Where to begin writing. I awakened with the feeling of having dreamt this writing problem all night long. When I rose at a quarter past six, the driving refrain of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal lyrics looped in my inner ear, “Annie are you okay, are you okay Annie.”
In my dream, I began, “He died, finally. Finally. He died.”
On Friday, my first attempt at a twenty page manuscript was discussed — “workshopped” — as part of Bennington’s graduate writing seminar. Someone asked for confirmation that my father had died. You see, I had begun my story in the middle, at the point when I had reached the limits of multi-tasking and decided to retire to care for my father. In the manuscript, I never came right out and said he died, though I had implied it.
Yes, he died. On January 12, 2013.
They tell you, in writing seminars, to begin with the end in mind. To write with a sense of the feeling that drives your compulsion to write. To understand the fundamental question you are trying to answer. Note the singular: “question.”
Why do I write? Am I really writing about my father, or about me? Why did I decide to devote seven years to caring for my father? During those seven years, how did my relationship with my father change? How did I change? What does it mean to be a father, to have a father, to lose a father? What does it mean to be a daughter? What have I lost by no longer being a daughter? Why did Dad become nicer? Would I have cared for my mother in the way I cared for Dad? Why did I take notes when my mother and father were dying?
My notebook is full of self-interrogation.
When I awakened, I had that feeling that if I went straight to my computer to write, it would be there: the perfect beginning. I had formulated the first paragraph in my sleep. And it had worked.
A half hour later, the sentences have floated apart, smoky tendrils I cannot grasp and put back where they belong.
So I’ll begin, doing the hard work of following images back to elusive memories that await me. And I’ll begin again. Somewhere.
The Henry Chronicles 