And so on that day in August, in my seventy-eight year, I sat down to begin the memoir which I swore I would never write.

Edna O’Brien

I wrote a memoir many moons ago. Part exercise in proving I could do it. Part exercise in the practice of writing. Part exercise in sense making and paying attention. Part joyful excursion into the parts of my brain accessed through thinking. (Writing is thinking, after all.) It took several years and many writing classes. It took hours of coffee shop conversations with professional writers, who by their very existence proved that people can make a living writing. (Their spiritual and technical support in the process bolstered my shaky knees.) This was not about producing a product. This was about spiritual edification. This was about the marriage of love and words. This was about excavation and memory and stopping time, if only for a second, at that point between youth and wisdom. This was about candles burning and smelling the wax and flame and beauty.

I am at another August. I am at another point where my heart bursts with story. (It always kind of does, but I am feeling it especially right now in that deep space within that writers know.) I have my assignments, both real and created in the quiet corners of my mind where it all starts.