~rivers can be bridges or gates sealed tight
in the same way roots are anchors or chains
bound to veins & after all this time building boats
& watering seeds one has to wonder who isn't letting go?~
Goals - 500 words a day / 15,000 words total: hopefully including 3 scenes + 3 related poems
> I also don't actually know if 500 words is too many / too few ~ so may adjust half-way through; we'll see! Last time I "attempted" nano I tried 250 words a day and failed miserably - but also that was poetry so was pretty challenging to meet that word count. Mainly I'd just be thrilled to have 3 unpolished scenes and 3 poems by the end of July. ... and if all else fails maybe I'll just do some river photography and call that poetry? to be determined.
Premise - In college I took a memoir writing / reading course, and I think about my writing for it very often. I feel like the memoir writing I did in college has honed some themes that have become prevalent in my writing (& especially my poetry) and enabled me to bring in some sense of symbolism and "greater meaning" from my life story. It should be said that memoir writing isn't just autobiography or diary writing ~ there's ideally a sense of real "story" with even plot, conflict, and resolution / meaning / recurring motifs / symbolism / characterization etc.
I've been pretty interested in creative semi-biographical historical writing (isn't that a mouthful?) & other forms of creative nonfiction recently in relation to my family-history and ancestry research, and I imagine that my writing for this project will be useful for that project as well ... whatever it turns into, which in addition to the chapbook component is becoming a mixed-media project in the worst and best ways. You can read more in my writers corner thread about that project .
Some of the "life story" themes I want to cover for this July memoir writing are surrounding moving, transit, family & spiritual revelation. And I think it'll be a perfect opportunity to spend some time thinking through my experiences of moving because I'll actually be at home for July for the first time since December 2019! Probably understandably, because most of the writing will be more for personal usage and perhaps future poetry-inspo, I don't anticipate posting any of it on YWS, but I'd like to do three poems on the same themes in addition to the memoir writing so maybe I'll post those! And will try to post some updates along the way too!
Outline - ("Scene" ideas I could cover)
> Moving 2004 (west-bound)
> Moving 2019 (east-bound)
> Moving 2020 (south-bound)
> Moving 2021 (north-bound; home-bound)
> Pilgrimage to Ancestral Homesites + Grave Searching
> Airplanes + Un-homecoming
> Un-naming + Forged Baptismal Records
> Planetary Convergence + Star Watching
> House-cleaning + Mourning
> River Musings + Drowning Thoughts
> Losing Family Pictures
> Housefire
> Coal Mining
> Being Stranded
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