NaNoWriMo on the brain. Still can’t write. Searching for clues. I’m the one who tells people to just write, not judge it. Just pour it out and the ball of clay can be whittled down to a story.

But I’m not feeling it. I don’t want that ball of clay to be a mishmash of dried dirt and useless material I can’t carve into the story I want to tell.

The fact it’s a biography about the search for my piano teacher makes it even more difficult.

Fiction is freer, more powerful for the writer. You create a story that never existed. You are in control of where your imagination takes you. There’s hardly any limits.

In biography, you’re dealing with reality, with history and with a human being who left behind a loving family whose memories are very clear. You don’t want to disturb the balance or create a fictional situation unless it’s part of the creative license you acquire that allows you to deepen meaning and human themes.  With fictional flourishes, in the end, you have to show readers that this is just a passage of fancy, and how it connects to the real story.

So, as I sit here and thing of how to start my writing up again (after three days of being writing-less), I try to fill up the tank with art and music.

As I continue to sit and think and fill the well, I listen to the great Allen Toussaint – a true artist who passed away this week. Maybe a little ‘Tipitina and Me’ will get me going.