It’s currently about eleven degrees in New Jersey, and I am freezing to death. My house is 116 years old and has its original windows. Even with the storm windows (circa 1960s), the freezing air comes through the glass. Our furnace isn’t keeping up and it’s only 60 degrees in here. I’m wearing multiple layers of clothing and fingerless gloves. I can’t wait until summer.

Oddly, instead of eating my head off or hibernating under my covers, which is my normal response to deep winter, I’ve had a sudden surge of creativity in the past few days. This is odd, because I typically don’t feel this way until springtime, but I find myself with the overwhelming urge to browse fabric stores and do some sewing, or to create a collage, or to finally learn how to cook. That last one is the most surprising because normally the thought of cooking makes me break out in hives. I am not in any way a natural cook. I find simple recipes confusing. I have occasionally attempted cooking in the past, but it has always ended in disaster. Once, my then-five-year-old son, who will eat anything, actually threw up right at the dinner table after taking a mouthful of my meatloaf.

But last weekend my girlfriend, Virginia, was visiting and she made a delicious soup for us one evening. It made the house smell amazing and didn’t look too difficult to do. A couple of nights later, I managed to successfully make squash soup using a kit from Whole Foods with very clear instructions (and the help of the afore-mentioned child, who showed me how to use our Cuisinart.)  Now I’ve gone and ordered a cookbook and want to try some more challenging things. Imagine how much money I could save by actually cooking dinner for my family instead of depending on take-out? I could probably even afford a vacation or something! The mind boggles.

The question, of course, is how funneling my creativity into sewing or cooking or art might take away from my writing. It will, there’s no doubt. There are only so many hours in the day, after all. But what I’ve always found is that any creative endeavor ultimately feeds my writing in some way. Although I may not crank out the pages as rapidly as I would if I were only writing, the pages I do complete will be stronger for it. I’ll be less burned out because I won’t be focusing all my creative ju-ju in a single direction.

I’d be curious to know if other writers and artists go through periods of wanting to dive into more than one creative genre and feeling a great drive to…well…create. And what other types of things do you do besides your chosen art form?  Anyone?

I’m imagining that you all are out there tapping your fingers on your computer screens impatiently awaiting my next post here, since it’s been so long.  Such imaginings give away my tendency to think I’m the center of the universe. Well, I AM the center of my own universe, after all, so it’s a natural progression that I would be the center of everyone else’s as well. But no, I realize that probably a whole three people have noticed I haven’t updated and everyone else is getting along with their own lives, being the centers of their own universes.

The reason it’s been so long since I’ve darkened the door of this here blog has to do with my mother.  Oy, my mother.  My mother has a nasty and particularly cruel neurological disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.  It’s extremely rare so you probably haven’t heard of it. Suffice it to say that my 65-year-old formerly vibrant, law-practicing mama is now a helpless old woman stuck in bed, who depends on someone else to do absolutely everything for her, and who, if she declines the feeding tube she will soon need, will probably die before the year is over. A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit her. She lives 3000 miles away, so it’s difficult for me to get out there often enough. And although it makes her desperately happy when I do visit, it’s stressful beyond description, given our fractious past, my own guilt, the relentless expectations of my extended family (and our resulting near-estrangement), and the fact that I seem to have a bulletproof wall separating what’s happening to her from my emotional core. Stress notwithstanding, I have yet to shed a tear. I do what needs to be done and try to show her as much love as I can, but the grief that I should be feeling is locked away and I have yet to access it.

So why am I telling you all this? It’s probably TMI. You don’t even know me, after all. Why should you care about my sick mother? Well, because many people (most, even, I would wager) have some sort of difficult relationship with one or both parents, and many people have to deal with the slow, gut-wrenching deaths of loved ones. What I’m going through is not all that special or unusual. I sense that it is a situation readers might relate to. Also because the complexities of my relationship with my mother growing up, and the way it affects what we’re going through together now are central themes to almost everything I write. It is certainly a central theme of my memoir, even though the memoir is humorous and I spend most of it telling stories about my relentless dorkitude. While I can look back at my many missteps as a child and laugh (and they were truly funny in the way only the very sincere and dramatic child’s behavior and thoughts can be), the fact that my socially-perfect mother disapproved of my whole persona much of the time is a key part of the story. Writing about that time and poking gentle fun at myself is my way of re-parenting myself with less disapproval. (I don’t have a degree in psychology, but I’m pretty sure I could play a therapist on TV.)

The point is, I got mired in it all after the visit, and then it was my birthday, which I like to celebrate for an entire month instead of just a day, and next thing you know it’s been weeks without a blog post.  (Also, I am still a poet and was overcome with the compulsion to spend a day writing a poem about my husband’s love of a C.K. Williams poem featuring the low-hanging balls of a basset hound. When the muse calls…)  My apologies to you three people who have been waiting for an update.

The good news is, I’m back now. And I’m getting back to the bad fashion memoir chapter I started before the trip to Seattle. My writing buddies were promised it at least a week ago and I have a lot of catching up to do.

