As I sit here at 5 am thinking of where to go next with my writing, I think to myself that I still have so many stories that I haven't written. So so many.
You see, my two books cover very specific periods of my life. My childhood mostly and my dad's death and some of my public defense career. What I haven't written about is my 20s when I was working my way through college. And I also haven't detailed much of my 30s and law firm life and my 40s which include my infertility struggles which I've only written a couple of pieces about. (As an aside, I had been working on a series of infertility essays. Then I put it aside. Maybe I'm just not ready. It's a hard, triggering topic to write about in my 50s staring at my life.)
The true beauty of writing memoir is that there's always more to cover. In my opinion, the very best essay pieces and full length memoirs are specific to a theme. They're not biographies. On the contrary, they're literary exercises in excavation. It's about the digging. The finding. The realizations. It's about figuring stuff out. Memoir is about growth.
So I have decided that I will continue to dig and dig and then dig some more because my life is full of stories to write about. The everyday rote routine of life never ceases to amaze me. Plus, if a person can write a magnum opus of a novel about one day in Leopold Bloom's life like James Joyce did, then I can write a series of books about all of the highs and lows and joys and sadness inherent in my life. Can't I? Can't you?
I think so.
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