Being Ready

Every writer has a Reader, with a capital R, someone whose literary opinion the writer trusts completely.  My Reader is also a close friend who I met some 12 years ago in a writer’s workshop.

She and I were talking the other day, and I told her that I feel like I can’t write fiction until the memoir is finished.  I told her my fiction was not ready or perhaps I said my fiction wasn’t good enough.  In any case, she said she disagreed.  She said, “You are ready.  It is good enough.  You just need to finish it.”  Sometimes you just need a champion.

I’ve been working these last few months on fiction and non-fiction.  I’ve been alternating between developing a detailed outline of a novel (I’ve devoted 72 hours to that task, and I’m still not done.) and drafting chapters for a memoir.  Lately, the memoir has been more demanding and unyielding, so I give myself to it. 

Funny, I’m reluctant about giving myself to anyone.  I kick and I scream and I push people away, but I willing give myself to creativity.  The last three chapters that I’ve written have been painful…hell every damn chapter has been painful even the light-hearted ones.  After I wrote last Thursday, I felt debilitated for two fucking days.  But I gotta get this done, and I gotta do it well.  I keep telling myself: Be raw.  Be true.  Damn, I wish I had one of those normal childhoods people keep talking about.