Process Notes: The Mourner’s Response when Charged with Truth-Telling

75º ~ 70% chance of storms later in the day, the sky a greenish gray, the slightest of breezes as the air gathers energy for thunder, lightning, rain

“I went back to my hotel room and I scrawled ‘Tell the truth’ and the Roman numeral I on the cover,” he says. “I promised myself I would fill up a page every day, and it wouldn’t matter how terrible the writing was or how crazy it was. The only rule was it had to come from a place of truth.” ~ Charlie Worsham on NPR’s All Things Considered

“There is a charge // For the eyeing of my scars. There is a charge / For the hearing of my heart– // It really goes.” ~ “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant — ” ~ “1263” by Emily Dickinson

Finally, I am done with teaching for the semester and have spent several days doing absolutely nothing in order to recharge and regroup. Given that I haven’t found a way to teach and write in my “newish” job yet (as a junior faculty member and with all new preps each semester), I’ve renewed my commitment to writing during the summer. Last year, I had the added motivation of a summer stipend; this year I have the added motivation of my own mental health. Like most writers, when I’m kept from writing because of other commitments and concerns, my brain and my emotions tend to founder, causing temporary bouts of depression and anxiety. In other words, I write because I must.

So, as I was finishing up the semester, I happened to listen to the NPR interview with rising country star Charlie Worsham, and his method of re-igniting his passion for writing lyrics stuck with me. I started a new journal this week, and while I didn’t follow Worsham’s lead by writing “Tell the Truth!” across the front, I am writing that phrase on every fresh page.

Because my father died recently, I’ve been writing some about him and about grief, or lack of it, given that my relationship with my father was somewhat strained. As a farmer’s son and as a person whose skills rested in his hands and in physical labor, my father never understood this weird, artistic and intellectual daughter, who tried to do all of the building and growing things, but was pretty terrible at all things physical/manual. And my father made several moral choices with which I strongly disagreed. So, I’ve been trying to tell the truth about that, but it’s hard b/c this is a truth that doesn’t fit the “good daughter” role.

In the process of writing today’s draft, I thought of both the Plath poem and the Dickinson quoted above. Given that my most recent work has only been tangentially informed by my own experiences, I was most certainly telling my truth “slant.” In the manner of “Tell the Truth!” I’m working on “upright” truth. I’m working more in the non-fiction vein than I have recently, so I feel the Plath quote rising up as well. I’m risking more on the page and I can feel it in my heart, a stretching, an opening, and a scrunching up as well.

In terms of craft, the funniest thing happened, again. I scrawled out the rough draft in my journal, working the phrases out loud with tongue and breath and gathering them loosely on the page with many crossings-out and nearly illegible scribbling. Then, I went to the computer and put it up on the screen in a free verse form, but dang it, in the first line I use “three-personed” to describe my father, and you can’t allude to one of the most famous sonnets, Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God,” and not write a sonnet. Funnily, I didn’t even think of “sonnet” until I got to the end, a three-line closing that really contained a traditional sonnet-like couplet. Dang it! Those forms and theory classes really got under my skin. Of course, I re-drafted and now have sonnet before me. Dang it! On re-reading, the “turn” even ended up being in line 9.