I have needed something that would move me out of a frozen place of fear where I have been afraid to move forward or backward hence being stuck in place. I have needed something to create movement in my life and open up a new vein of creativity so that new life could flow in. I couldn’t imagine how to move out of this place. Enter my dear friend of decades, Katya Sabaroff Taylor, one of my writing teachers and mentors, who has written several books, and taught writing for several decades to people in every imaginable venue including in prisons. (Her book Prison Wisdom, the collected writings of men and women she worked with from 1991 – 2015, is simply phenomenal.) Click on her name to go to her website to read all about her work and books. Katya is so creative and writes with different people, stories, and she asked me to partner with her to do the same. She has asked me in the past and I have said no because I felt shy and kind of afraid. She asked me again recently and I said yes. Why not? I’m still shy, and kind of afraid, but all of a sudden this feels like just what I have been waiting for. Katya calls it “The 700 Word Story Club” and I have her permission to write about it here.
The way it works is that both of the participants choose a noun. They then share their noun with their partner ending up with 2 nouns. Those two nouns are the jumping off place into your story and both must use both nouns. This time Katya has chosen “Window” and I have chosen “Pomegranate.” So we have those 2 words, we have to write a 700 word story based on those 2 words, and we have to send each other our stories before Friday. As I have a standing meeting at 8 on Thursday night I will send my story to Katya before then. I am excited, and nervous, but I already have an idea about how I am going to begin. Katya said “Don’t worry, once you begin the story will write itself!” I’m not sure about that but the story is already unfolding in my mind. Katya does this with other people, in fact has done it since 2010, so she has written lots of stories. I have read a handful of them over the years and they are so good, I would love to read a book of Ka’s stories but though she has published several books this is not something she is ready to do yet. It would be a real treat to be able to read a collection of them. I hope she does decide to publish them one day.
And here’s the thing. I have, as I have written many times on this blog, written since I was 9, regularly. I filled notebooks with stories and poems. In my life as a writer however I have written, primarily, non-fiction. I wrote for magazines and newspapers from 20 well into my 40’s, have had a handful of small presses, all dedicated to writing about subjects coming out of my life from early on, writing about childbirth, homebirth, breastfeeding, family life, homeschooling, gardening, and more. I taught journal writing classes for nearly 4 decades and was zealous about keeping a diary. But in 2010 when I bought this house and was moving in I shocked everyone by having almost 400 volumes of my diaries destroyed.
The thing is I had planned to will them to my eldest daughter with the other 2 kids having the ability to access them through her. We imagine our children are going to really know us in this way. There was a family joke. I used to say, “I’m going to leave all of my diaries to Jenny (my eldest), my wedding rings to Rachel (my middle child), and my rolltop desk (A huge fancy rolltop my husband gave me on Christmas a year after we were married in 1975) to my son Aaron. The joke was that Jenny used to say to Rachel, a little more than tongue in cheek, “I’ll trade you the journals for the rings!” Ha ha ha. People wondered if I worried about my family reading my private diaries but they were all on shelves in my office. The family was really just OVER Mom’s journalling. The thing is I lived with a journal and pen in my hand. I wrote EVERYTHING, every time anyone moved or breathed, every single milestone my children made, their handprints, every gift they got for birthdays or Christmas, the whole story of our family, there was so much there that was wonderful, and those are the things I feel sad about not having anymore, BUT they were filled with decades of processing therapy and a lot of it was about having been sexually abused from 4-18. The journals were where I processed it all, including things about my marriage to their dear father that they just did not need to read. In the end I made the decision to have them destroyed.
The hundreds of volumes would have been an albatross around their necks. It was a terrifying, heartbreaking thing to do, and in the end, liberating. I felt like a slate was wiped clean. I used to, even in just moving around the house, always have a journal with me. I recorded everything. And there was the week I spent at my dying father’s bedside, he who had abused me. He suffered terribly at the end and I forgave him everything, not for him, but for me, I needed to let go to survive. I filled an entire journal in that one week. And it was not pretty, and it was not something I wanted my children to read or to know. The journals were destroyed, and I stopped teaching journal classes. I have never been able to keep a journal in the same way again. I have tried. I have bought countless blank books, some very beautiful, some expensive, some ordinary, but I start and I can’t continue on. To what end? I ask myself. I had always imagined that I was leaving a legacy for my family. When I realized it would be more burden than legacy and destroyed them I could never look at them in the same way again. I was already blogging, and I made the shift to these posts. They are ephemeral, they will last for a time, and that’s all that I need them to do. But, through the years, I also wrote novels.
