9. Why Conversation is the Bread and Butter

    October 3, 2012 by admin

    Tough. It’s a word I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as I find myself in conversation after conversation with wonderful, inspiring people over what it means to be tough.

    Wyoming leaves, Copyright 2012 Kate Meadows.

    The past two weeks in Wyoming have been an awesome hurricane of readings, book selling, interviews and writing workshops. Coming up against those Sublette County mountains – my mountains, I am proud to claim – is nothing short of spectacular. Experiencing a Wyoming fall in all its glory was a blessing unmatched – it’s only fair to say I get homesick when the quivering leaves of a yellowing quaking aspen put tears in my eyes.

    Selling a book, this piece of art that has been so close to me for the past four years, is a tremendous and rewarding feeling, it is. But the best part? The best part has been being in conversation with people, real people with dynamic lives and hearts tuned into what really matters. Real people with lives much different than mine. Real people with unique perspectives of what it means to be tough.

    I think of Ashta, the 69-year-old woman from West Virginia who I met in a Jackson Hole bookstore. One day away from her 70th birthday, she told me how she planned to celebrate her special day in the Tetons, her sister and son by her side. She likened “tough” to “strong,” thinking on the term from the perspective of a woman, a mother. That we draw strength from the most unexpected places sometimes.

    And there’s Paul, who walks with a cane now and recalled his days driving cattle with my grandfather before sunrise on an old local ranch. He’s lived in Sublette County his whole life, save for one month, the month he was born so many decades ago.

    And there are the two women I met at the Rock Springs library who own property up near Sublette County’s Warren Bridge. One of them was taking her grandson bowling the afternoon I gave a reading. Still, she made time to stop in and buy a book. The slight woman who has lived in Rock Springs since 1946 and loves to collect as much information, hear as many stories as she can about the region where Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood takes place.

    These people, these conversations, are the bread and butter of what I do. I write, yes, but writing would be meaningless without people to share it with.

    At its base, writing is about communication. My reward for writing is the communication that gets returned, those individuals who stick around long enough to go a bit deeper, who take the time to share with me their own perspectives.

    Part of life’s beauty is the way we meet each other at our various points along life’s path, the opportunities to share our unique views with one another.

    The book sales have been outstanding. Exciting, rewarding, completely worth smiling about. But those conversations? They are the real icing on the cake.

    So? What’s your perspective? How has the concept of “tough” played out in your life?

    Category Books, Creativity, Feel-Good Stories, Home, Life, Life Stories, Place, Writing, Writing Life | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

  10. What is Your Life’s Theme?

    September 13, 2012 by katemeadows

    If you could pull one theme out of your life, what would it be?

    For me, that theme is “tough.” As in, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    I didn’t know this when I first set out to write a series of essays profiling the colorful characters of rural western Wyoming around whom I grew up. That series of essays now comprises my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, published this month by Pronghorn Press.

    The essays were, at first, quaint and almost fluffy, mere sketches of people and experiences in my life that I found interesting. One piece did not necessarily relate to another; they just sort of fell out of me, one by one, like stones. I knew I had to write them – but I didn’t exactly know why.

    It was a long time before a pattern started to emerge, some sort of thread or echo that started resonating within each piece. I realized I wanted to know how these people – people like big-bellied bachelor Uncle John, the rancher-turned-writer woman named Chris, and my wild and impulsive Grandpa Bucky– helped to shape my upbringing and, consequently, shape the woman I am today.

    The resounding thread? Each of the characters I wrote about exhibited some form of tough. And moreover, they displayed senses of toughness I never felt I had. Having to homestead on a desolate landscape so barren that nothing grew? Not me. Driving cattle home at four in the morning? Not me. Spending lonely winters alone in a boxy cabin miles off a main road? Not me.

    Through writing, I started to look hard at this theme of “tough” and ask myself, “What does it mean to be tough?”

    All of these things, yes. But wasn’t there more to the meaning of that word? If not, I realized, I wasn’t tough at all.

    Except I know I am tough. Just not necessarily in the ways a rural Wyoming life demands. Through writing, I realized that my notion of “tough” was narrow. By holding myself up so sharply against these people who had truly lived hard and noble lives, I had for far too long denied that “tough” badge for myself.

    Looking back on the essays prompted me to examine my life via other questions as well.

    If you could re-do any moment of your life, what would it be?

    If you could live one sweet and precious moment of your past, what would it be?

    Thinking about our lives from a variety of angles can help give us a better grasp on ourselves, who we really are. Peeking through multiple lenses can help us to better understand ourselves – who we have been, who we are, who we hope to become.

    The former New York Times and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen writes: “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again. It turned out I wasn’t alone in that particular progression.”

    I am not yet 30 years old. As someone once told me, “You’re not old enough to write a memoir.”

    But in writing about my younger self, I discovered a powerful theme at work. It’s a theme that, piggybacked with a theme of confidence, I take with me into the wilds now of motherhood. It’s a theme that is molding me now, and a theme I believe will continue to shape me in the future.

    And all because once, I wanted to write about and therefore recall some colorful and strangely admirable characters of my past.

    Look at how these “tough” people defined me. Because of them – and because of the writing process – I am now tougher and more beautiful, a more complete person.

    You can receive a signed copy of Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood here.

    So? What about you? What is your theme?

     

     

    Category Books, Creativity, Family, Family History, Home, Ideas, Inspiration, Life, Life Stories, Motherhood, Parenting, Place, Quotes, Writing, Writing Life, Writing Process | Tags: ,,,,,,, | No Comments

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