The Stories I’m Still Learning to Write
LIFE WRITING@ WORDHOUSERESOUND
Writing later in life can confront us with hesitation and uncertainty. We may have plenty to say but still wonder whether our life stories matter, whether we are confident enough to write them, and what form they should take. We don’t have to be ready before we begin. We can discover the story, and even the kind of writer we are, as we go.
When Your Memories are Asking to Be Written
This is the time of my life when looking back is normal. When I talk about my past with someone, I tend to spill much more than I intend. Memories that at first seem insignificant become something in the telling. One detail leads to another, and soon a story takes shape. Afterwards, the other person may comment, “You really had a dramatic life.”
I’ve tried not to overdo the narration, nor project another me, to posture an alter ego. As I go back to the details of a moment, I can only hope that I had been objective. And as often happens when the other person is a friend who knows I write, I immediately hear the inevitable: “You should write about it.”
But I’ve written about it. It’s in my blog somewhere or filed among so many beginnings. I’m a bleeder when I write; it takes too long to finish a piece. Why can other writers say what they want to say on paper immediately? I need to process so much and still end up processing. And now, maybe I’ve gotten too old.
But age is not the real problem. What is missing is the confidence that my stories are worth telling to a wider audience.
Writing Without Measuring Yourself Against Other Writers
Comparison often begins with, “I could never write like that.” But no writer begins with the same skill, talent, experience, or confidence. Some have had a lifetime of literary kinships; others seem to have found their way into language early. I may not be picking up a pen for the first time at sixty-four; I’ve been writing for years, but I still cringe when I hear myself called an author.
There will always be another writer who writes more elegantly, finishes more quickly, or seems to know exactly where a piece is going. The real hurdle is confidence. A writing mentor calls this ego strength. It doesn’t come automatically, even when we have proved ourselves in other parts of life: raising children, managing a household, teaching, running a business, serving a community, or planting a tree. Sitting down to write can still make us feel strangely vulnerable, as if we are beginning a life again.
This is where ego enters the picture. Writing needs enough ego strength to tolerate naivety and imperfection. For some of us, that strength needs to be propped up at the beginning.
It means gladly following the prodding that says, “There is something worth exploring here.” It may mean joining a writing group. It may mean letting others into the draft. It means staying grounded while the work is still unfinished. A mentor or friend may see possibilities in the writing before we do. Beginning is also discipline. We stay with the page long enough for something to emerge.
Finding the Right Form for Your Story
Beginning also means asking what kind of writing you want to do. This means getting past the need to stamp ourselves as one particular kind of storyteller. We can struggle when we try to force a memory into a form simply because we have decided that this is the kind of writer we are.
A long life contains many possibilities for finding our way into language. A memory may become a memoir, a family story, an essay, a poem, or something that does not fit neatly into any of these. In my own writing life, here is a book of poetry, and here is a children’s book I wrote. I don’t have to fixate on a genre, but neither is genre random. It is a choice about what I want the writing to do.
Much of what we learn by living resists language. For me, writing remains an awkward beginning: you write, discover, and write again. A finished book may settle one story, but not everything it has stirred.
What Living Longer Gives a Writer
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott reminds writers that the first draft only has to exist. For most older people like me who are told, “You should write about it,” beginning is a steep climb. After a lifetime of doing the same things and different things, taking care of parents and siblings, saving for a home, surviving bad decisions, and hoarding unusual memories, we may still be ignorant of the actual seed experience that will begin our narrative.
We know what we already know about life. The harder part is beginning to write it down.
Writing may begin with a memory that keeps returning, or an ordinary experience that becomes more interesting each time it is told. That may be the seed. But finding the seed is only the beginning. We still have to sit down, find the words, and stay with the page when the writing does not come easily.
So, if a senior who has always wanted to write begins only now, the temptation is to think, I should have started years ago. But having lived longer can give us more to work with. We do not need another writing technique before we begin. We just need to “Just write it,” as Nike says, and let the draft exist. Anne Lamott reminds us that a first draft can be messy, awkward, and imperfect.
The goal is not to prove that I can write a book. First, and more urgently, it is to keep going, giving my life a frame, like pictures in an album. The album keeps the moments. Writing is not an effort to make my life more dramatic than it was, but to give its ordinary moments a steady frame.
