How to Begin Writing the Stories

Since the light wakes me up around five anyway, I've been going to bed early and reminding myself what a joyful time it was when I got up every morning to write. I produced an unpublishable novel and many short stories and essays during a period of a few years, about a decade ago, and I miss that richness. I worry hard that my aging process will make writing harder or impossible, so I've vowed to use my self-discipline to restart.

Both OCF and Saturday Market are asking for member stories, and I have a wealth of them. Writing them is the easy part; deciding how to write them for publication is much more difficult. They're personal, and some are confessional, and some thinly disguised as fiction to tell the more embarrassing or deeper emotional truths that I don't want to fully claim. I want to share them, but am I ready for what could follow?

I don't want much of that vulnerability: people passing judgements, learning intimate details, having access into my interior life. It's why I haven't been writing this blog much. I also don't want to make pronouncements as I tend to do about my reality, imagining it as universal, sounding like I have expert opinions that must be shared for the edification of the masses. I don't want to sound that confident in my own judgements. Mostly I don't want to get wounded.

It's these times. We're all so constantly in shock and ashamed to be white Americans with all the privilege we carry. We see all our collective sins, and we know we have to pay. The psychology is deep and I feel I know why we are not in the streets protesting every minute this corrupt regime and the turn our political life has taken. I feel manipulated no matter which way I move. I feel helpless and profoundly confused, and at the same time completely sure of my convictions and completely present and poised for action. Yet no action is clear.

And I am busy working. My refuge seems to be work, when I can be engaged, thinking, solving problems, and not trying to fix the seemingly unfixable. I can do the writing part of my tasks, but how can I help myself do the putting-it-out-there parts?

First, write. I put together one short piece today and reviewed some written a decade ago. I have more in my files to unearth and edit. Do I make a plan and release them one by one? Do I figure out some framing or parameters for myself to make them a collection that makes sense with a context, or let them go out unexplained, at face value? Do I simply give them away? Do I hand them over to be edited by others?

Or do I write all new ones with my present perspective, less personal ones perhaps, and set these aside? What is being asked for is not blog posts, not opinions, but actual stories. Can I be a storyteller, or am I stuck in this role as personal essayist and confessionaire? Will they lose their value if I take out all the insight and emotion I am actually proud of, in my egoist role as person who writes the best about these things. Dropping the ego is the first thing I have to work on, as well as the biggest. I'm in my own way, that's clear.

It's humbling to be needed, and I see that I run from it. It's a responsibility. I went out to pick berries and think through some of these arguments. What if I take the egoism all the way out to its limits and expose it right now: I am one of our community's most willing and able writers. Lots of honest people have told me I am good at it, and I believe them. I have a perceptive position in the interstices of our organizations, as one who has participated in lots of levels with a full heart and plenty of personal investment. So I am qualified. And I have the skills. And I'm of an age that allows me to use some applied wisdom, and maybe can do it without some of the pitfalls of my earlier writings.

Plus it brings me great pleasure. I'm really happy today at getting up early, having so much extra time. I got up because either a bug crawled into my ear and fluttered wildly or I have some congestion in my head that needs to drain, but it was enough of a cosmic message to make me sit up and type instead of reading our dreary newspaper. A lot of my vulnerability at the moment comes from the recent RG article about me, for which I feel explicitly and embarrassingly exposed, but look at how he titled it: Veteran vendor contributes to marketplace of ideas. Could that be any more affirmative of what I should be doing with this opportunity? It's my chosen path, and not by accident. I'm here because I have applied my combined skills to make my niche with my wit and intelligence.

The writer, Christian Wihtol, intuited and prised out a lot of my authentic self. He asked a lot of



questions I was happy to answer. While appealing to my ego in a sense, he also had a story to tell about the Market and those of us who are invested, and he told it well. Many have thanked me and come to support me and each time I read the article, it seems more benign. There's little to fear. I didn't tell my innermost secrets. He didn't say anything objectionable, except calling my booth a stall (we don't use that word, as we aren't animals and it isn't a barn...) but I didn't get around to telling him the forbidden ways to speak about craftspeople.

So my fear that something bad will happen with my writing is groundless, and anyway, why do I care? If someone thinks my style is annoying or my ego is showing like a soiled slip hem, so what? Will I even know? Won't that be balanced by the delight of another person who enjoys my story?

What's my real problem? I suppose it is losing control of my products...squandering my material by giving it away, pearls before swine. Easily remedied by asking for editorial control, or by more diligent editing so I don't give away points I might want to use. I sincerely doubt I will write a book about OCF, though I do plan to write one about Saturday Market. I don't, however, want to write a definitive history book about market, but actually have another plan. It would only add to a body of writing about the Market, not be the one and only book. The more available to not only outline, but to fill in the details of our experience, the better, from a historical perspective. My thoughts die with me, unless I put them on paper and share them while I can. If I truly have enough ego to think they are valuable, giving them away should cost me nothing.

So I have no good reasons to hang onto my writing and now, with the 50th arriving, now is the time. I want to feel compelled like I do today. I want to immerse in it and get all the deep feelings that make the brief week of Fair so rich for me. The more I write about it the better it gets.

So it seems I've decided. One first draft every morning, and one edit of an old piece, and some research into the blog posts for forgotten writings. Then start, soon, giving them away. Maybe do that today, send one. Push myself a little, for the common good. When someone reads mine, bad or good, they will feel a tiny push to send in their own. I want to read them, and I am not the only one.

Write. Pick berries, move the sprinklers, read, write. Turn the sacred upside down. Gaze at the beautiful summer light, go deep, feel satisfied. Cry. Write. Push "publish."