What has changed since I began graduate school? This time last year my home smelled like freshly baked french bread and sometime a crockpot of homemade yogurt could be spotted on the counter. I was super idealistic about the home cooking tasks I could accomplish as well as my studies. This was before I pooled all my creativity onto the page.
A memoir requires much more dedication than I ever imagined. In my case, I often write eighty pages on one topic, just to find my voice on the matter. In that process I think, wow, I have a whole other book on just this topic. Then I reread the maze of my mind and realize how little of it is even interesting to me...the person who lived these things.
There are emotional moments in writing where I have written about the topic of my choice and it sounds like my seventh grade diary, but not in a good way. Wow, I was super dramatic in seventh grade. I can face the fact that I still am, but maybe slightly less so than that voice...that girl...I've grown since them. I have three of my own dramatic little girls.
Remolding my voice has been a threading of several layers of myself. There is such an amazing feeling once something starts to sound like a real person...more like me. People aren't just the person he/she is in present time. Nope, people are made up of complexly woven together moments of time. Sometimes, one has no idea what stitches together what. I was surprised to see that in the middle of wishing I could become a famous actress, and noticing I really liked psychology, that there was also a person who loved to process all kinds of thoughts on the page. Thank you Montaigne for giving us a reason to try out our ideas. It probably has saved my sanity.
As for the woman who made loaves of bread daily, I plan to do that again. Bread has been replaced by things like homemade almond milk...awesome stuff, when made from scratch. I still make fun things like cookies because mine are dairy free. I will admit that cooking is actually a part of my writing process. There is reading, then writing a bunch of ramblings, then chopping up veggies for dinner, and yes that wonderful moment hits...I know what I plan to write. It is amazing how real life kills writers block.
So, this time last year I had no idea how to make sure school work would be finished and mommy Marion wouldn't be too grouchy. Now, I have figured out some kind of a dance where my home life is just as much as my writing life as my writing life is. I get grouchy about not finishing a book I am reading at times. Getting lost in the worlds other people have created for me is a whole new balancing act.
For now, I can take a deep breath and smile. Writing is a pretty awesome way to spend extra time.
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