The Writing Process

Writing memoir is a challenge and a joy. Writing the Levittown Stories is the joyful part because unlike many authors of memoir, my childhood was a pleasure, filled with love within an intact family that dispensed affection instead of abuse. The memories come like little bits of chocolate or peppermint candy--sweet on the tongue and raising endorphin levels to joyous heights. They come unbidden or with the slightest nudge of my writer's prod.

I hope my readers enjoy these stories about a time and place that lives in my heart and head. They depict life in its most magnificent glory. Someday I hope to produce them in a book for my children and grandchildren so they will know exactly where I came from and what I am about. But there are other memoirs to write, not so glorious or pleasant. Perhaps that will be another blog or maybe those stories will stay inside notebooks and hidden from public view.

That is a struggle many memoirists have--how much to tell and who to allow to hear the stories. You must tell the truth, but how much of it do you reveal? Sometimes revealing the story to yourself is the most difficult thing to do. But we must, as writers, get our stories down and out in the world, like a tiny infant who clamors to be born and breathe her own air. These stories need to breathe too and maybe once they do I can breathe freely at last--unburdened and free of the stories that hold me back and hold me down.

It's all good! Life is good! And time is a wasting--so back to the story writing.