I have always thought I could never be a novelist because I don’t have an attention span long enough to write one thing over such a long time, in so many words. Yet, I have learned things as I’ve worked at this blog. Writing in this techno age, I have information about my own work here. I am not particularly adept at the short blog post. Or maybe adept isn’t the right word. I just don’t seem to be able to do them. These blog posts are very consistently about 900-1400 words. Longer, I think, than is the convention in this form. You, reading this can’t see, but I can see this as I write on this blog site. A few shorter and a few longer, but pretty consistently within that range.
I have looked closely at the work of other writers whose work I am moved by and whose writing and minds, I admire. I do not want to reduce something so devastating and profound as the death of a child to a word count– but a year or more ago, I studied the work of several women bloggers very closely. This wasn’t a class or tutorial– I just did it. I often hold in my mind, the fact that Vicki Forman wrote a beautiful and detailed farewell two and half years ago– to her almost 8-year-old son, Evan, who died– and to her Special Needs Mama column in the online zine– Literary Mama, in a piece called Saying Goodbye. It is about 630 vivid and heartbreaking words. I’m at 206 right here.
There are pieces in my mind that I want to write– really so as not to forget. Whether there is deeper meaning to these things, I do not know. But at least they will probably be shorter. My practice at being succinct. And I think I will tag each of them– mother haiku:______. For example I want to write a piece about sticks– my daughter’s interest in, collecting of, and keeping sticks. I want to write about the things I find in her pockets, backpack. I want to write about — the old plastic vegetables I was aways trying to keep together, but that she liked to put in her purses and play strollers. The fight against and ultimately the fight to embrace, as a parent– clutter, noise, interruption, speed, motion, and so many things out of the boundaries of a rigid adult world.
I’m right over 400 words here– so I should give this a rest now. Then I should start writing. And then stop writing. Soon.
laura writes 