While it might appear I vanished into the Barbados writing colony last winter, that was actually not the case. I came home and immediately plunged into some intense processing of memories, from diving deeply into a century of photographic media from my parents’ lives to finishing repairs on my mother’s house and then selling it. Creative projects from the writing retreat have just been sitting, waiting for…something…to shift. Memories took over any forward thinking on my part.
Memories Stored on Media
I’ve been away from the blog for four months, through the spring season, for reasons both practical and emotional. I got a new roof put on my mom’s house, then listed and sold it (end of May—and there was much rejoicing!).
But before that, I felt so stuck and stagnant. The blame clearly lay in the thousands of photographs, slides, CDs, cassette tapes, and VHS recordings piled under my dining room table and in the basement, messing up my energy flow. Add to that media various historical items, such as clothing, World War II era letters, and a gigantic family bible with entries dating back to before the American Civil War. No wonder I couldn’t think!
So, as I awaited roofers to do their thing, I sorted, triaged, and labeled the media archive. I humidified curly photos and scanned long gone relatives, trying to piece together identities. I talked to several historical societies to find good homes for these things. What started an effort to reduce the volume of stuff launched some interesting side projects. But all this effort stirred up grief work along with the dust.
Memories Aren’t Stories
These tasks did take up big chunks of the day, but I think something else lurked behind my inability to set my mind to fiction or even blog writing. Have I been simply hiding out in the memories or is something deeper, more insidious going one?
A not-so-fun fact about depression is when you find yourself in it, you realize you’ve abandoned all your usual coping mechanisms along the way into the fog. (“So, what did you expect to happen?”)
As I move into summer, I am taking better care of myself, and things seem to be sorting themselves out. I closed on the inherited house’s sale. My historical artifacts are mostly ready to go to their new homes in museum archives. I’ve also had a lot of time to ponder my next steps. To consider what I really want from and for my art in the future.
Meanwhile, enjoy yourself with my latest novel, The Talking Cure.
What would you like to see from me as a storyteller? Comment on the blog.
If you relate to this blog about creative funks, you might like to read about Writing Through the Tough Times.
“The Talking Cure is a marvelous story—an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery infused with a strong sense of the Weird… and a hearty dose of magic on the side. It’s ideal for all fans of the sinister, the surprising, and the strange.”
—Cherie Priest, award-winning author of Boneshaker
Find The Talking Cure at these fine locations:
Left Bank Books in St. Louis
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Wolfhearted is also available as an Audible audiobook, here.
Last year St. Louis Writers Guild published Weird STL, an anthology celebrate the strange, spooky, and just plain wonderful stories of our hometown. This volume of short stories, poems, a play, and essays includes a Sean Joye universe short story, “Big Magick.” Joseph Arwald, one of the baddies from The Big Cinch, tells us what really happened to the Ferris Wheel from the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair.
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