The next decade....what's in store?

Sounds like my SELF

I didn't leave the computer until about 3 this morning. After I turned in, I wasn't tired so read part of my SELF magazine. From the early pages I knew this one was going to be better than O. You bet.

In one feature, they asked 13 'wise women to reflect on the life decisions, large or small, that shaped them into whot they've become today'. Several of them made me look inward, but this one especially got me thinking....

GIVING UP LONELINESS
As a child of divorce, I grew up thinking that relying on others was dangerous. Love died. People changed. It was better to be independent and self-sufficient. By 14, I could cook, clean and take care of myself for a week at a time.

As an adult I continued to perform my one-woman show. I avoided roommates. I chose a solitary profession. I fell in love with unavailable people. Outwardly I was confident, but inside I was lonely.

Ultimately I had to admit what I'd grown up denying: No woman is an island. So I chose to take off my mask of self-sufficiency and let others begin to know me. I deepened relationships with my family and made more nurturing friends. I met someone who was available and, for once, I stood still. I've since replaced my one-woman show with an ensemble piece. And I've never been happier.

Rebecca Walker, editor of WHAT MAKES A MAN: 22 WRITERS IMAGINE THE FUTURE

So I got to thinking....

1. Am I lonely?

2. Do my friends really know me?

3. Am I a one-woman show?

And I answered myself....

1. Most times not really.

2. I think so....ask them.

3. Most definitely....I was just thinking that the only real relationship that I've had lasted for 8 months, the explanation was that I moved away, but it's quite possible if I hadn't moved away I would have got tired of the monotony, the sameness, the routine, and ended it. Because I am self-sufficient. I don't need anybody to cook for me, wash the sink load of dishes I've been too tired to do for the past 2 days, bring my favourite flavour ice cream.....or do I?

Hmmm, maybe that one not so settled yet. But paragraph 2 is me 100% except for the fell in part with unavailable people. The difference is I didn't fall in love with them. I must be a magnet.

Anyway, another of the 13 wise women wrote something that I connected with as well.....

BECOMING A WRITER

When I was a kid, I loved to write. Nothing earth-shattering - I had no drawers full of novels or stacks of stories, only diaries with entries that consisted mostly of "tonight Mommy made lamb chops and pease" or later, "Oh God, I love him so much." I wrote for pleasure, without thinking. Then, my freshman year in college, I got pregnant, married and expelled. It was 1959. By 36, I had four kids, two ex-husbands and a long list of things I'd failed at. I could, however, roast a mean chicken.

At that point, I viewed writers as a group apart. They knew something secret, something big, something I didn't. Now and then I'd sit down with pen and paper, but after a few sentences I'd crumple the page. "Who do you think you are?" a voice in my head demanded. "You haven't even read MOBY DICK." Then one rainy afternoon I heard a story told at a funeral and I couldn't wait to get home and write it down. My first attempt was terrible, but instead of flinging my pen at the wall, I decided to try again. The story was most important than my ego, and five hours later there were three pages I liked. I was 46, but at last I knew the secret: There was no secret. To be a writer you don't have to start right, you just have to start.

Abigail Thomas.

What struck a chord with me was "To be a writer you don't have to start right, you just have to start". Do you know I started to write a short story several years ago....well it was a semi-autobiography. I gave my brother to read and he laughed at it, and so I deleted it from the computer.

But while in Grenada in April, I was cleaning out the boxes I left with all and sundry for safekeeping in 2001. There, in between the lizard crap, was an old notebook. For some reason I don't like throwing away notebooks. You bet....the handwritten story was in there.

Of course now I would write it differently, having had a lot of practice first writing stories from England, then this blog, I guess I've improved a bit.

I saw Sis's ex-mother-in-law in Miami last week and the first thing she asked was "Where's the book?" This was a question many people asked when I just started to send them the stories from England. So I thought of a title "Somefink to write home about: Diaries of a Yardie Yamfoot in the Motherland" and they would be short episodes rather than a running book.

The title of the semi autobiographical one would have the words "Croaking Lizard" in it, because there have been two episodes with those creatures which have been profound.

So I need to do like Abigail and start writing! Maybe I could become like J K Rowling and be a billionaire off my books.

Posted by yamfoot at September 6, 2004 02:58 PM