Friday, February 04, 2011

writing it down

In an unusual confluence of pressures and demands, both Ed and I hurriedly went off to attend to work issues early this morning. But somewhere in the middle of those early hours, I took time to look at the NYTimes and I allowed myself to be amused by this article (on the subject of the proliferation of writers who want to publish, for the world to see, their memoirs).

I like the opening line: A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.

But I don’t like the overall message: that if you live an ordinary life, you do not deserve to see yourself in print.

I never thought that it is the extraordinariness of life that made you an interesting candidate for a memoir (though obviously extraordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances have a foot in the door there). Instead, I thought it was about whether you had an original story to tell and could tell it well. Original need not be fame-driven or revolutionary in nature.

Then, toward the end of the article, I see that the author has a message to those who do not have either an interesting story to tell or the ability to craft something halfway readable: go blog.

Well, sure, you can do that, but why equate a blogging field with a pile of nothingness? If you’re going to have a boring and poorly written blog, isn’t that going to give you the same meager returns as a boring and poorly written memoir would?

People write for many reasons. I see no reason to discourage anyone from writing. If you don’t want to read fragile efforts of another soul, on paper or on the Internet – don’t then! But if someone writes, and there is even only one other person who reads her or his writing (a mother? a friend?) then we’ve got a conversation going. And what could be better than two (or more) people, groping to understand one another.


In other news, after attending to the nagging details of work, Ed and I broke away and by 4, we were at Owen Park. Just five minutes from my condo, infinitely pretty but especially in the late daylight of a winter day.


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We clicked into our skis and took off. I was so dazzled by the light in the woods and over the prairie, that I managed to crash at the bottom of a steep descent.


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Serves me right. In the same way that people ought not text and drive, they should also not ski and take photos.


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And did I mention that I had the pleasure of watching, for a brief second, a wild turkey consider seriously the possibility of befriending Ed?


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The turkey thought better of it and flew away.

Wet, somewhat cold, but ultimately satisfied, we returned home and Ed fell asleep before I even finished dinner.