I mentioned in a post earlier this month that I want to write a book. So today I thought I'd do my daily writing practice and use it to flesh out what I want to write about. (In between tossing a ball for Mittens, who is up and at em at 6:30 am, of course.)
When I'm driving or walking, that's usually when my ideas come. And they come in little flashes, no real explanation. In this case it was "Write a book about home."
So now I'm wondering what the heck my idea-generator meant by that.
I love reading memoirs and collections of personal essays. Ones I've read lately are "The Middle Place" by Kelly Corrigan, and "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris. I feel like I could actually write one myself (and ooh the vampire voices come up when I type that!).
But seriously, I could. I've been blogging for thirteen years. I got the "writing about myself" thing down, I think.
I want to explore the concept of home. I want to do this about Cape Breton, about my relationship with it (as both someone who has lived here my whole life since I was 8 months old, and as someone who was born Away and whose whole family is from Away too). I want to do this about the Earth, about the ground and trees and sky we are all born from and which we must take care of, for our own sake if nothing else. I want to do this about specific towns. I grew up in Baddeck but now I live in North Sydney. I want to do this about relationships: I didn't move out of my mom's house until I was 28, when I moved in with my partner and formed our own home.
I want to tell stories. Stories that I don't even realize yet are waiting to be told. Stories from my own life. When you just kind of look back on your own life, I don't know about you, but mine feels rather normal. It's just ... my life. But when I read the memoirs of other people, yeah, it's their life, but it's in the way they tell the stories. The lessons they draw from what happened. The humour they find in it. The humanity.
(Oh! The humanity!)
Anyway. It's now 6:54. Time to get ready for work, and a dance party. Thanks for reading, as always, and for witnessing me. Saying things out loud, to someone else, is the first necessary step for a big journey, whether that's on foot or around the world or diving deep into a big project. So, thanks for hearing me do that.