Roads to Joy

So the new task for Writing Group this coming week is to write something about ‘walls, frontiers, margins.’ Could be poetry, fiction, or even creative non-fiction in the form of memoir. Pace John Irving, who wants us to believe that his creativity is so much more than reality, but I suspect that novels are a kind of emotional memoir, a mulling over of an author’s life, developed as a story. Else, to be frank, why write?

However that may be, I hadn’t thought, at this stage of life, that I might sit down with myself to work on a personal memoir. In the first place, memoirs are for famous people, aren’t they? Or people whose lives have been particularly interesting, or at least, people who have the capacity to write interestingly about their own experience. The Bookseller at the End of the World comes to mind in this context.

And yet, and yet. I knew almost immediately what I might write about, when the task was discussed yesterday afternoon, and after a little snooze to compensate for the hard day, I did sit down and write my single side about walls. In memoir mode. It felt like I hadn’t actually written for weeks! But I have kept up reasonably faithfully with this friendly blog. That’s my fun, I guess, not really my regular writing ‘job.’

Anyway, my task sorted by the time the evening proper arrived, I felt good, pleased. How easy it can be to find joy, if you know where and how to look for it! How challenging we might make it for ourselves to even try.