My name is Mary Brigit Elizabeth Poppleton, and welcome to my blog! You might know this already, but I am writing a memoir. I got the idea when we learned about memoir in my Rhetoric and Composition class. I am writing a memoir because I think I might like being a writer, but writing a memoir strikes me as considerably easier than constantly thinking of plots. And, if I write poetry or short stories, then I’ve calculated that my life could take approximately two different routes:

A) I could be discovered immediately, and my first story could be published in the New Yorker at the age of 18. I could spend the rest of my life leisurely writing 5 more stories, traveling in circles of up-and-coming literati, and being able to afford designer drugs, which will eventually become my unfortunate downfall.

Or

B) I could get really invested in my writing, enter my own world, and consequently become brilliant and also crazy. Then, I won’t ever leave my parents’ basement. I will stay down here and write prolifically. I will never let anybody read my writing, but I will save all of my stories and poems and they will be discovered after I die at a tragically young age.

And come to think of it, I will probably keep writing on this old Dell computer that was made in 1950, and it will most likely crash with my life’s work on it. Plus, this computer isn’t hooked up to a printer like the one upstairs in the office, so I can’t even print out hard copies of my work and hide them in the space behind the dryer or something. Of course, no-one in my family will realize my creative genius and let me use the computer in the upstairs office, even after I’ve lived in the basement crazy and writing for eleven years.

Every now and then, one of our neighbors might maybe poke their head down into the basement and say, “Hi, how’s school been?” And I’ll probably say something like, “I don’t go to school anymore. I’ve been in the basement for the past thirteen years.” And they’ll say, “Oh, really? Well, that’s nice. I don’t think your parents told me that.” And they’ll probably be right.

Okay– enough for now….don’t want to bore you in the beginning!

 Mary Brigit Elizabeth Poppleton

— Mary Brigit Elizabeth Poppleton