Writing Memoir Draft #1

I always felt confident about writing. From early years in elementary school to later years of college, it seemed to come easy to me. There was something about the process that seemed natural, as if my hands wrote down exactly what my brain was thinking without any interference. I remember how I used to write in my free time, always creating news letters for our family store, or writing letters to my parents when upset rather than verbalizing it. It was an escape route, and required little to no effort when my topic was a "heart and mind topic."


Now, not to say that I never had issues writing. In high school when we wrote about specific topics of little to no interest to me, or in college when we wrote the same response to something four different ways, I cringed. I would stall until the last minute, and then write such six page papers in an hour or less. I never drafted my work, and only revised once the paper was complete. In college years, my roommates and peers would spend hours upon hours writing three page papers and often call on me to help them formulate thoughts into words. I remember sitting there frustrated that they had no idea what to say and no idea on how to create a stimulating sentence. I felt their writing lacked entertainment and substance and was amazed at the different level of writers among my classmates.


Even as I write this, I do not wish to send the message that I am a well written writer. My writing has many faults. I just wish to explain that maybe because I enjoy writing, the act of it caused me no time lost and no sleepless nights before papers were due. However, as college years were filled with mindless writing tasks that never developed me as a writer, I decided to keep a journal about certain times in my life. I felt that during hard times in my life it was a perfect way to draft a "novel" or memoir of such times, and allowed me to not have to discuss it with other people.


I began my little project right after my last grandparent passed away. I remember beginning to write the fun memories and little fun facts of my family tree. It was interactive and happy, yet spoke intimate details of my feelings at the time. As I began to write, the process in which I confided failed me. I wrote and re wrote and deleted and reworked my story as if it for the first time was not matching what I was thinking. Looking back now, after years of rereading the same piece, I realize that my writing was one huge thought. I literally took everything about one time in my life and jammed it together in one "chapter."


It was at this time that I, as a writer, saw the process I had learned so many years earlier. I broke up my thoughts and focused on one smaller step at a time. I looked at my word choice and sentence structure. I began to draft with bullets to keep me focused and distinguish between where one thought should end and another story should start. I found myself with a new chapter and a new confidence in my writing. The natural part eventually came back to me and I began to write in this journal again. 


As a teacher, and still a student, I found the importance of such writing tricks in the writing process. I found myself using every skill that I taught in my writing workshops during student teaching and applied them. I found myself not only to be a teacher of writing, but a practicing writer finding uses for the exact things that I taught. I discovered that it is this realization when we truly become writers; when we actively write, and despite the road blocks and unknown territory we write ourselves into something greater.