Dear Readers,
Cancer or other chronic or life-threatening illness doesn’t respect our need for holidays, taking a breather from all those pressing worries, appointments, tests or surgeries. But we all welcome a break, a chance to get away from the stress and worry, even for a day or two, a time to enjoy family and friends and not think about the ever-present shadow of illness. In my expressive writing groups for cancer survivors, we gradually shift the focus from writing about cancer to writing about life, no matter what diagnoses we’ve been given. Call it a little break, a self-imposed holiday from illness, or simply recess, we all need to refuel and replenish, to consider what’s most important to us for however long we have to live.
For the next several weeks, I’m taking the advice I often offer to students in my creative writing classes. Take a break. Let things percolate. Keep writing, but without the interference of thinking about editing, shaping or publication. In other words, let your muse out to play and, in the process, discover new angles, new subjects, a new slant on work you’ve been agonizing over for weeks or months… Take a little vacation. I’m taking a break.
I’ve been posting g a weekly writing reflection and prompt on this site since 2006, and for the summer months, I’ll be taking time to travel a bit, play around with words and ideas, return to a folder of unfinished stories, or even (maybe) pick up that novel I put aside a few years ago and take another look…In the meantime, I’ll draw from nine years of weekly writing prompts and re-posting them on this site. For this week, I’m choosing one from April 24, 2011: Rewriting Your Life. Happy Summer ahead–and keep writing!
REWRITING YOUR LIFE
For the past several months, I’ve been re-writing sections of a novel begun a couple of years ago. When I began, since this was my fifth revision, I didn’t intend to change as much of the story as I have. “Since it’s a fifth revision,” I thought. “I’ll have this done in no time.”
I couldn’t have been more mistaken. The story, lying fallow for the better part of last year, has changed. The beginning is completely altered; I’ve dumped a couple of characters; a new character surfaced. It’s no minor revision. It’s a complete rewrite.
I’ve been working on my rewrite, that’s right
I’m gonna change the ending
Gonna throw away my title
And toss it in the trash
Every minute after midnight
All the time I’m spending
It’s just for working on my rewrite
Gonna turn it into cash…
Paul Simon’s “Rewrite,” the fourth song on his latest album, So Beautiful or So What?, has become my theme song, blasting from my car’s speakers as I run errands around town. There’s more to the lyrics that a process of writerly revision, though, and probably one of the reasons Simon’s song lyrics were published in a recent edition of The New Yorker under the heading, “Poetry.” Listen to the complete song, and you realize it’s a story of a man, a Vietnam vet who’s had hard times, asking for help to rewrite his life, to create a happy ending.
Think about it. How many times have you, in the midst of hardship, illness or loss, wished you could change the life you have, that you could dump those old pages of script and start with a clean sheet of paper? How many times have you said to yourself, “if only I could go back and do that differently?” Well, what if you could?
I’ll eliminate the pages
Where the father has a breakdown
And he has to leave the family
But he really meant no harm
Gonna substitute a car chase
And a race across the rooftops
When the father saves the children
And he holds them in his arms…
We can all fantasize. Look back and imagine how our lives might have been different, but that’s the stuff of old dreams and wishes, of fiction instead of reality. What we can do is honor the uniqueness, even the struggles, of our lives, learn from them and perhaps, write a new script for the life we have in front of us.
In an interview by William Young, published in the Winter, 1993 issue of The Paris Review, William Stafford commented on the choice of the title of his book, You Must Revise Your Life. “I wanted to use the word revise because so many books about writing make it sound as though you create a good poem by tinkering with the poem you’re working on. I think you create a good poem by revising your life… by living the kind of life that enables good poems to come about.”
To love life, to love it even
When you have no stomach for it
And everything you’ve held dear
Crumbles like burnt paper in your hands…
When grief weights you like your own flesh
…you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
Between your palms…
And you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you again.
(“The Thing Is,” from: Mules of Love, 2002)
Ellen Bass’s poem hangs, printed and framed, above my desk. I re-read her last two lines on those mornings my old sorrows hover nearby. “I will take you. I will love you again.” No rewrites here, just the acknowledgment that life offers me the chance to learn from what has gone before, to live differently, if I choose, from here on out.
Given the chance, would you rewrite your life? How have the events of your life prompted you to revise your life or embrace the one you have?