Oh hello, all you lovely people who are here from Poetry Hut Blog and Avoiding the Muse. Nice to have you. That turned out to be a pretty interesting discussion in the comments on the MFA post. You should go read them if you haven’t already. And how nice to get some fresh opinions.

I don’t really have any specific topic to post about today, so here’s a helpfully enumerated list of things I’ve been thinking about lately. (And apologies for the following boldface, which is annoying. I have to figure out how to change that code on my template…)

1. I just finished reading John Irving’s new book Last Night in Twisted River. I haven’t read anywhere near all of Irving’s work, but Cider House Rules was definitely one of my favorite books ever, and I think he’s generally considered to be a very good writer, yes? So I’m wondering what others thought of Twisted River. I thought the story was good and engrossing, and it was interesting in a sort of “meta” kind of way (which I guess I won’t explain so as to avoid spoilers), but it felt like it could have benefited from some pretty heavy editing. I’m guessing 80-100 pages could have been cut fairly easily. And it got pretty navel-gazey at times. Lots of shout-outs to other writers, like Vonnegut and pretty much anyone else ever associated with the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Although I did enjoy the cameo by Marvin Bell, with whom I’ve studied.  I’m not sure the average reader would have appreciated that bit, though. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I finished, so it must have been successful on some level, right?
2. As for writing, I took the days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s off, but I haven’t started back up again. Partly it’s been because I’ve been recovering from something medical, but also because getting going again is tough and it’s too easy to tell myself I’m not feeling well (due to the afore-mentioned medical stuff.) The momentum has been lost. I’m sure I’m just going to have to suck it up and force it. I’m a big girl now and a “professional” writer (hahahaha! As if I’ve made more than $20 total for my writing in my entire life) so I guess I’m at that point where I just have to stop whining and do it. Luckily, I have to go into the city today and won’t be home until 5:00 pm, so I can make myself do it tomorrow. Heh.
3. I’ve been reading memoirs like a fiend, schooling myself for carrying on with writing my own. The ideas are piling up in my head like misspelled signs at an Obama protest rally. (Har!) I’ve been having a hankering for poetry lately, though. My old friend. I feel that poem-writing urge rustling around inside me. I might have to put the memoir aside for a day or two and crank out some verse. The nice thing about a poem is that there is more or less immediate gratification. It might make a nice break from the slog of prose, and let me tell you, I could use some immediate gratification in my life right now.

Three things hardly seems like a worthy list, but that’s all I’ve got today. I’ll leave you with this question, because I’ve been spending way less time online lately and more time with my nose in a book: What are you reading right now and would you recommend it?

Homegirl Kelly was writing on her blog the other day about the past decade in terms of her growth as a writer, and it sent me back to my own early days as a writer. I’ve been writing seriously since high school, but only decided to focus on poetry about eight years ago, in 2002. I know this because I recently found some old journals I started keeping after I said to my husband one day, “I think I’m going to forget about fiction and do poetry instead.” See, I say these things and they seem like an offhand comment, and then next thing you know…

But this story isn’t about how I became a poet (and let me just say…holy CRAP were those early efforts horrible. Seriously, I’m so embarrassed. But I suppose we all have to start somewhere.)  This story is actually about MFAs. Masters of Fine Arts for those of you who are physicists or engineers or whatever and not in on the literary degree lingo.

Here’s the thing: MFAs are controversial. That in itself seems supremely silly to me, but people spend a lot of time being outraged by a lot of things that seem silly to me, so who am I to say? But yes, silly as it is, there is a whole, and fairly large, set of people who are anti-MFA. They argue that MFAs are a dime a dozen. Everyone has them these days! (As if that negates the work put into earning one because, let me tell you, it ain’t a cakewalk.) They say that MFAs turn out cookie-cutter writers who only learn to regurgitate the style of their teachers. (My two main poetry teachers had vastly different styles, neither of which are remotely like mine. As for my fellow MFA poets–none of us writes just like any other of us. We each have a unique voice.)  Perhaps some rail against MFAs because they feel “art” should come naturally and not be forced by rules.  (Ok, that’s just ridiculous. Craft is craft in any art form. You learn it from people who know better than you.)  Whatever, MFA haters!

Going back to 2002, when I decided on a whim that I wanted to leave fiction in the dust and become a poet, I found a local workshop taught by a woman who would later become a friend and mentor, and I signed up. Showed up on the first day with my notebook and pen, ready to roll. I jumped into the local poetry scene with both feet–I did several workshops, went to local readings, and I wrote and read a LOT of poetry. Eventually I joined a private critique group in my very small town. All of these things definitely helped me to improve, but the improvement wasn’t happening as fast as I wanted it to. In other words, I wasn’t publishing.

So I started looking into MFA programs. I’d actually been interested in pursuing an MFA since my undergrad days as an English/creative writing major, but had never felt like the time was right. Now I wanted to do it. The funny thing, though, is that I think I wanted to do it more so I could feel like a legitimate writer than to improve my writing. I mean, I figured my writing would improve and that would be a good thing, but at first it was the letters I wanted, the letters that told the world “Hey, this girl has a degree so she’s legit.” (Silly, silly me.)  I also thought, to be honest, that it would help me publish–the letters in my bio, I mean. It didn’t occur to me that I would be publishing because my poetry would become THAT much better.

