Been meaning to join this year’s project but thought you didn’t have time? Check out our new timeline! You now have until May 15, 2013, to get on board. The 2013 theme is “Wild Things.” Questions? edg@longridgeeditors.com.
http://essaysonchildhood.com/writing-guidelines-and-current-schedule/
Over the past year, I’ve become fascinated with stories about childhood encounters with animals. It started with Julian Martin’s description of his grandmother clubbing, skinning, and cooking a groundhog; since then, it seems everywhere I turn I hear great stories about courage, life and death, love and affection, loyalty and hearbreak connected to children and animals.
What’s your story?
via Essays on Childhood: Wild Things | Esse Diem.
Middle school started to show me that football could put a boy at the top of the popularity totem pole. The players always seemed to have the prettiest girls talking to them and they got the most attention around school. That was especially true when game day arrived. The team members always had a tradition of wearing their jerseys at school all throughout that day. The school would be dotted with light blue jerseys bouncing around campus. Everybody got excited for the games, especially if they were playing at home. Those days we didn’t have to ride the school bus home. We could stay after school, watch the game, and have our parents pick us up after the game was over. But when you saw those blue jerseys around campus, they were not being worn by the players.
In a lot of cases, those jerseys were being worn by girls.
via In a Man’s Voice: The Jersey by Vernon Wildy, Jr. | Esse Diem.
Filed under Essays on Childhood: In a Man's Voice, Writing
Now, some dozen years later, with my 67th birthday behind me, as I think about Essays on a West Virginia Childhood, I realize that I wish to paint a portrait of my childhood rather than try to provide you with a photograph.
Yes, a portrait, not a photograph. And, since I am the artist I can apply the colors and hues with strokes that compliment the caricature I wish to portray.
via In a Man’s Voice: Self-Portraits by Steve Alberts | Esse Diem.
Filed under Essays on Childhood: In a Man's Voice, Writing
My father was an amateur magician. With a sleight of hand, he used to pull coins from the ears of grandchildren, use his nimble fingers to shuffle a deck of cards into a magic trick. He could separate inseparable rings.
He was a busy man when I was growing up. One of only three doctors in my hometown, he was up and out early, and though he most always was home for supper, often in the middle of it, the phone would ring, or people would show up at the back door, and he was gone again. My mother, brother, sister and I shared him all those years, waiting at home as he delivered babies (12 in 24 hours once), treated hearts — both broken and diseased — mended bones and emotions, nurtured families as they took root, grew old, died.
via Essays on Childhood: Pick a Little Talk a Little by Susan Byrum Rountree | Esse Diem.
Writer Rob Boone of West Virginia with his daughter, Jessica.
The Essays on Childhood project is pleased to introduce you to the writers for 2012.
They are, in a word, strong.
They are all skilled writers, but they are also individuals who exude a quality best described as simply iron. I know many of these people in some way: Some are social media friends, some are “real life” friends in my community, and some are even people with whom I shared a part of my own childhood experience. Their strengths come from intellect, and physical power, and emotional fortitude. They are special.
As a third year editor in this project, I’ve come to appreciate the different types of essays people write about their childhood experience. Every type is valid and good, but one can tear at your heart while another sends you into gales of laughter. Others may leave you reflecting on the mysteries of life, or convinced it’s time to reconsider your own story.
The word essay means a trial, or an attempt. Essay writing is personal writing, and it requires courage.
This year I’ve seen a few drafts, and I have a good feeling about this group. These writers have plans to open their worlds to us.
I’m ready. I hope you are!
Filed under Essays on Childhood: In a Man's Voice, Writers, Writing
John from thebeautifuldue
I loved reading this poem the first time and have re-read it several times since. It is a combination by the poet of “several male sources.” While it could be the experience of just one man’s childhood influence, it pulls together pieces of various lives to tell the story that may very well speak many men.
“A lot of men find it very hard to write about their childhood.”
Something about the way he phrased that made me rethink the dynamic. I realized I processed the hesitance to follow through as a lack of interest. Allan helped me see it’s not that at all. It’s a level of difficulty and often of pain that may be more pervasive in male childhood experience than female — not at all to say women have easy childhoods, but there is something here connected to the male psyche and experience in the early years that may be keeping a lid on what is actually a very keen interest in writing.
Read more here: Essays on Childhood: In a Man’s Voice | Esse Diem
Autumn acorn come Spring.
It’s nearly impossible not to fall in love with Valley Haggard when you read this quote on her “About Me” page from her website:
I backed into [writing], after my more ambitious dreams – to be a saint or at least a wonderful wife and mother – didn’t pan out. -Phyllis Theroux
The post below (shared with permission) is a fresh and exciting take on writing about identity, origin, and “place.”
Valley writes:
“This particular piece of writing comes from an exercise in a creative nonfiction class I’m teaching, the title borrowed from the poem, “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon. It does seem to open up some interesting doors.”
For those developing an Essay on Childhood, consider how this writer defines place in her fluid reflections: She is “from” people, from relationships, from illness and health, from stories and landscapes and emotions.
Visit Valley’s website to view the original posting, as well as to learn more about the organization she founded, Richmond Young Writers. Valley offers writing classes in the Richmond, VA, area, as well as editing and consulting services for fiction and nonfiction manuscripts.
Valley Haggard: Where I’m From
I am from the little lady with the big baby. The little lady who carved us naked out of clay, she on her back, arms open, me sprawled fat and barely born across her belly.
I am from the man who was a boy with a foot so long they said he looked like an “L” with hands, I’ve discovered, mine will never grow into.
I’m from Jewish anarchists and Methodist peacekeepers, garden gnomes and Denmark, Boris and Margaret, Whilhelmina and Ray, the Pale- that stretch of land between Poland and Russia.
I’m from a little house with a big backyard in the noble heritage of the near West End in a corner of the world called Tuckahoe, a name I’ve heard means “Little Potato.”
I am from short and tall, late and early, passive aggressive and just aggressive, tongues that long to whip and to kiss. I am from a grated oil burning floor heater and metal ducts snaking forced heat through holes in the wall, couches found in alleys, lampshades made by hand, food stamps, thrift stores, love first rate, never used before.
I am from pastel and oil, acrylic and watercolor, pencil and ink, wood and ruler, hammer and nail, chisel, chainsaw, miter, drill, screw.
I am from Mr. Rogers and Bob Marley, Uncle Wiggly and The Rainbow Goblins, The Monkey King and Thumbelina.
I am from a marriage and a divorce, love and its opposite, the familiar clang of the world at its end and at its beginning, splitting apart and then reformed, broken and whole, the consistency of two people working out their distances across town and across a river and across a home and across a little girl.
I am from blooming fig trees and hacked down dogwoods, watermelon rinds, black licorice sticks, mugs of Folgers shot through with honey and hot milk.
I am from a house full of art and cats and paint and dishes piled in the sink, addiction treated and untreated, words in sentences, stories in books, love kept and love given in such abundance it takes all of me to remember.
Image credit: E. Gaucher, April 17, 2011
Ashes to Ashes, Pen to Paper: Embracing Grief for the Good of Your Writing | Esse Diem.
Essay writers may wish to read the above blog post on engaging “the ashes of a past event” in developing an essay on childhood.
