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Solving a Problem 1
By memoirista | August 3, 2007
I have gone silent on both my Hadabrain blog - the actual writing of the memoir, and this blog, the process of writing the memoir.
Hadabrain refers to the song in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz - “If I Only Had A Brain (A Heart, the Noiv)” sung by The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion. The Scarecrow gets his brain when he is granted a diploma by the Wizard of Oz. That fits the general “triumph over obstacles” outline of my memoir. And that’s the end of the story (I think) for the Scarecrow.
I was puzzling, though, over Dorothy. What she wants to do, her goal, is to go home, and the conclusion of her story is that she gets back to Kansas - having hit her head and dreamed it all.
Well, the whirlwind that took me from Salt Lake City, Utah (even further out than Kansas) to the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Division of Arts and Sciences also took me away from “home” - actually another displacement of the idea of home. Home to me is diversity, home to me is East Coast, home to me is opportunity. Salt Lake lacked diversity, was in the Mountains instead of on the coast, and had a glass ceiling on opportunity. So perhaps I did click those ruby slippers, say to myself “there’s no place like home!” and wind up in Philadelphia, close to the East Coast, full of diversity, and with far more opportunity–home at last.
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August 4th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Hey Memoirista,
Your journey brought you right down the road to my home town. Welcome! At least one aspect of Dorothy’s story is about the allies she meets along the road, who form a community to temporarily replace the one she left as well as give her wisdom she bring home.
If you want to see another process blog, check mine out. I’ve been hacking away at the memoir process for 17 months (but whose counting), analyzing memoirs and the memoir process as part of my own journey.
Good luck with your work.
Jerry
Memory Writers Network
August 4th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Hi, Jerry
Thanks for your note. Yesterday I was following your “Have you posted to your memoir blog today” thread on Absolute Write, and earlier today I decided that I want links to other (serious) memoir sites. I just recently took down a lot of extraneous stuff, such as Amazon ads. Among that stuff was the huge number of Absolute Write blog/website links. I do want lots of neighborly links to people who wrestle with this genre, though.
So, one of the things I’m doing tonight is putting up such links. Yours was first on my mind this morning, when I thought of doing this.
By the way, I also have a blog reviews.memoirista.com. I have a hard time finding your reviews on your blog site; I’d like to invite you to do a guest review, or we could do paired reviews, say, of Angela’s Ashes.
Welcome to process.memoirista.com.
All the best,
Sigrid Peterson
process.memoirista.com
reviews.memoirista.com