I mentioned in this post that I was taking part in this project, one of a hundred participants writing a short hand-written true story. Taking the idea of patchwork as my inspiration, I intertwined several stories of birth and death, and wrote about an emotional journey from the time when my grandmother died last year to the early weeks of my new son's life.
This also brought in other people loved and lost, stretching back into the past - my grandmother's life, my mother's. I tried to catpure the strange interweaving of life and death, the agonsing pain of loss, the vulnerability and joy of life. It is also about family, about the circle of life: the comings and goings that shape us and make us who we are.
It was an extraordinary process, especially writing by hand. I've often written a journal, so it was a little like that, I suppose, except that I had a bit more of an overarching plan: I knew what I wanted to write about. Somehow it fitted into the form of this little book of lined pages. But writing by hand felt raw and intimate in a way that the keyboard just doesn't achieve. At some point it will be digitised, and, if you feel like it, you'll be able to read a little piece of my heart online. I'll let you know.
See this post for more details about the project.
