What I have learned

LWP
11/11/07
sbrowder


What I have learned…

* “I took myself as the bottom line”[109, Inventing the Truth, “Lifting the Veil”, Henry Gates] I have permission to take off the blindfold and tell my truth. Thanks Henry! He also wrote: “But my advice to anyone writing a memoir is: Be prepared for the revelation of things you don’t even dream are going to come up.”[108] I will read and re-read, these two essential pieces as the law, as I continue to write my most honest, raw memoir about my son - twice born - once as I knew him from birth, and again when he ’came out’ to me years later - a gay man. I never knew what my feelings were, until “The Telling of Two Lives’. In fact, I may have just discovered the title of my book - “Twice Born”.
* There is writing that sells and there is writing that feeds the writer’s soul and sometimes these are the same pieces!
* Don’t rush the ending. It deserves the same attention as the rest of the piece.
* My first lines, for now, are found on the second page. I just need to get the first chunk of lines out of the way. Annie Dillard, in her chapter, “To Fashion a Text” from, “Inventing the Truth” [153-154],recommends “…not hanging on the reader’s arm, like a drunk…”. What I did or did not do is hacked at until what I have dug up is what I meant to say.
* It is OK to wall-paper my wall with rejection slips,like King did. At least it meant I had sent something out for others to see. No one is going to come to my door, knock, and ask if I would like to be published.
* I hereby give myself permission to write something and throw it away!
* Dillard wrote: “You can’t test courage cautiously.” This is a ‘must remember’ quote for me as a writer.
* Metaphors are wonderful, but please, just one to a paragraph. [And I thought dangling participles where my biggest fear.] Maybe I will write a book about metaphors and then read it.
* Knowing the rules of grammar are essential. King reminded me about this but I didn’t believe him - now I do. I have an !illustrated! edition of “The Elements of Style” on my writing table. It is on my current, “Must Read” list.
* All writers have something to bring and something to share that is needful to my craft. My response group became those kind of writers for me.
* I am a work in progress.