On Writing My Way Through

... and why I've been remiss ...

Reading to an audience of one. (Photo by Margit.)

It’s been four months since my last confession post. Way, way too long, especially for those who have ponied up subscription $$ to help this gal out.

Some have unsubscribed and I get it. I shoulda coulda given signs of life and I didn’t.

Some of you have reached out: Are you okay?

I am. I’m also doing some of the hardest work of my life.

I am writing a memoir.

The draft is well past the half-way mark. I had dangled deadline carrots to get’er done by my August birthday. (Missed that.) Then by the first day of autumn. (Missed that one, too.) And here we are, in October. Now, I’m aiming for Thanksgiving.

Unless you’re a known entity in the publishing world, you’ve got to write the damn thing before you can pitch a memoir to the people whom you’ll hope/pray/crossfingerstoes will publish it.

I am up before six most days when my brain is plastic, when the street noise is dull. I put on one of my smock-like dresses and I put a Moka pot of half-caf on the stove and I stretch while I wait for its gurgle. I sleep monk-style in a twin bed in my office so that I don’t disturb Russ in the dark of dawn. I get a few hours in, then I get on the mat and Maud leads the way and I go upside down, working out kinks in my spine and in my manuscript. I return to the page for a few hours in the afternoon, or until my eyes get heavy. Rarely do I write at night. Then I really wouldn’t be able to sleep.

I’ve been deliberate with how and with whom I spend my time. It means I have been less social — in real life and on the Internet. And in this here space.

Whenever I can, I retreat — not just to my monk-ish room but further afield in the company of other writers, including Suzette, who has read nearly every word so far, and Margit, who asked me what no one else has: What are you stuck on?

For a change of local scenery, I’ve holed up in a local hotel, at a college library, in a friend’s studio. Every day, I inch a little closer to the finish line. I used to think I could never run a marathon. But I think that’s what I’ve been doing this past year-plus.

I’ve been working on something else, too — something I’d never thought I’d be writing to share: Next week, I’m getting on stage and performing a piece of my own writing.

The piece, “Mise en Place,” is about a sixteen-year-old girl who has just lost her father and who must try to figure out how to be in the world without him. After a lot of bumbling around, she finds her purpose in learning to cook. And in doing so, she learns to cook up a life.

It’s a piece that I knew, as I wrote it, would likely never make it into my memoir because it’s set in the way-back past — what’s known as ‘back story.’ But when I lifted it out of the big document and dropped it into its own petri dish, I noticed a beginning, middle, and end. Pages torn from my life that read like a short story.

As the Starstuff festival approaches, I still feel like an imposter. But every time I do another run-through, I am reading less like a newscaster. These words, which I stitched together, which I had never intended to bring to the stage, are now running through me, vibrating, pulsating, reminding me how far I’ve come and how much brush I’ve cleared.

Wish me luck. And thank you for putting up with me. I will always be strange, but no longer estranged.

Love, kod