Before we had the complex machinery of writing, we acted out our stories around the fire, where we gathered and connected and learned. Where we spent the long dark nights lit by the passions of the storytellers. Safe in the circle of the story.
When we see ourselves as Storytellers in an ancient tradition, instead of memoirists or biographers, everything we write is infused with that energy. Every life is worth writing about and we become deep-sea divers, exploring their depths, their topographies. But what happens when that sea seems too vast with possibilities? When we don’t know where to start, where to end.
Some of us search endlessly for that one magical first sentence that will open the floodgates and the sea will pour forth in one mighty surge, perfect and brilliant. Some of us create endless mountain ranges of research, comforting ourselves that at least we are doing something. Some of us tie it up at the dock and walk away, reassuring ourselves that we will get back to it when the weather clears up.
My writing students and author-clients are in turns shocked and relieved that we are all swimming in the same writerly sea, subject to the same storms and vistas, fears and fogs. “No writer is an island,” I say. Writing is the great leveler,” I say. “It happened to me,” I say, with both my books, a sea-faring memoir and a biographical reveal of Cascadian women devoted to the sea.
I also say, “It doesn’t matter where you start writing it’s all going to change anyway. Just go diving for pearls. You can polish and string them later.” I tell them that writing life stories is like creating a pearl necklace: you gotta dive for oysters to get the pearls, so start there. The more you dive, the easier it gets.
When I was writing Beckoned by the Sea last summer, I broke the anxiety-storm not by waiting it out, but by diving down and bringing up one shell a day, one rough and messy story of a woman’s life. In 24 days I had 24 shells which revealed 24 pearls, which I eventually strung together with my life stories and a moderate mountain range of research.
Take a deep breath and dive in. We’ll be on the dock cheering you on, helping you pile up your pearls.