I started writing about myself in my early teen years, when my cousin Scott Bennion’s interest in writing poetry infected me. Maybe we both had it in our blood, our grandmother was a painter and our grandfather was a historical writer. We wrote on paper bags, scraps of paper, in the mud out on the desert where we worked together on my grandfather’s ranch. We made up obscene lyrics, which we sang to the skunks and rattlesnakes, and impossible fantasies, generally having to do with girls, which we narrated to each other. Since then, for better or worse, industriously or lazily, I’ve written about myself, or recast my own experience as fiction. For more than thirty years I’ve worked to persuade others that the pleasure and pain of writing about your own life is worth it. Writing helps us see ourselves and others, our experiences, more clearly. I have a head-full of tactics to uncover material about our own lives. The purpose of this blog is to download what I’ve learned, to test new tactics, and topublically experiment with writing myself. The title is a little silly, but it can be read as an imperative: WRITE YOURSELF, YOU FOOL! or as instruction WRITE WHAT? WRITE: YOURSELF. AlsoDo it yourself. It also can be seen as psychological insight. Right yourself by writing yourself. I do believe in the benefits of writing self.
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