{"id":757,"date":"2016-01-21T21:44:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T01:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=757"},"modified":"2016-01-21T21:44:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T01:44:51","slug":"%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bf-obsessive-behaviors-writing-the-same-story-over-and-over-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=757","title":{"rendered":"\ufeff\ufeff OBSESSIVE BEHAVIORS: writing the same story over and over again"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>OBSESSIVE BEHAVIORS:\u00a0 writing the same story over and over again<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I started writing in second grade, a jingle.\u00a0 I was paraded from room to room in Standish Elementary School to persuade my peers to give money to public television, or some such cause.\u00a0 In fifth grade, some of us were cool enough to be poets and produced a mimeographed collection of our rhymes.\u00a0 Seventh grade was more serious.\u00a0 Our journal contained stories and<\/u> poems.\u00a0 In high School, for me, it was cool to be in the Creative Writing Club and hang out with intellectuals, not that I was one (but there was that one boy I had a crush on).\u00a0 However, skipping past more solitary and juvenile attempts at writing, my epiphany came when I was in my thirties.<\/p>\n

I980s: I attended community college, enrolled in my first Women\u2019s Studies Class (Women in Literature) and my first academic class in the writing of poetry.\u00a0 The Women in Literature class required us to go to a bookstore.\u00a0 I went to Amazon Bookstore, Minneapolis\u2019 independent bookstore, the first lesbian\/feminist bookstore in the U.S. according to Wikipedia (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amazon_Bookstore_Cooperative<\/a>).\u00a0 With curiosity, I examined categories of books, na\u00efve, but on a mission, it dawned on me\u2014 I was missing.<\/em> 1980\u2019s and a mixed-race-passing-for white-woman was not on the shelf.\u00a0 I went home and wrote, basically a chap book of poems, about me.<\/p>\n

My self-interest\u00a0 peaked as I continued my college education , a stop and go experience that began when I was eighteen and ended, at least formally, at 48, to learn all I could about race, gender, sexuality\u2014and oppression.\u00a0 The more I learned the more I wrote.\u00a0 But for the most part, I wrote the same story over and over again. \u00a0But my undergraduate advisor said that it\u2019s okay.\u00a0 That most of us have one story we\u2019re obsessed with, one that we can\u2019t stop writing.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t stop writing yours.\u00a0 Because you will not be writing it to death; you will be writing it to life.\u00a0 The more you write the story you\u2019re obsessed with, the more it will evolve. Eventually your story will answer questions you didn\u2019t know you were asking; eventually your story will connect, once it\u2019s out in the world, with other people\u2019s stories and an even larger realm of understanding can take place.<\/p>\n

Also, the more you write that story you\u2019re obsessed with, the better your writing will become.\u00a0 Better because you will know your story so well that images and words will return time after time, but each time, perhaps in a different context, perhaps surrounded by fresh words that sing or singe.\u00a0 Richard Hugo acknowledges he uses numerous words repeatedly, so do I.\u00a0 Mine are:\u00a0 Chinese, Black, mixed race, passing, Mother, mahjong, white rice, South Scandinavian Minneapolis, virgin birth, conjure, and love.<\/p>\n

I do get tired of writing my story over and over again, the story of a Chinese Black girl passing for white, but after forty some years of repeating it, in poetry and in prose, I may have discovered who I am, and I may have finally relinquished the need to know more.\u00a0 But, maybe not.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ve just found a couple of new obsessions to sidetrack me for awhile: aging and autism.\u00a0 But they, too, are stories within my story.<\/p>\n

I keep telling myself I\u2019m not a narcissist. \u00a0Just because I\u2019ve written about myself for forty some years, doesn\u2019t make me a narcissist-it makes me an activist, according to my friend, Anya. My story, like your story are stories that will help us identify with each other, even if your story is about aliens or robots I think we can find familiarity and hope-as we also acknowledge difference.\u00a0 As always, I return to Nikki Giovanni:<\/p>\n

\u201cand if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows \/ that I know that touching was and still is and will always \/ be the true \/ revolution\u201d–Nikki Giovanni, \u201cWhen I Die\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Exercise:<\/strong>\u00a0 What story are you obsessed with?\u00a0 What words are you obsessed with?\u00a0 Keep writing the story; keeping using the words and images that might be haunting you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9Sherry Quan Lee, January 21, 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OBSESSIVE BEHAVIORS:\u00a0 writing the same story over and over again   I started writing in second grade, a jingle.\u00a0 I was paraded from room to room in Standish Elementary School to persuade my peers to give money to public television, or some such cause.\u00a0 In fifth grade, some of us …<\/p>\n

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