back to work

Well, Allie said that first sentance I maligned in my previous post was actually good. So I guess I'm in that state of doubt that's so common to starting a new writing project. Her aprobabation was helpful (she read more than that one sentance, of course). I went to Tea Drops and wrote some more. Got the overview section all put together, which is probably the toughest part. Beginnings are always a challenge; they've got to be on point, fast. So now I'm feeling back on track.

I think this family memoir is the right project for me to do next, if only for the feelings it raises in me. I feel meloncholy, not quite pleasant blues and not quite agonizing depression. I'm in a very uncomfortable place in between. And the feelings aren't evenly mixed; they come in microwaves. One split-second I feel elated, the next I feel like weeping. This is a good climate for creativity, methinks.

Part of what really resonates about this with me is that it brings me back to the place where I first fell in love with words and began dreaming of being a writer: my grandma and grandpa's house. I spent a few summers there in my young adulthood, and I read a lot, and I tried to figure out what it would take to write the kind of stuff I was reading. I always sensed that the raw materials were right there in that place, in my grandparents hip little modernist home and surrounding lush yard full of perrennials and tall trees. But more than that sense of place, it was the placeness of my family, or, more accurately, the story-ness of my family, which all families have, but mine seemed to have it more so, I guess because I was looking for it.

SO now I think I've found it, and it's resonating with me in that wonderfully awkward way such things resonate.

I'm on track again. For me, I guess, vacations never last long.