Avoid worrying about whether what you write will be worth reading. Instead, ask whether it is worth writing; and, if so, how it may best be written. Avoid worrying about whether what you write will be original. When originality occurs at all … it occurs as a by-product of conviction. Laughable error and profound discovery are born of the same freedom.
~ Robert Grudin
At the end of 2009, after an intense twelve months of remembering, reconstructing and connecting, I finished a 250-page memoir for my adult children. When I began the endeavor I had no idea I would become so thoroughly involved and invigorated—as well as puzzled and perplexed—by the process; I had no idea I would uncover and eventually connect so many latent memories. Writing just a line or two had the ability speak volumes as wave after wave of recollection effortlessly tumbled onto the page.
Every day I awoke energized because I knew I had something in the works and I was joyous at the prospect of each new day delivering another moment of discovery, another string of connections; or as Abraham Lincoln said, finding "...those mystic chords of memory."
So many times as I began writing a new essay I would stop midway, stunned by what my mind was recalling and how those recollections were streaming onto the pages. I know this should not have puzzled me; I have always been completely aware my writing often takes me down uncharted paths. Paraphrasing E. M. Forster, there are times I do not “…know what I think until I see what I say.”
My life has been rife with perplexing and contradictory issues; most of them exacerbated by my actions; many of them not near as mystifying as I felt they were at the time and far too many where I wish I had shown better impulse control.
All in all, maybe there’ve been times when I have just been too given to angst; when I have made a mountain out of that old molehill; when I have examined too closely rather than just ‘let it be.’
