Beginning

A coworker & I exchanged a few emails today regarding work-related stuff, eventually devolving into writing about writing; English teachers, right?

Below is one of those exchanges.

Colleague writes

Thanks for sharing! Lots of symbolism there---needs to be commemorated in poetry...

Poetry isn't really my strong suit, despite my tendency to write in flowy words and expressions. Too much reading & teaching Capote, I suppose. For certain, though, my fondness for Capote has incapacitated me when it comes to my own writing; I feel the precedent too powerful. So, I have refrained from writing my own thoughts, thinking them invalid or otherwise not worth the time it takes to strike the proper series of keys, let alone making the strokes of a pen---a pen I in turn would need to fall upon for having permitted so much ink bleed unnecessarily upon a page.

Just between us girls, I've toyed with the idea of writing a nonfiction of sorts, chronicling my wife's journey to learning of her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and how it has impacted her life since. Same with several friends I have known in one capacity or another, unified sadly in not only knowing me but also in having been told their own body is attacking and damaging their central nervous system without current hope of cure; rather, merely a management of varying, unpredictable symptoms with pharmaceuticals originally designed to eradicate cancer. Like a little bit of chemo. For the rest of your life.

Wow. this has gone on too long. Gonna let this go now. Would you mind, terribly, if I borrowed your words from this correspondence to blog about it?  As you know, every writer needs a starting point. This may be mine.

Thanks for reading.