Calibrating Narrative Voice in Memoir

finding my place in the revision process

Early last evening I looked outside and saw that the curtain of night had descended. Although the days here in Florida are nearly always sunny, with daily temperatures still reaching into the eighties, the abrupt nightfall surprised me, as did the sense of melancholy that came with it. Now it’s morning and I’m sitting on my little patio. I can hear music coming from inside my cottage intermingled with birds chattering and the cacophony of shouts and thuds from the high-school, which is next door to my place. I am surrounded by winding streets. The morning traffic sounds like ocean waves without discernible rhythm.

I’m immersed in book revisions and it feels like I’m underwater, clinging to this monumental task as everything else (class work, teaching, committee duties, social engagements, watering my plants, feeding my cat, feeding myself, papers that need writing, books that need reading, sleep that must be slept) floats towards and away from me. In some moments I’m overwhelmed. In o…