How To Start Writing A Book Without Meaning To, by Rachel Simon

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A lot of people have asked me why I wrote a second memoir, assuming it arose as part of a grand plan.  The truth is that I hadn't intended to write this book at all. 

The first hint of it arose in the summer of 2005.  My career had taken a leap forward that spring when my last book, the memoir Riding the Bus With My Sister, was adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, and after the fanfare died down, I felt at a loss about what to do next with my life.  I began contemplating what I call in this new book my "Search for Life Purpose 2.0".

As it turned out, that summer, I wasn't able to make Search 2.0 my priority.  My husband Hal, an architect, had convinced me to undertake a major renovation on our house, and that summer, as we were preparing to move out so the contractor could start the work, I found myself overwhelmed by the prospect of packing. 

Shortly before our move-out date, I went see a friend in Washington, DC, and spent the two hour train ride writing.  I'd been thinking about writing a short story, hoping to return to fiction after the first memoir.  But the moment my pen touched the page, I found myself examining my struggles with the packing process.  To my surprise, I found I wasn't writing about packing as much as my internal conflict; I'd had a hard time sorting and parting with possessions because these things were more than photo albums or bits of stained glass or old containers; they were pieces of my internal world.  I'd come to a new understanding about friendship as I'd packed, which I put into the essay.  I finished the last line as the train pulled into Union Station.

I thought the piece would be a stand-alone essay.  But when we moved out a few days later, I had another experience that twined together the inner and outer worlds.  I wrote about that, though this time I focused on family more than friends.  A few days later, I had another bump in the renovation road, and it forced me to focus on myself and examine some of my personal issues. 

Suddenly I realized that our renovation had put me on a journey that was both physical and emotional.  My concrete world was intimately tying into my thoughts and feelings about all the relationships that really matter in life: family, friends, and self.  I also began to see the renovation process as a metaphor for love.  When you think about it, love is always in the phase of construction, demolition, or repair.

I chronicled the whole story as I lived it, having no idea where it would go or how it would end.  Amazingly, the day the renovation finished and we moved back in, I figured out my Life Purpose 2.0.  In a moment of clarity, I knew the end of my memoir and my life's purpose.  Not bad for a book that began simply as a two-hour train ride!

Rachel Simon, Building a Home with My Husband, memoir, home renovation, Penguin Books