The second revision of my memoir is finished. It was an arduous process that took 18 months, but finally. Finally I could save the document, close it and rest. Breath.
And then immediately (the next day) I began almost frenetically creating again. Stories, long essays and short ones came tumbling out. It was as if they’d been held on reserve and now that I wasn’t devoting my creative energy to And Then This Happened, they could be released.
I am released.
(Excerpt from And Then This Happened):
I was still “taking notes,” I told my therapist one day. The process of writing and re-writing my story would start later. I’m a diligent journalist. Research must be conducted.
She prompted me. We’d been talking about this for 10 months now.
“What is keeping you from moving from note taking to writing?”
I’m thinking thoughts. Vulnerable ones.
We both wait for the stirrings in my soul to catch up to my mind to be translated into words. It finally happens.
I haven’t started the process of finishing my book because it is the ultimate goodbye. It is the act of me laying this part of my story on the proverbial altar and walking away. Or, to put it another way, putting the thing to bed, tucking it in, and cutting out the lights. I imagine it will feel as though I’m parting with an old friend.
It is a final, public acknowledgement that this happened and then this happened and releasing that to you is, in a way, releasing it from myself.
I am delightfully free (until my third revision begins in March), and I have so many things to tell you. Funny things (stories you’ve never heard), introspective things, spiritual things, life things. I have a list. And it’s dwindling because when I sit down at my keyboard, I say more and more and more. Then I have more ideas and I keep writing and writing and writing.
You’ll read them soon. I promise.
For now, I’m having fun.
Creating.
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