If you’re following along at home, you know that I’m part of a mom’s writing group. We’re called the Write On, Mamas. And we’ve decided to publish an anthology of our work. We’re raising the funds through Indiegogo and if you follow the link, you can help us get there. Our tentative title for the anthology is Why Mamas Write.
Here’s how the idea started: my fellow moms would talk about their writing. Or I’d read an application for a writing grant. Inevitably two minutes into the spiel or two paragraphs into the draft, I’d hear the words, “And that’s when I knew I had to tell this story.”
The stories of how our stories started—the original myths—are fascinating. One of our moms, Mindy Uhrlaub, is writing a novel about Congo. When Mindy talks about her time in Congo, her eyes widen. She opens her arms in broad gestures and shakes her head back and forth. She describes sitting in her son’s room before her trip, packing a duffel bag with toilet paper and diapers and Crayola crayons. She is in that place where the mind does the math: what could one person possibly hope to accomplish? Then the heart takes over, pulled as if summoned from beyond.
If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
It’s so fitting that yesterday’s “Goodreads Quote of the Day” came from Doris Lessing, 2007 Nobel Laureate for Literature. (Who, coincidently also wrote about children in Africa.)
Here’s that quote:
Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
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