On Writing

I first started writing my childhood memoir in a high school writing class. It wasn’t until 57 years later that I continued writing it in a class at the Y. I finally finished in 2019, for my 80th birthday, and presented a copy to each of my kids and grandkids. I called it “Tales from the Boarding House,” a collection of stories on the first 21 years of my life.

What took so long for me to return to writing, I’m not sure. Probably, I needed all the years in between to recognize the value of growing up in a boarding house and how it influenced the years I had ahead of me. Looking back, I realize that my need to be surrounded by family and friends goes back to the boarding house community; there was always someone around for conversation and support.  Most certainly, I needed the reflection and writing time that retirement provided, as well the deadlines and support from my writing classes.

When I began writing about my later years—getting married, raising kids, getting divorced, being a single mom, getting remarried, spending summers in the Berkshires and at the Cape—my experience as a high school English teacher came in handy. I knew the importance of structure, transitions and editing. But I knew little about what makes for interesting content and how to hold the attention of a reader. Over the course of the last ten years, I’ve had two talented writing teachers who’ve taught me how to construct a story, to say more with fewer words, to connect with my childhood and recall the small but memorable incidents that influenced the person I had become and, above all, to find my own voice.

With each class, it became easier to face the blank page. Sometimes, all I needed was a working title—The End of a Marriage, Life Without a Dad, or A Big Bad Terrible Week.  Or an opening sentence—I’ve Never Had a Room of my Own, How Did It Go So bad So Quickly

or I’ve Always Loved to Curse. Most ideas came to me swimming in the pool, at the supermarket, on the subway, and walking along Broadway. Others from articles in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and TV news events—Standing in Line, Cleaning Up Before You Go, and Close Friendships Take Time.

After settling on a title, or a first line, I slowly make my way down the page—jotting down my ideas as they come to me. I have never been able to write an outline, even in high school. My thoughts are not linear; they’re all over the place. Putting them in order is part of the fun: ranking them, putting flesh on their bare bones, connecting them, and determining the flow of the story. Then I keep returning to the draft, time and time again, to add, to delete, to find just the right word, transition, and ending. Often, I stop writing after I’ve written down a new thought, so I can look forward to expanding on it the next day. However, as much as I enjoy the writing process, and despite the number of stories I’ve written, I still need a class and a deadline to bring me to the writing table .

            Last year, I decided to start a blog called “From the Boarding House,” from which to post my childhood memoir and add more recent writings. I’d had a few hours of blog training which included how to post and edit, but I still needed to learn how to update the blog, which is a huge technical challenge for me. So I asked my daughter, who’s a graphic designer, to be my technical advisor and she agreed.

Here, too, I needed a deadline. I gave myself to June 30 to go public—with an extension clause, just in case. Good thing. It took me til November. I still need my daughter’s help in posting photos, but I’m learning as I go along, and it’s giving me a tremendous sense of satisfaction to know my stories are being read.

Even an elderly amateur needs an audience.