When my mom got sick and I traveled to her home to take care of her, I left behind a manuscript one-third done—the beginning of a new book of memoir, the concept of which I was crazy about. I thought it was solid work.

Then suddenly my mother was dead. Nine days later my kitty was dead, and well, I just gave it all up and went to Europe to walk it off by following the trail my parents had traveled sixty years earlier, a goal all tangled up with grieving and the book I had been writing, but then you know that if you’ve been reading this blog.

When I came back I was jazzed to write. What I didn’t expect was the way I would respond to the material I had already written. I thought it was crap. Familiar feeling, fellow writers? Really horrid stuff. Ugh. I couldn’t believe how awful it was. So what did I do?

I printed out 200 plus pages—all the stuff I’d written and liked, and lots of little snippets and pieces that hadn’t been fully completed or patched into the arc of the story, but were waiting. I printed and printed, and then I read and shuffled the sections, like cards in a deck. This wasn’t something I could do by cutting and pasting files. I actually had to get my hands into it, feel the pages, know there was something solid behind the stories, something more than digital finger impressions of thoughts.

Do you know what I mean?

And then, literally, I chopped. I got out my scissors and hacked those pages into reimagined sections. I was a mad woman, slicing and rearranging.

I have it! I thought. Stacked up all the sheets, a completely new approach. Yes, yes! This is the way.

The next morning I perused my new creation, realized it was horrid. All wrong. Went back to the material I’d writtten before I fell into the tunnel of death and saw again the simple logic of that original plan.

Ha!

The lesson here, if there is one? I guess we have to be willing as memoirists to tear it all apart, forfeit the preciousness of our perceived creation to truly see the story waiting within the experience.

Currently, I am tweaking the original structure and moving forward with new chapters.

Such is my current process of composing a book-length memoir.

P.S. I am currently holed up in the old family fishing cabin writing—in the Sandhills of Nebraska. I’ll post photos next time I report in.

May 20, 2010

Lots of cold and rainy weather as I travel. It’s been hard to coordinate time to write here with the appearance of trustworthy wifi. But here I am—in Brussels, Belgium. This is a city balanced somewhere between old and new, striving to define itself as the “capital” of Europe and yet mired in old animosities between French and Flemish.

I ride the Metro and walk the streets seeking the heart of the place. I take what pictures I can in the swirling wind and rain.

I am here visiting a former journalism student who works as a foreign TV correspondent covering European Union (EU) politics. She and her husband live in a big house not far from the nondescript buildings that make up the EU.

My parents were in Brussels long ago but the city was a much more gentle version of itself in those days—a lower sky line, more harmonious architecture. Now it is a jumble of old Europe careening into new.

May 4, 2010

I ate salmon grilled crispy on the outside this evening, moist and juicy inside, served with carrots cut on the bias and coated with the most luscious sauce. Simple food, but so satisfying to the soul. Served just off the Place d’Armes in a brasserie where I listened to a Brit talk long and excitedly about his job with the ministry while his dinner companion tapped his foot impatiently under the table, much to the obliviousness of the Brit.

First impressions: Luxembourg feels like a mini Paris. French predominantly is spoken, although I’ve also heard German that sounded German, German that sounded French, British English, American English, and a language I could not even name; people here smoke even more than in Italy, an amazing heart-break for a woman who just walked her mother to death for a love of cigarettes.

The city is wireless—check out http://www.hotcity.lu.

Also, the city has a wonderfully progressive

bike-sharing system called vel’oh!

I’m not here long enough to give you any kind of authoritative report, and I fear my impressions may even be narrow and unbalanced, but I have walked through yet another place my parents walked. I have seen buildings and landscapes they viewed, and I have felt the widening of my world in a way that must be much like what they felt. And this is what I have been seeking, for in it lies a understanding about home and family, and who I will be in the coming years now that I have neither.

Off to Paris! I’ll write more from there . . .