Rewriting History

Throughout the years, I've told my children many stories about my life. They nod and smile, or frown, and often tell me in that slow, dry, not-quite-patient tone reserved for the elderly,
"Yes, Mom, I've already heard this story."

I'm sure as I get older and continue to tell them stories, I will hear that line more and more often.

Occasionally, I get a nice surprise when I tell them something they haven't heard a thousand times. It comes as a shock to both of us that once in awhile I’ve left something out!

Now that I'm putting my memories into print, I’m happy that I’ll finally have visible reminders of the tales I have, or have not, told them.

Years ago, when I wrote the first "Reflections." it was mostly about the current happenings in my world. Nowadays it seems I'm doing more writing about my early life and memories. I actually started writing a family biography ages ago, but didn't stick with it. Unless I'm writing fiction, short stories are about as much as I can handle when it comes to family matters.

I love writing and most of the people I've let read my work seem to enjoy it very much. What they seldom see is how hard I work at honing my craft. They don't understand that when I turn off the phone, don't answer the door, and stay up all night on the computer, that I really am working!

They'll read a bit and say, "That's good;" I look it over and think,"It can be better." Writing, after all, can be a never-ending work-in-progress and this author, for one, is never completely satisfied with the final edition.

It was a challenge for me to take literary criticism when I was in college and nearly twice the age of most of my classmates. While they were learning to find their writing voices, mine was already well-developed. I was lucky enough to have great teachers who appreciated where I was as a writer, and yet kept showing me ways to improve.

I’ve frequently been asked about the how of my writing, how I pick the topic or how I plan the structure of it. I have no satisfactory answer for that. Although I freely admit that I write from personal experiences, I rarely know exactly what I'm going to write about or how it's going to come out.

What I do is begin with the germ of a thought or an incident I found interesting, or a memory or a gripe I want to explore, but once I get started, the writing takes off on its own and I'm as surprised as anyone else about the course it takes, where it ends up, or how it touches me and my readers.

I once wrote something I thought was an unique experience and when I showed it to my mom she said, "Yes, I've felt that way myself." At the time I was somewhat dismayed and insulted that she could see herself in something so personally mine. It took ages before I understood I've been given a talent to put the thoughts and feelings many of us share into words.

I lack a certain discipline about my writing. I don't have a specific time or place to do it. I don't keep to any schedule. I write wherever I am, sometimes in long hand, but more often on the computer because I love how easy it is to move things around and make changes. I don't take a predictable path by starting at the beginning and writing straight to the end. In fact, I more often start with a few lines that eventually land in somewhere towards the middle or the end.

Discipline does factor into my work in my attitude toward it. I take it very seriously and will work on each piece until it feels right. It usually takes me at least an hour or two to write two pages and another 4-6 plus hours per page of editing and rewriting to get them fit to print.

I weigh each word and phrase. I take my ideas to bed at night and dream solutions to get the words just right. I try not to get hung up on the spatial construction, where the paragraphs and lines end, how it looks on the page, but I make changes for that, too.

I continue to polish, prune, and rearrange until I am ready to release the final version, and then I'll edit again if I think it needs more work--which it usually does. I'll read it aloud, to myself but preferably to someone else; find something to correct or tweak, make my final, final changes and then force myself to leave it alone, maybe.

I prefer writing when I'm alone, and would write while driving if I were better at transcribing from a tape recorder.

On the other hand, I have written in break rooms, at restaurant bars, and in other public places, but I've found it's hard to write around other people. For some reason, they find the temptation to interrupt your train of thought to ask what you're writing almost irresistible. For me, writing is a private process, and I really have to focus to get through the first draft.

Crisis and chaos in my life can either shut down my creative juices or send them into high gear. It's a toss-up either way.

I don't question the why of my writing. It has been my creative and emotional outlet for as long as I can remember. The answer to why I blog is perhaps as simple.

Maybe I'm setting down stories for my friends and family to entertain them; maybe I’m reaching out to tell them something about me and let them see who I am; maybe I’m letting them know how they’ve touched my life and how I feel about them. Maybe I'm just venting an opinion or irk.

Maybe I'm looking back to see how what was has affected what is now. Maybe I'm telling the stories of my life because I wish I'd asked my parents more about their lives while they were still here to tell them. Maybe I set down these stories because there are so many memories that I've either lost or blocked out.

What I do know is that eventually I end up with an imperfect, one-sided, slightly biased snapshot of my own history and those who have been part of it, and that I do it, for the most part, with no malice intended. Even so, I wonder how much of what I remember is what really happened and what is just my interpretation of what I remember or was told. Hmmmmm.

As the result of one of my blogs, I received a not-so gentle poke from one of my siblings to inform me that my view of the past and theirs was quite different.

Instead of them hearing the praise, love, and admiration for them that I intended to express, I think my words were taken as intrusive, inaccurate, and a harsh reminder of the "bad old" days. That was never my intention and I am sorry they were taken that way.

What I've recognized from this comment is that no two children, living in the same household with the same parents, have the same memories of events in their childhood--at least not in my experience.

When you factor in the number of different places and homes we lived in, the economic changes we went through, the different relationships we had, our strengths and weaknesses, and the varied circumstances accompanying the addition of each sibling, it's fairly easy to see how all of us would have a different experience and viewpoint.

Despite all the ups and downs, I grew up with the belief that I had a happy childhood and, like typical teenagers, I blamed my parents as much as possible for the core of my adolescent angst. I also neglected to recognize, that even before the glaring B-M-D (Before Mom Died) demarcation line, how different my siblings' lives were from mine.

I don't think my family is particularly unique. I think most people have it rough growing up, for one reason or another. I think talking and writing about those times can be either painful or liberating, and sometimes both. I never intended for my memories to inflict more pain, sorrow or misunderstanding.

I hope my family will bear with me as I explore the past and sometimes make erroneous assumptions and other inadvertent mistakes along the way. The problem with writing about memories is that, for better or worse, you are essentially rewriting history as you alone see it.