No doubt you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for an update about my writing project.
Right?
RIGHT!?!
My first step was to sign up for a website called 750 Words. The idea is that every day you write 750 words about anything. As the creator of the website says:
I’ve used the exercise as a great way to think out loud without having to worry about half-formed ideas, random tangents, private stuff, and all the other things in our heads that we often filter out before ever voicing them or writing about them.
Okay, cool. Except I’m terrible at that kind of stream of consciousness writing. I need a subject.
I’m writing my 750 words about the adventures of my family. Because it’s easy. I come from a family of goofy people. Here is my Dad. My Step-Dad. And now me. Plus I married THIS dude. (The women in my family are obviously smart enough to stay off camera; clearly I should learn from them.)
See what I’m saying here?
Before I was born, my Dad had a “beautiful” 1964 Chevy with no floor on the passenger side. His favorite thing? Picking up hitchhikers, “to see the look on their face.” This is the same man that drove on the Parkway talking on a gigantic rotary phone, out of pure mischievousness. For random holidays, I get an Easter card from my uncle. When my mom needs to solve a problem, she takes a bath. I was in a wedding where the maid of honor was carted off by the police. Just yesterday, I had to resist an overwhelming desire to steal a golf cart. And despite what my husband says, no one in my family ever, ever lies. We tell “stories.”
Here are some of my favorite family stories:
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. (I have no doubt my parents would have loved to put me up for adoption many times, but thankfully they didn’t.) I am also looking forward to reading his new self-help book This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. One reviewer called it “the most pragmatic self-help book in the world.” Whoa.
Anything by David or Amy Sedaris.
Anything by Jen Lancaster, blogger of Jennsylvania. Her subtitles alone make her books worth reading.
- Jeneration X; One Reluctant Adult’s Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It’s Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner
- Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly Ex-Sorority Girl’s Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are All These Idiots and Why Do They Live Next Door to Me?
- My fair lazy : one reality television addict’s attempt to discover if not being a dumb ass is the new black, or a culture-up manifesto
Too Close to the Falls and After the Falls: Coming of Age in the 60s by Catherine Gildiner
- Diagnosed as “high-strung,” Gildiner was put to work at age 4 in her father’s pharmacy. Her stories about growing up in Niagra Falls is sometimes unbelievable with an amazing cast of characters, including a sleepy Marilyn Monroe and an Indian chief.
I’m Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff
- When your white father truly believes he’s a black man, you are going to have an interesting childhood.
Pig Boy’s Wicked Bird: A Memoir by Doug Crandell
- Growing up on a farm in Indiana.
A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
- What’s with Indiana? Really anything by Kimmel is going to be fantastic.
On tap:
Let’s pretend this never happened : (a mostly true memoir) by Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess
And by the way, I wouldn’t trade my goofy family for anything.
-suzy
Eleventh Stack 