Monday’s Memoir
I’ve spent a good part of the
afternoon trying to organize and separate a mess of papers pertaining to my
family history and memoir writing projects. I have a terrible habit of
scribbling things on pages of steno notebooks I carry around. They are each
supposed to be for a specific project, like one for my Alaska Sled Dog stuff
and another for my serious socio-political essays and diatribes, one for
current to-do lists and projects, goals etc. and still another for odd tidbits
that pop into my quirky memory and may trigger an essay or vignette, an entry
into the life-calendar or the register of livestock I worked with and so on. Even worse, I may find things on line or in
reading old journals etc. and scribble them on some errant scrap of paper that
just happens to be within reach. The result of course is a scrambled mess!
I’ve always made lists and notes
and reminders, written pages of goals and resolutions (in earlier years I did
them whereas I now do goals) and dissertations of philosophy and such. I laugh
to read some dating back into the mid 1960s and seeing how much is still the
same and where the changes occurred. I really make a fetish about trying to
stay organized but I think I am a natural born slob, not to mention a packrat,
a squirreler-awayer, and at times just plain lazy or rushed into throwing
things into folders, boxes or a handy draw haphazardly. Of course that creates its
own special punishment, for eventually you have to fix it. You are looking desperately
for something you know you saw, wrote, found, or suddenly need and it has to be
in that folder, this box or the third drawer there.
Out it comes. Piles all over the
floor of like stuff—until you forget which goes where. Or you get distracted
stopping to read something that looks utterly fascinating though you have no
recollection of ever reading or even seeing it before! There are days I have
the attention span of a kindergarten level gnat and anything can distract me,
especially from a tedious and tiresome chore. I’ve fought that today and I
actually did make some headway. Papers, notebook pages and haphazard jottings
are roughly sorted into several categories which make sense to me although they
would probably blow anyone else’s mind. And each is stowed in its own labeled
file folder. Brave for me—for now!
The next step is to find several
partial drafts of three related but dissimilar projects in my computer—probably
on my main document storage flash drive-- and begin the task of putting these
notes into digital form. Some will go on existing lists and tables, appendices
of a sort to one or more of those three big projects.
You might ask: what are they? Well,
one is a family history with quite a bit of genealogy and anecdotes that have
come down through both sides of my family. There I keep finding new marriages and
begats and property acquired and moves made, an occasional perhaps true story
about something some ancestor or distant relative did and so on. That one doesn’t
have a title. I began it the winter after my husband died, working on what I
knew of his family first for the kids and grandkids and then picking up a start
I had made for my two brothers and me after our mother had passed. I had a
loose leaf binder for each of us with photos, documents and a fairly short narrative.
I’ve had my youngest brother’s since his
death and looking through it realize the whole thing needs updates and additions.
The decision to write my own life
story came along sometime during those processes. I have not gotten too far but
it’s inching along. I’m about ready to get through high school in that
narrative. For now it is called Shoving
Smoke and Herding Cats which pretty
well portrays the way I always seemed to have gone about life!
Then when I was participating in the
Older Writer’s League (our self chosen moniker) at the Senior Center
I went through those short works
today and got them into a loose leaf notebook. There is too much—damn, but I am
a wordy creature! There is also duplication and redundancy among some of the
individual pieces so that will take more work too. I may get brave and try to
format it for an e-book myself and then get it up on Amazon or somewhere. I
will have a long learning curve there, especially since I want to put photos
into it as illustrations for many of the stories. Anyway, that is ‘where I’m at’
right now and the excuse for not having a new piece ready to go—with photos.
Next week I will do my best to have one for you!
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