Something different on my usual Thankful Thursday. I finished the 21 Days of Wild Writing class from Laura Waggoner’s 27 Powers writing classes. It’s an on-demand class. There is no deadline. In fact, she acknowledges throughout the 21-day course that sometimes, we may skip days because–well, because “life” happens.
Today was my 21st day. The prompt is called “I Write Because,” a piece written by Anele Rubin. The jump-off line for today is “I Write Because”. Here is my first-draft, slightly edited, fifteen-minute piece inspired by that line.
I write because–because I cannot NOT write. I write to get the thoughts running around in my brain on that hamster wheel out and lined up so that they make sense.
I write because if I don’t write it down, I will forget. And forgetting sometimes seems worse than death.
I write because I want to remember how Grandmother took us fishing in the shallow creek under the bridge in Peak, and Elaine caught a gar, and the cars crossing the old wooden bridge rumbled like thunder against the quiet of the day.
I write to remember the night Peak burned–the doctor’s office, the drug store. My cousin Jimmy giving the firemen cold drinks from the ice box in Aunt Mayme’s store, red flames shooting upward in the sky; we could see them from our house two or three miles away.
I write to sort things out, to solve a problem, make a plan.
I write to share my days with old friends from school whom I have seen in forty years.
I write because in February the cherry and apple trees bloom; in March, the jasmine blooms, and the camellia I brought from Gramma’s house is red with blossoms.
I write because the birds are singing between the showers of rain.
I write because my grandson and I had a dinosaur war on his Uncle John’s 35th birthday, and Aaron went back to work after an injury and received a promotion, but he still has to relearn the knots he learned as a Boy Scout twenty years ago.
I write because time is passing and I’m getting older and one day there will be only my words to tell my story.
I write because I have to write. I said it before, I cannot NOT write. I write because I like the feel of the heavy fountain pen in my hand, the feel of the nib moving across the page, the texture of the paper against my palm, the quiet scratching that could almost, but not quiet, drown out the writer’s voice in my head.
I write because it’s raining outside, and the sky wavers between light gray as if the sun wants to break through and the heavy darkness just before the “bottom falls out.”
I write because the dandelions are blooming and turning into puff balls and the false garlic is white bells across the front yard and the honeysuckle will soon bloom and the rose buds are opening.
I write because I have to.
Telling Stories 