Anna Quindlen’s slim notebook, Write for your Life, contains many pearls of wisdom which relate to my motivation in writing my journal over more than 40 years and, above all, in my hope that my wife, Francie will continue to commit her remarkable stories to writing so that future generations can see them. Perhaps, these words will encourage you to record your stories.
Here are some of the pearls which Anna Quindlen offers us:
In reflecting on her motives for writing her books, shew writes: “In these pages I hope my children would find me when I was gone. The fact is, the books are only collections of words; there is a familiar motto: ‘Actions, not words’ are what matter. The fallacy in that quote is that words are actions. They punch, tear, hurt, harm, soothe, amuse, educate, illuminate. They express ideas and feelings, and they make people feel better and they move them to tears and they enrage them, and they define them.”
“Think of it this way: if you could look down right now and see words on paper, from anyone on earth or anyone who has lifted, who would that be? And don’t you, as do I, wish that person had left such a thing behind? Doesn’t that argue for doing that yourself, no matter how terrifying or impossible writing may sometimes seem? It doesn’t really matter what you say. It matters that you said it. The gift of your presence forever.”
“So what if your story of a small, unremarkable life is read only by you, in some quiet corner, or by one or two people you love and trust understand? If those are people who can learn from and value it, isn’t that a notable achievement, a valuable audience?”
“When you write, you connect with yourself, past, present and future.”
“’Life is all memory,’ wrote Tennessee Williams. ‘Except for the one present moment that goes by so quickly you hardly catch it going.’ The point is that writing is a net, catching memory and pinning it to the board like people sometimes do with butterflies, like the ones we hatched. Writing is a hedge against forgetting, forgetting forever.”
“There are no journals written by my father. If I could go back in time, I would ask him to keep one, but maybe, like so many busy people, he would think it was a waste of the scant hours in his day. Why? you would ask. What would I write about? I would offer you the same answer I would have given him: Nothing. Everything. He could have written a recollection of college days gone by, or an account of the morning’s fishing, getting skunked out by the secret spot…”
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