Writing novels is an interesting thing, it is a completely different experience than writing non-fiction. It is freer, more exciting, because you can create the characters, create a whole universe, and tell a story that may, at times, come close to real life (or not at all) but it is a whole different way of writing. I loved it. I wrote several novels through the years and though I didn’t sell one I did have a few near misses and one unbelievable experience. I had written a novel called “The Threshold Of Pain.” This novel explored how the threshold of pain is so different for each of us. How, one might ask, does someone who survived the horrors of Nazi Germany come through it and live a productive life while someone who seemingly has everything ends up committing suicide? That was the premise and it fascinated me. I wrote a very odd story, pre-internet days. It was a love story between two very unusual people who, because of circumstances, had a love affair for years via phone, letters, even very elaborate occasions where he sent entire gourmet meals delivered to her with bouquets of flowers, fine wines, and more than you can imagine, and they ate together, over the phone (again, no internet, no Skype, nothing that we have today). On the cusp of them finally deciding they will risk everything and meet in person he is killed. In the end, through a breathtaking (I have been told) series of circumstances, she plans, and executes, her own suicide. It had a Romeo and Juliet feel to it. (The odd thing is that today, with the technology we have, this kind of relationship could happen. But then it wasn’t even on the horizon, or, I suppose it was, but I had no way of knowing that. It was pure imagination based on a very secret experience I will never reveal.)
The thing is that it was at a time when I had met and become friends with a mother and son who ran a very high-end boutique. She looked like Coco Chanel. Every year they had a huge fashion show that people traveled all over to attend and all of the proceeds went to AIDS research. We had become very close and they read the novel. They were (in their words) so “blown away by it” that they asked if they could have copy bound in leather to keep and I said yes. The novel was never published, but it changed lives, the lives of those two people and others who read it. And the sad thing is that because it was before the days of the internet I never had it on a hard drive, only the hard copy (paper) and I lost it during my house fire in 2014. That loss was more devastating than the loss of the 400 journals.
After that I stopped writing fiction. There were no more stories. In a desperate attempt to understand my complicated life I wrote only non-fiction. I tried, a couple of times, to do NaNoWriMo but quit early on. “The Threshold Of Pain” had been such a uniquely powerful experience in so many ways, and it was lost forever, I didn’t have the heart to go on. Even writing this 700 word story is scary for me, but it might just represent a shift that needs to happen for me in my life, and so, after I feed the dogs and make my own dinner, I am going to sit down here and write about a window and a pomegranate. I am excited and afraid, and I am going to do it.
Where might this lead? I don’t know. But I think opening the door to fiction, and writing stories again, may just save me. Writing stories save me through years of abuse when I was a very frightened little girl. Now, perhaps, fiction will save me again, as, in my 60’s, I am wondering how I will face the rest of my life. I am going to try anyway. 700 words might just save my life.
The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda
Dear Maitri, that 700 word story sounds like fun. I have a friend who writes Flash Fiction. I tried a little of that myself.
You destroyed all those diaries! At first reading that I felt shocked but as I read your reasons I totally understand. Maybe it’s time I do the same. Most of mine is all about trying to figure out what was wrong with me, then learning I had agoraphobia. I wrote about my panic and anxiety, my fights with my mother, how I didn’t fit in and too much else. Really, who would be interested? Would it make them understand me more, why I didn’t come to their wedding or know my Great Grandsons? I don’t know. I’ve had people say “don’t do that”.
Oh how I wish I could read your story about The Threshold of Pain. No it can’t be re written. I’ve been trying to make a novelette out of a story I had published in a Confession magazine way back when. It isn’t happening even though I love the subject so much (like the movie Somewhere in Time). Since they bought all rights I can’t really do anything with the story 🙁
I hope you decide to write fiction if it feels right to you. I can see how that fire just made you feel totally helpless and lost. So good you are finding yourself again and healing.
Much Love, Jean
Thank you dear Jean and yes, I destroyed all those diaries. You know the thing is unless you are famous for some historical reason who, really, is going to read them? That’s what I ask myself, and as I said I had very real reasons for not wanting them to survive me. I would not have been doing my children a service to have left behind hundreds of journals filled with so much pain and things they just didn’t need to read. In the end, as much as I recorded so much of our family’s history which was lovely, I mainly used them for myself, for catharsis, for healing, and that is a very private affair. At least it was for me. We each, of course, must decide for ourselves what we must do.
And yes, I lost more in that fire than people realize, things that were irreplaceable, as people do in such a tragedy. It makes it hard to go on in so many ways. It’s not the material goods that are so hard to lose but the pieces of ourselves and our lives that we can never get back. And my beloved parrots. It is hard to ever truly recover from those kinds of losses, but we have no choice but to go on. What other choice do we have? And no, we can’t rewrite the past, we must forge ahead and write new stories. The past is gone, the future awaits us, what years we have left must be spent doing the work that is pertinent for us now, or so I believe and shall try to do.
I am beginning tonight. I am afraid, but I have begun. There is no other choice but this…
Well, here’s another little something you might or might not know about me…
I started journaling for myself 20 years ago this month, as part of my New Year’s resolution to “cultivate a lighter side” to my personality. I all but stopped journaling in the last few turbulent years, but with my commitment to writing Morning Pages, I am journaling consistently again. It feels good to be able to spill my mind out onto the paper and leave it there. The journals I have to date are in a trunk at the foot of my bed.
