Thoughts on writing

So, I am here at my mother and John’s house, and my idea is that I am trying to help her work on her book. Of course, it is virtually impossible to get her to do anything at all (sound like someone else you know?), and all I end up doing in nagging her as she moves the fresh bread from one end of the kitchen counter to the other again and looks around for the phone number of someone I have never heard of before. I think to keep me quiet for a while, she has given me a copy of a chapter of the book that she finished some time ago (in an attempt to make me think she is actually working).

It’s a chapter I have read before and every time I find it completely emotionally devastating. I am about 10 pages into the 16-page chapter, and I have stopped to take a break. I just re-read my last blog entry (the one about the last time I was here 2 weeks ago) before posting it, and I realized that there’s a strange reflectivity in both of our writing. We talk to the reader. We try to guess what the reader is thinking.

A few years ago, I formed a writing group on Craigslist. It comprised 3 other women. It’s not important for me to characterize each of them, but one wrote fascinating memoirs about her adventures traveling. They were always skillfully crafted, always had a strong narrative, always followed a traditional storyline structure, and these were freewrites (when you compose for a given period of time without stopping or editing yourself and then read it aloud to the group, who is forbidden from giving any criticism other than perhaps mentioning if they like something in particular). Once, in celebration of our one-year anniversary, we exchanged works in progress. I don’t think this one woman had anything to submit, but she did have a whole lot to say about everyone else’s work. She commented on the fact that I like to address my reader directly, ask them questions, speculate about what they are thinking; she found it too aggressive, too direct. She wanted to read a nice easy little story with complete emotional disclosure. She didn’t want to be engaged in a conversation with the text.

The group fizzled out after that. I think we wanted different things. I didn’t want to be a leader. I didn’t want to hear what they thought about my writing (random people from CL have much less clout with me than my own friends and family, go figure). I think next time I will either charge money to coordinate a group or find a way to be clearer about my desired structure.

I guess that’s it for now. I have 6 more pages to read. That is, I have 6 more pages of conversation with my mother on paper before she wakes up from her nap.