Getting to Know Me...

How much ego does it take to create a blog? I mean, one has to think, "I have something to say..." or, more to the point, something to say that someone else might want to read-- right? On the other hand, there are plenty of people in the world who seem to just talk (or write) to hear/see their own words. Most of us can make a short list of some of those acquaintances in the time it takes to start-up your computer. I don't think I fall into the latter category (?) and yet I still find myself cataloging the reasons why I'm clicking away at the keys on my laptop at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night-- when I could be delving further into the latest book that's caught my imagination or at least washing a few dishes lingering in the kitchen sink.

When I joined the cyber "poem" group started by local poets Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham and touted on Facebook, I read that poetry written from their prompts should be posted on our blogs or websites so members of the group could offer their feedback. Unfortunately, I had no blog (although I'd been saying I was going to start one for over a year) and my WomanWords website fell off the online wagon a few years ago for lack of time (both mine and my daughter's-- Kristen was doing the set-up for me). I sent a note to the FB group saying I wasn't sure what to do about this. Carolee assured me that I could post my poetry on FB in the Notes section. Given recent hype about FB in the press, I'd been careful NOT to post much there that hadn't already been published somewhere else. So this was the kick-in-the-butt I needed. Reason #1 for A Woman and Her Words.

Reason #2 is simply that I love to write. At times I'm driven to tell a short tale or two about growing up, about something I heard, about something too good not to share. I have a friend in California, Pat G., who says she loves it when I "go into story mode." According to Pat, there's a distinct change in tone in my e-mails when this happens, which is when her eyes open wide and she pays close attention. Lots of times this is when I tell a story about growing up in a large family-- not of siblings but of a multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins. Pat and I have been friends since my first attendance at the International Women's Writing Guild summer conference in 1995, when she was housed for the week in a room next to mine. She's only been able to attend that event perhaps two or three times since then (once my husband Bill and I picked her up at the airport and drove her to the campus), and yet I'd bet she knows me better than many of the people with whom I worked for years in a state agency. Stories do that. Shared words can create bonds.

Under other circumstances, I would say that #3 Reason had something to do with my love affair with paper. I love the look and feel of paper. Paper entices me to do something with it. Fill it with words. Cover it with images, color. Tear it up for collage. It's probably why I started writing. I can remember long afternoons as a kid, no one to play with (my brother was off somewhere, most likely), when I'd open a black-and-white composition book and fill its pages with "lesson plans" and lists of imaginary students. Once I walked the block to Woolworth's, a crisp dollar bill rolled up in the palm of my hand, and bought-- instead of a few comic books or something "normal"-- a rent receipt book. It just called out to be purchased and filled with imaginary tenants. More recently, on vacation in the Maryland/ D.C./ Virginia area, I kept my husband, daughter and two friends waiting while I drooled over tons of items in a "paper" store in Old Town Alexandria (I wound up buying four large, and not cheap, sheets for collage). But certainly blogging isn't about paper, not unless I print my entries and put them into a binder. Hmmm... maybe...

This blog is about Expression. Mine and my readers (I'm assuming I'll have a few). My WomanWords E-Newsletter seems to have been well-received since Day 1, with its Quote, Writing Prompt, list of Books I've read and copious suggestions for submitting work, creative events and other possibilities. Some of that is likely to find its way into A Woman and Her Words, but I'm thinking this is more than a newsletter. The plan is to not have a plan. In the beginning, it will be more like the freewrites we writers should be allowing ourselves to do: it will be allowed to evolve. Especially, it will be about my creative process and I'll be interested in hearing how my process resonates and/or differs from others'.

As an opening, I posting (below) a poem written at the IWWG conference several years ago in a class called "Writing from Our Religious Pasts." The workshop leader was Kathleen O'Shea, a former nun and a writer previously nominated for a Pulitzer for her nonfiction book, Women on the Row. The crux of this class was that so much of our religious past forms us. During the week we wrote from childhood and other "religious" experiences, but our final assignment was to write about what we currently believe. As an introduction to Marilynology (I stole that term from a fun exercise currently going around Facebook-- using your name and adding the "-ology" after it is part of the game), here's the result of Kathleen's final writing prompt-- for me-- at that summer conference:


BELIEF STATEMENT, 6/24/04
by Marilyn Zembo Day

I believe the Divine
is Within and Without
but that those who do not seek Her
Within
will find it difficult to experience Her
Without.

That sometimes the answer
is a question
and the question may lead
to more puzzles
the complexities of which
in themselves
might be answers.

That knowing that I will never know
with absolute certainty
all of the answers
or even a considerable amount of the questions
adds to the mystery and affirms
that life is deep and changing
and linked to something greater than ourselves.

I believe that I can name
my Inner Divinity as I choose
but that She is really nameless and genderless
balanced in her love for humanity;
I picture her saddened, tearful
at the violence done in her various names
wanting to pull all men and women to her breast,
to comfort, reintegrate us into her womb
that we might re-learn our Oneness.

I believe that all life is a circle
and that we return, return, return
that, as science informs us,
our energies, atoms, do not dissipate;
all energy in the Universe continues to exist,
simply evolving into different forms
just as all of our stories
shapeshift in our many voices.

I believe in the Soul
insofar as it is somehow linked to our own Divinity
and in that it speaks to us through our creative urges
and that if our creativity is stifled
we become as broken bits of glass tossed aside by the Creator
when we might have been a stained glass window
reflecting back to the world
all that we have become and
all that we leave behind.


Now here's what YOU, reader/writer, can do. You can pick up your pen and start with "I believe..." and just let go. If you get stuck, start again with "I believe..." or try "I don't believe..." This doesn't have to be spiritual or intellectual or anything at all. It only has to flow from your pen (or through your keyboard). It could be that, at the moment, all you can believe in is the t.v. remote and its ability to take your mind off the crappy job or the possibility that your husband is having an affair or your empty nest. Don't judge what you're writing. Writer Emily Hanlon says you get it down and then you pick out the jewels later on. And if there are not jewels this time, there will be eventually. If you don't write at all, there will never be jewels. Write.