Pre-scription- blogging groundhog day
"Discover the secret to crafting a killer last line for your blog posts! Learn how to break free from the 'Groundhog Day' cycle and leave readers wanting more.
On Wednesdays I do one of two things (I’m pro-choice,) I write about writing or I share writing that I have written that is “real writing.” Write on. (x6)
Usually, before I start writing I have a first line. When I wrote for blogs called things like Scary Mommy and Coffee and Crumbs and Ravishly. (Ravishly, really?) a version of my first line was always my last line. I trusted my readers to take a journey with me… but only if I carefully held their hand and returned them pretty much to where they started.
A post about my four year old, a pack-rat opened with “Everything is a container for you to fill” and closed with “everything is a container for you to fill, just like you are a container to be filled.” Between these lines my son gathered cigarette butts and shiny shards and planted them into gardens and lined pebbles up like armies. He filled pillowcases with art supplies, and gum, and had what he called a magic pocket which produced legos and pokemon cars and house keys. There was a scene where the amused and beleaguered mom (me) stood in the laundry room pulling the wet wad of theatre tickets for that Thursday’s matinee out of overall pockets.
It did not include the moment where my son opened the burled box on my bedside and held a sculpture that my father had made in his small hand. It didn’t say that when I felt the thread that connected my son and my father it made me want to scream out with loss instead of bask in the warmth that a bit of my dad lived on in my boy.
A piece that I wrote about depression began “The oldest man in the world is swimming laps in front of us, his skin a peach parachute billowing half a stroke behind him. I hope he doesn’t sink.” The piece about pool-side depression finished “the oldest man in the world has finished his laps. Today, at least, he didn’t sink. And neither did I.” Between those lines the mom’s wet kids wrestled all over her reading material, a magazine with the cover story “Top ten ways to survive parenting toddlers” has been soaked in pool water, tips that might have turned things around for our protagonist ironically lost forever.
It did not include the moment that I decided to take anti-depressants and give up the highs and lows that felt as much a part of me as the tender place inside of my elbow.
An essay about choosing not to continue to try to get pregnant with a third child’s first line was a curt “enough is enough” while the woman that used to be me furiously threw a hundred dollars worth of pregnancy tests into my tissue filled waste basket. It’s final line? “Enough was enough” Readers learned that I appreciated the beauty and health of my family and felt gratitude for what I had.
It did not include the way I walked around, insides on the outside, weeping like a wound over every small child on the planet. Nor did it talk about the guilt I felt over that.
Usually before I start writing, I have a last line. But when I do I know where I am ending before I even start. So I am giving that up. Because I want the act of writing to be more about learning something about myself than teaching something to an unknown reader.