Write People are traveling into the Imnaha Canyon today for a spring outing...Janies cabin sits along side Sheep Creek (Crick to the locals) so we pack a lunch, sit outside, gaze at the rimrocks and listen to the river...Maybe some of us have even been inspired to write so we have something to share...I seem to have lost my inspiration...Writing my blog is still easy as I don't worry much about sentence structure, craft, scene, musing, description, punctuation or even if it makes sense...I let stream of conscience take over and where ever my mind goes that is what gets recorded.
Writing a "real memoir" is different...It must have a catchy title, a cover like no other, index, chapters with names, some kind of order, characters that come alive on the page, colors, smells, similes, metaphors, scenes, musing and punctuation...It can be creative non-fiction, which gives you some lee-way as to the truth of the whole thing...It is what is still in my memory and only my sisters and a few neices and nephews can dispute what I write...Everyone else is dead.
It is kind of fun to imagine what life might have been as I rode horseback, free as the wind, drove a bobsled and team atop six feet of frozen snow, harnesses jingling, steam rising from the horses backs and the ever present smell of horse manure in the frozen air...Or in summer when a bicycle was my mode of transportation (much easier than catching and saddling a horse) or was I sitting tall on the John Deere tractor, eating dust from the harrow as it smoothed the ground ready for grain to be planted or maybe the cleaner job and the smell of fresh cut alfalfa now in windrows waiting for the baler...Did I walk 5 miles to and from school in a raging blizzard climbing uphill both ways, summer and winter?..Did I really have a fairy book childhood where my parents loved me and I alway went to bed with a full tummy?..Who is to know how much truth goes into these pages when this author takes "poetic license" as her 70 year old mind conjures up a lifetime of memories.
Sad to say I'm frustrated with this writing game that I took on when I thought I could just put a few stories on paper, telling about a childhood that is foreign in todays world...It would be a simple little booklet, writen in my own jargon, minus commas, colons, semi colons, quotation marks, told mostly in summary, stapled together and titled "Memories of a Farm Girl." OR "life Under Jughandle."
I have learned much about writing over the last few years...It has been a fun journey and I appreciate the teaching and mentoring from all people involved but writing is not a passion for me...I don't have to write everyday to feel fulfilled...I write because I need an outlet for my feelings and thoughts and I enjoy that, but I've come to the conclusion that I don't live to write....Hugs To All...OWAV:)
My advice: Write what you want to write, and don't let anyone make you feel like you have to do more than that. :)
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