As for fiction…I started writing science-fiction in 1984. I was having a challenging time in middle school, and writing that first story down onto paper saved my life, by giving me a refuge to hide in when reality got too ugly. I wrote the most in my college years, and actually got two short stories published in the university’s literary magazine in the early 90’s.
I wrote off and on after I graduated. I have a passel of short stories, which I may wind up self publishing, and two or three novels, one of which is “fan fiction,” a story I set in the “Star Trek” universe. This is the story that actually started calling to me a month or so ago, so I got it out and did an editing pass on it. All of my stories will need at least a little tinkering with before they’re ready to see the light of day.
As the resurrecting of dreams goes, the one of being a published writer is more likely for me. Maybe this story is my starting point. We’ll see. The writing challenge you’re partaking in now sounds brilliant. Happy writing! 🙂
Victoria! Gracious! The things I have learned about you in just the last two days! Marine Biologist! Hammerhead sharks! And now a science fiction writer, short story writer, NOVEL writer! My heavens woman you are a powerhouse! And yes! It is time for us to recover whatever lost dreams we can and make them manifest. I am SO excited to see what all you will end up doing. More than I can possibly imagine, I know. I will sit and watch you in wonder. There is so much in store for you, I can feel it. SOAR Brave Sister! I absolutely cannot wait to see where you are a year from now. Go girl, GO!
thank you maitri, for turning your readers on to the 700 word story. i wanted to add, that the two chosen nouns (here Pomegranate and Window) are put together to make the TITLE of the story. Thus Pomegranate Window (or “The Window and the Pomegranate) Having a title immediately sets the stage for finding an “angle” for the story. Will it be about a pomegranate who looks thru the window into the life of a family? Will it be about a man who eats a pomegranate and it becomes a “window” to a hallucinatory world he travels to? Will it be about a stained glass window featuring pomegranates in a pagan fellowship hall? The sky is the limit. You can be the window, you can be the pomegranate, or you can be whatever protagonist pops into your mind as you begin the tale. What i have found in writing these stories, with a variety of partners (some local, some thru e-mail), is that having the title gives me a way into the story, and knowing that i will be SHARING it with my writing friend makes it much more appealing an exercise. A friend and I had been writing 700 word stories for a long time, and we decided to put together a “chapbook” of our stories, hers next to mine, so the reader could see how each of us took the tale in our own direction. That volume was Peacock Bock, the first story we wrote together. When this idea originated, with my original writing partner, gregory, who lives in new york city, we found that 700 words was just long enough to write a compelling little tale, but not so long as to be burdensome. My hope is that you-all will find a writing partner, independently choose a noun, then put the nouns together, and GO! (One story was Avocado Letter, another was Honey Clock, you just never know!) And remember, this writing is meant to be FUN!
Thank you for clarifying that dear Ka. I did name my story “The Pomegranate Window” but it just FLEW and the first draft is almost 1000 words. Pairing it down to 700 will be a challenge but that is the work now! And I had so much fun doing it! Thank you so much for the invitation to the dance, I am enjoying it immensely! I need to get ready for bed now but I have written the story and had an absolute ball doing it. Now to pare it down. And I will. Oh, I am loving this! 🙂
And I love you dear Ka. You shall have it soon!
M. xoxox
Hi Maitri, your journals look so scrumptious I have only seen snippets of them. In an age where people aren’t necessarily open about their feelings its really nice to see someone who is willing to say what they need to say. I hope you had fun doing that 700 hundred word challenge. It would be nice to publish your journals somehow though. You could do your own version of the Ram Dass book “Be Here Now” – that book was full of pictures, scribbles and anecdotes. I could see you doing that. Its really nurturing scrolling down the page and seeing all your tidbits in your characteristic writing style. Today I had a surge of listnessness and then slid into depression. Its been hard pushing through but I cooked up a pot of chicken, mushroom and gnocchi goulash. The routines keep me stable. I have to try and tackle the kitchen and do a pile of dishes but can’t summon the energy or wherewithall. I just do what I do. I hope you had a nice evening, sending smiles your way
Leeanne… I thank you for you kind comments but I am very confused, you talk about my journals but I haven’t shown them here in fact said I destroyed them, I don’t know what you are referring to?
I’m sorry you were down but it’s wonderful that you cooked something good. I hope you feel better today…
I thought I saw a pic of you writing with your dragonfly tattoo. It was only a picture but it looked nice 🙂
Ah yes there is a picture somewhere of me writing with my dragonfly tattoo! You referred to my journals and I had written in this post that I destroyed them all so I was confused! 🙂
I try to journal and have just never gotten the hang of it. I admire those who do. What is ” NaNoWriMo”?
Dear Lorraine…
People have many ways of expressing themselves and processing their lives, a journal is one way, and it’s not for everybody. NaNoWriMo is “National Novel Writing Month” and it has really become a huge thing in the last years. Participants write a novel in a month, there is a challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November. It’s HUGE! 😀 You can read more here: https://nanowrimo.org/
Many people start NaNoWriMo and don’t finish. I was one of those people more than once! It would be fun to do it some time though… 🙂