Summer

Spring goes out like a petulant teenager. It’s cold. I pull on a hoodie, long pants, and socks (socks!) to stay warm, and close the doors and windows. When I pass by the den on the way downstairs to the woman cave to write, I spy Maya curled up on a blanket on the sofa wearing her own little pink hoodie. Gerry must have taken pity on her before he left for men’s meeting.

Writing requires vast amounts of courage.

Sue Monk Kidd

I serve a hot lunch and lose a couple of chess games while we eat. Gerry goes out to do some shopping and I head back to the woman cave to work. I switch the heater on for a few minutes to take off the chill. Rain falls in torrents.

The most powerful strand in memoir is not expressing your originality. It’s tapping into your universality.

Cheryl Strayed

The gift is a day of quiet time in which to write and read so all is not lost. I start a new book: Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature by Meredith Maran. In these virtual pages, I find kindred writing spirits with those I dare not say I have something in common. (The quotes in this post are from that book.)

People think my memoirs are very easy to write because I do sound like I talk. They don’t know it takes me five drafts for it to sound that way.

Anne Lamott

This morning it’s summer and warmer, and the sun is shining. The forecast is promising, not as hot as I’d like, but after yesterday it will seem tropical. Everything’s relative.