I've realized recently that the essay is one of my favorite writing styles. Well, favorite reading styles, I should say, and this based on a consideration of a short list of favorite authors and books: Caroline Knapp, Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, Elizabeth Gilbert, Judith Viorst, "Why I'm Still Married," and "Because I Said So" (the latter two both collections of essays by women).
And what I'm starting to realize is that maybe I could write that way, too. I mean, maybe it would be okay for me to write that way. That I should give myself permission and then start doing it.
I think I've always thought that, to write, you had to have a subject. I don't mean like in English class where you learn to pay attention to your subject and your predicate, that's not the kind of subject I mean. I mean I thought you had to have something big to say, a whole cohesive fluid story to tell, before you could write. And I've never been much for story ideas. I'm way more an observer of story than I am a creator of one.
But what I've realized is that what's common about all the authors and books I listed, plus so many more on my bookshelves, is that the authors write about their lives. The stories they tell are their lives and, often more specifically, their life's journey. And that's the kind of thing where you can't write it out from the beginning knowing how it will wind up in the last chapter.
It's starting to dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I could write like that. Friends have been telling me I should write for as long as I can remember. I write emails to friends, and sometimes the emails turn into novelettes, and later the friends gush at me embarasingly that "Christy, you should be a writer! You should write a book! You've got to write!" and I say, "You know, I actually kind of get that alot, but I don't have a subject." I shrug my shoulders bemusedly and look a little lost or something, and sometimes I add, "I've been waiting for God or life or somebody to give me a subject, but it hasn't happened yet."
I wrote poems from a very young age. When I was in first grade I won first prize, in the entire elementary school, for a poem I wrote. I still remember sitting in my little seat at my little desk in Mrs. Brose's first grade classroom and hearing my name announced over the P/A system... to the whole entire school! Shy little me back then, I hardly knew what do make of that. My poem was apparently so strikingly insightful from one so young as I was then, about the "masks" that people wear to hide their true selves, that my Dad still brings that poem up to me sometimes even now if he makes an observation about who I am and who I've turned out to be all these years later in life. I take him to mean I had a capacity for noting the human condition even way back then, though he never say that directly.
When I was a little older, a young teen spending a lonesome few of weeks of summer at my Grandparents' "ranch" in Northern California, I sat out on the deck of the house every evening and composed a poem in ode to the sunsets and the trees darkly silhouetted against the sky. Later, when I was home again, I took a tape recorder and recorded myself reading the poem aloud dramatically while a movement of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture played on the record player. I confess I was a bit morosely dramatic in those days.
For years I've filled journals with my thoughts and observations about life and people and books and experiences. I set up this blog site with the idea of trying my hand more intentionally at writing, to have both the creative and the emotional outlet. But I haven't done much with it, maybe because in a way I haven't given credence to my own writing because I'm not creating a story, like writing a novel, with a beginning, middle, and end. But I think I need to quit cutting myself off before I even get started, quit setting limitations on myself based on misquided ideals. Many excellent writers - with valuable things to say, even - write in essay form, and even have their work published. It's not that I necessarily have a lofty goal of someday getting published (though that would be pretty darn cool). It's just that, I guess, it's a part of myself that I feel like I should explore and develop. The truth is that I often find myself "writing" in my head, while I'm driving in my car or working in the kitchen or taking a shower or walking the dog or whatever. I "write" stuff all time, but I rarely capture it or put it down anywhere. And even when I do, it usually sits in the background of this blog site inn "draft" format and never gets finished, let alone "published" (to the blog). So, I've decided to start trying to do something different about that.
So here I am, I'm writing.
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