Writing Motherhood
This week I’m reviewing Writing Motherhood, by Lisa Garrigues as part of the MotherTalk blog tour. It’s a how-to book, aimed mostly at the beginning writer who is feeling intimidated by a blank page. Garrigues is a friendly, encouraging voice, telling the reader that yes, she does have a story to tell and that she just has to jump in and start writing.
If you’ve read Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott, or Natalie Goldberg‘s books about writing, much of the specific advice — to carry a notebook, to write daily, to take some time to play, to free write first drafts without editing — will seem familiar. But just because Garrigues didn’t invent these techniques out of thin air doesn’t mean that they’re not good advice. And the book contains literally hundreds of suggestions for topics to write about, from birth stories to bandaids. While I can’t imagine anyone finding them all equally inspiring, I can’t imagine reading through the book and not itching to pick up a pen or open up a file over one of them. I think my favorite idea was to write down all the questions your child asks you in the course of a day.
Like Dani, I’m a little skeptical about the inherent virtues of longhand writing. Garrigues is quite adamant that, whatever the virtues of a blog as a way to share writing with a larger audience, it’s no substitute for a Mother’s Notebook. I agree that the public nature of a blog means that I’m not quite as uninhibited as I would be in a private notebook — there are some topics that I’m just not willing to share. And I know that the nature of the medium discourages revision, and that my writing is better when I revise. But knowing that there’s an audience out there reading keeps me writing far more regularly on my blog than I have in my journal in years. Ultimately, I think there’s a role for both. Garrigues loves her journal because it’s the one place she can be truly alone; I love my blog because it’s where I can always find company.
This week, I’ve also been reading some of The Elephant in the Playroom, which is a collection of essays by parents of children with special needs. It’s very much a mixed bag. My favorite piece in it is by Flea from One Good Thing, a version of her post about putting Alex on Ritalin. What makes that essay stand out is that she’s not trying to summarize her entire life as Alex’s mom. Rather, she describes, in exquisite (and hysterical) detail, a few specific moments in that life. Some of the other writers also understand the importance of the moment and describe the phone call they received to find out that their child got into the school of their choice, a walk they took after a night when they didn’t get enough sleep. Others tell, rather than showing.
I know I’ve complained before that too many anthologies about the parenting experience draw too heavily on professional writers. There’s an obvious reason for this — they tend to be good at writing — but it limits the perspectives that we get to hear from. Garrigues believes that every mother has a story worth telling — and gives them the tools they can use to make it a story worth listening to as well.
June 9th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
The way that you describe your blog is the same way I feel about mine. I have kept a journal for years (and still do), but the pressure of writing for an audience keeps me writing much more consistently than I have done in my journal since I was in college. I wouldn’t want to give up either. And I’m going to have to try that question thing!
June 10th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Hi, Elizabeth. I do think the notebook thing is useful for _private_ writing. I use longhand when working out problems in fiction — it’s helpful because there’s only one way to go and my handwriting’s illegible. I’m not tempted to stop and edit. There used to be a wp program that worked similarly by turning everything to asterisks as you wrote. But I don’t think it’s helpful for public writing unless you’re using it as a draft paper, where you’re going to leave lots of room for crossouts and rewrites and scribbling. I keep a longhand journal for my daughter, and it’s some of the slowest and most careful writing I do, because I’m not going to revise much and I’m not going to tear out pages.
June 10th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Thanks for the review. I’ve just finished reading “Writer Mama” and she suggests the same thing with the notebook. But I type twice as quickly as I write, so I lose interest with the long-hand rather quickly.