Writing to Think

Here's something I wrote this week that isn't in the #NaNoWriMo novel but is helping me think about it. And writing this is was a procrastination tactic this week (gah, very, very behind). Oh well.

A great writing teacher once bravely admitted to our class during a training that she could only think in a clear, organized way when she was writing. This was a revelation to me, knowing that other people's brains worked that way too. My mind is often just mleep-mleeps and song lyrics unless I'm writing things down. So here's some of what I've been writing and thinking about.
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“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
-Joan Didion

The major outlines of our lives, as we remember them, are carved by the stories we tell over and over again. The fuzzy details that shade in between become almost inconsequential after awhile. We know that story by heart. Especially my tight-knit family, I barely need to hear a sentence of a one of these stories before I know where it's going. My dad likes to joke, "Stop me if you've heard this one already." He's not telling me something that's new in content, and that isn't why he's telling it anyway. He's telling it to remind us, and himself, what's important.

I have a selective memory for details, so I love when friends tell their version of things that happened when we were kids, or in college, or sometimes last week. This sounds self-centered, but it's really the details I never would have remembered or noticed that end up being the funniest. My most cherished friendships are with people who have a whole arsenal of these stories.

But what if some of the details that a friend filled in weren't for the better? What would happen if someone brought up a part of the story that soured it for you? "You were pissed at me that day" or "We had to leave that party because there was a fight" or "That guy was actually the one who dumped me freshman year."

Now imagine that, this jarring re-framing of stories, happening over and over again in quick succession.

Maybe you have seen this: People you barely remember, maybe women who've gotten married and changed names so you definitely can't tell who they are anymore, scanning in photos from high school onto Facebook. Everyone is all braces and acne, hoodies and flannel, bad eye makeup and stringy hair. And then they start tagging everyone. I always wonder if that triggers, for some people, a very strong desire to delete themselves from Facebook and crawl into a cave.

There are some stories we would rather not go over, and that if we revisited them entirely openly even with acquaintances, some pretty uncomfortable dissonance would emerge.

What if you couldn't hide your side of the story?
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So, back to the #NaNoWriMo: I have to more than double my manuscript this weekend if I have any hope of staying on track.

7,702 words down, 42,298 to go. Let's see if I can hit 18,000 by Sunday night.