The story compelling enough to pull myself away from pie (briefly)
and a quiet symphony of stories all over the world
Last month, my family returned to my grandmother’s hometown in upstate New York. The one where her parents lived and my mom and uncle grew up so we could lay her to rest. It was a beautiful and simple ceremony in a cemetery carpeted in thyme.
We had lunch at one of her favorite restaurants, exchanged stories and spent the whole weekend together.
The morning after the ceremony, before we went back home to Pittsburgh, I asked if anyone would like to tag along on a side visit about 30 minutes north to a town on the edge of Sacandaga Lake. My parents, sister, and husband agreed.
About a year ago, my mom had texted me an article about the Chimney Swifts of Northville, New York. The article said that in this town, just 30 minutes from where my grandmother lived, birds would migrate from South America to one particular chimney every year on May 6th.
People in the town would gather to watch the birds, one by one, form a giant cloud swirling clockwise around the chimney and then counterclockwise. They watched as thousands of swifts dove into the tall brick structure to nest for the summer before returning south in the fall. There was a festival to celebrate their arrival each year until 2012 when the chimney was demolished.
Something about the article stuck in the back of my mind and after my grandmother passed, I felt drawn to spend some time in this town, near hers. I made an appointment for us to meet with the town historian that morning after her funeral. The historian opened up a little red museum, formerly a schoolhouse, and showed us the historical marker that used to be near the chimney and some of the bricks she had collected.
If you weren’t looking for them, your eye probably wouldn’t find them among the old pharmacy bottles, signs, and contraptions (including a hot metal curler that looked more like a torture device than something you’d find in a beauty salon). All items she had carefully gathered in the museum. A labor of love for her town.
We spent just a couple of hours there, at the museum, the grassy patch where the chimney once stood, and the Big Red Barn antique store. The swifts don’t come anymore, at least not in the numbers they used to.
Though I can’t physically travel to this town very often, I’m planning to spend much more time there, in another way, as we approach one of my favorite events of the year: National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo or NaNo).
NaNo is an international community event and personal challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of November.
Everyone does it differently, some set other goals or write genres other than novels. The only rules are the ones you choose to follow. Even if you write 5,000 words, it’s probably 5,000 more than you would have written otherwise.
The whole month is a quiet symphony of stories all over the world. People you don’t know and can’t see typing and writing away with you. While publishing is distinctly not a democratic process, choosing to write your own story is and it’s for everyone.
The executive director of National Novel Writing Month,
, wrote this piece in his newsletter a couple of weeks ago urging each of us to consider the stories inside us.For me, each year, leading up to November, I pay attention to the story that’s speaking to me starting around September. How do I want to spend a month of my time? What do I want to think about and write? What setting and characters will be interesting day after day and sentence after sentence? What will be compelling enough for me to pull myself away from apple pie during Thanksgiving week?
This year, when I asked myself that question, the answer was: Northville. My 2023 NaNo novel will be set in Northville, New York with the backdrop of the chimney swifts, the town, and the ultimate destruction of the bird’s habitat. It’s the string I want to tug at.
Every year choosing my story is an intentional decision in how to spend my attention. To figure out what I need and make a promise to myself and my creativity to show up for it.
This year, choosing this story means I get to spend a little more time with my grandmother.
A couple of years ago, during my chemo treatments, I almost quit NaNo before I started. It seemed like it would be too much on top of everything else. But it turns out what I needed that year was a mental escape and NaNo was just the community for it. I ended up writing 50,000 words of a novel that year that had (almost) nothing to do with cancer. It’s a finished book. I printed it out, read it for myself, and put it away. These projects don’t need to be for anyone other than ourselves and that one was the gift of a shitty first draft just for me.
The following year, I wrote a memoir. It was a surprise to me that I wanted to write about my experience with cancer and chemo less than a year after I finished treatments, but I did. It was something I needed for myself to process. And after re-reading what I’d written a couple of months later, I decided I wasn’t done with the project. I’ve continued to work on it, get input, edit, revise. It’s a work-in-progress.
Last week, I shared an excerpt of it: There’s Nothing More American Than Chemo with a Laptop.
One of the things I love most about memoir as a genre is that it’s open to everyone. You don’t have to be famous or in the third act of your life to write one like you do with an autobiography. You just need a theme worth exploring. It’s so in the spirit of NaNoWriMo: the knowledge that everyone has a story.
This year I have my chimney swift novel. It’s more than likely it will never see the light of day, but who knows. I’m preparing—reading, researching, immersing myself in books, photos, and articles in the world of the story. I’ve got a good writing candle and time blocked off on my calendar. And there are still three weeks until we start writing. (You would certainly call me a planner, but many others fly by the seat of their pants starting on November 1st and do just fine!)
I invite anyone I can to join me. My friend Julie and I have become writing buddies (sometimes even at coffee shops in person), my mom is working on a story, and a handful of other friends and coworkers have told me they have something at the tip of their fingers.
And since we’ve still got plenty of time until November 1st…will you join the quiet symphony too?
What I’m loving right now:
- ’s Love Notes from the Chemo Room, that made me cry and gave me company for my most recent scan
And Andrea and their wife Megan Falley on “We Can Do Hard Things”
Leila Walker’s From Abundance poem that begins with this… “On the trash edge of the sidewalk someone has spraypainted in blue: STOP RAT FOOD. I like to imagine it’s a mispunctuated invitation: “Stop, rat. Food!””
Once there were Wolves, an exceptional novel, by Charlotte McConaghy that I can’t stop talking about
My lavender candle from Cloud 9 Collective, a handcrafted, small-batch homeware brand my friend just launched in Pittsburgh that ships anywhere in the U.S.!