8/02/2012

structure change

[caption id="attachment_5900" align="alignleft" width="300"] Casing of the Okanagana Cicada, left behind on our mulberry near the side fence.[/caption]

Twenty-one years ago I prepared to move with my family into the suburban house where I've lived ever since. Things in the yard looked different then, but it was the same place.

I believed our buying this home meant I was beginning a new, settled era. Such musings made sense at the time for this mother of two small children, apprehensive yet set on brilliantly nurturing and educating them. I wanted to pursue the dreams and goals flowing from inside myself.

While I have remained settled in the geographical sense, now I consider that my structure has been and continues to be more than just my living space. Changes are the result of slow, messy processes in me and are influenced by various things I make note of that come along from outside myself.

Take, for instance, writing. As a bookworm schoolgirl I spent free hours penning stories, sometimes novels, but I told people writing would be my hobby when I grew up. That is, until one afternoon in college my favorite teacher -- the history professor whose enthusiasm kept him bounding up the classroom aisles and whose tough essay finals I didn't really mind -- took me aside and said I ought to consider writing as my profession. Returning my graded term paper, my teacher pointed out that all I really needed was to learn to spice my earnestness with humor, and I could be quite good.

Whether or not I've since gained humorous ability, and whether or not you can say I have a writing profession (my income is still mighty hobbyish), I believe that the little talk by my teacher stuck, in the particular way things sometimes do. And so I have stuck with writing.

Yet my authorly life has always looked more like a process than a moment when everything changed, new era-style. In a sense, I'm continually moving into a writer's house -- my writing "structure" changes. In a sense, as well, our physical home's structure is always changing, though I may not notice ants multiplying under floorboards and shingles decomposing on the roof.

[caption id="attachment_5899" align="alignright" width="225"] Bean blossom residing on our 20-year-old satellite dish.[/caption]Today this house in which I live is quieter, emptier, and so my writing life within it looks as though it might expand. Maybe it will burst the bonds of a sometimes hobby, as I often wish. From inside myself, I do a bit of dreaming (after, of course, I've spent time laboring on an essay). I'd like to brilliantly nurture my craft within these walls, and I hear experience reminding me I will proceed to a great degree in messy process. Then again something I don't expect could arrive any moment -- in the form of quiet talk or resounding events -- that might stick and may set me on the path of a different process altogether.

4 comments:

marianne said...

I am always encouraged by your process as a homeschooling/mothering/writer. I'd love to see that part of your life grow as your nest now has more room (and more ants. They are so diligent at their own work, no?)

Deanna said...

Marianne, thanks for following along, and for continuing on with your project of living, in your own creative structure. Lots of love to you and your dear family.

Dee Ready said...

Dear Deanna, like you, I feel drawn to writing. To expressing myself in well-crafted sentences. And this writing business is a craft of working and editing, polishing and redrafting, always aiming for words that communicate the essence of our idea. So I wish you well as you discover a newness in yourself and your passion. Peace.

Deanna said...

Dee, you said it well. Glad we both can keep doing this for now, at least!

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