Getting to the point, I ended up applying and being accepted to the Whidbey Writer’s Workshop low-residency program and three years later I had my letters. (I took a year off in the middle — it was really just a two-year program.)  I can say without any doubt that my writing is exponentially better than it was before I began the program. Sure, I got some letters, but what was far more valuable was that I was taught the craft of writing poetry. I was taught how to read the great writers who came before me and then apply their lessons to my own work. Not only that, but I came out of the program with a tight group of fellow writer friends, with whom I still share work regularly. I made professional contacts within the program, as well, one of which led me to my current position as poetry editor at LA Review. I became a good enough poet to start getting published regularly, which has led me to get to know lots of editors and other writers out there in the industry. I’ve become part of the inner circle. All that stuff? It’s like gold, really. It’s what took me from some woman sitting at her kitchen table with a notebook, writing stuff to share with her neighbors, to what my former teacher and current boss Kate Gale calls “a literary playa.” Damn, I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I love being a literary playa. That’s really what I wanted all along — more than those letters, even. And did the letters make it a lot easier to get in the game? Hell yeah! There’s no doubt about it…but it was more about the learning and the networking than the letters themselves.  So if you’re a writer and considering taking the MFA leap, I would encourage you to shut out the naysayers (perhaps they are too afraid to make the step themselves?) and go for it. The rewards you reap will be endless–and go far beyond the letters in your bio.

I’ve been on “vacation” for nearly a week now, and boy has it been great. I’ve given myself permission not to do any writing if I don’t feel like it, and so far I haven’t. Mostly what I’ve been doing is working my way through the stack of books that’s been sitting in a pile for weeks (in some cases months and years.) I don’t allow myself enough time to read, usually, unless I’m reading something specific for my writing. It kind of makes me sad, too, because for my whole life I’ve been a voracious reader. I used to go through several novels a week. Of course, that was before the Internet. Man, is my laptop a time-suck, and I’m not just talking about the time I spend writing on it. Blogs, Facebook, email, Twitter, chatting with my husband while he’s at work, etc. etc. It can consume the whole day if I’m not careful. There’s always something else to click.

On Christmas day I decided to spend some quality time reading fiction. I haven’t read fiction in a long time, aside from flash-fic, because I barely have the attention span for it anymore. And since I don’t write fiction, it feels like slacking to read novels when I could be reading poetry, memoir, and books on writing craft. In fact, the last time I allowed myself to read a novel was in August when I spent a week at the Shore. So on Christmas I started with the new Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood. I bought it hard-cover a few months ago when it was released, and then it sat under my bedside table gathering dust. Took me almost four days to read that sucker. Yeah, it’s a pretty thick book, but that’s a looong time for one novel. I felt like I was reading every spare moment, so I’m appalled by how much my reading has slowed down. No wonder I don’t have time to read anymore! Boy, it was good, though. I got sucked in just the way I used to. I love that feeling.

Next up: John Irving. Bought at the same time as the Atwood book. Equally huge. I have six days of vacation left, so I should be able to finish it and maybe read a third book besides. I’m excited. It’s that old feeling I used to get when I was a kid and would come home from the library with a big stack of new books. God, is there anything better?

In other news, the day after Christmas I got a holiday card from my former teacher Carolyne Wright. I opened it, read her Christmas greeting, then saw the scrawled P.S. It said, “I nominated you for a Pushcart Prize. Expect to hear from Bill Henderson in Feb.”

I blinked.

I blinked again.

It still said the words “nominated” and “Pushcart.”

Now, I know that thousands of writers have been nominated for Pushcarts. I don’t want to make myself out to be better than I really am.  But WAAAAHOOOOOOO! Talk about a deep, dark wish coming true! As it turns out, she (as a contributing editor, I assume) was able to nominate me as a poet, rather than for a specific poem, which means I get to send 3 or 4 poems to be considered. They have to be poems that were published in 2009, of course, and given Murphy’s Law of Pushcart Nominations, my very best poems were published in 2008 or are forthcoming in 2010. Ha! But there are a couple that might have a tiny chance. I’m not going to look a gift nomination in the mouth, that’s for darn sure.

Tonight hubs and I will be having a little champagne and going to the movies to see Sherlock Holmes in celebration of the honor, and then tomorrow I’ll try to forget about it until they announce the winners. I can’t afford to spend a lot of time thinking about it because I’ve got reading to do.  And if I go any slower I’ll never finish!

I spent most of the weekend writing chapter one of the New! Improved! Funny! Memoir! Totally cracked myself up. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Told some great stories and poked fun at myself all the way through. Sent it to my critiquers, feeling mostly good about it.

And here’s why they are such good readers.

They told me I reveal too much too soon, and need to figure out how to only tell what is necessary, to reveal in such a way to allow for suspense and discovery. Also that I need to find a way to blend the funny with the serious. I can’t do all trauma, but I can’t do all funny, either, apparently. Even David Sedaris has the dark side in his stuff. Oy. I totally see their point, but I have no idea how to blend the two voices into something beautiful and moving and lyrical (AND funny.) Homegirl Tanya gave me the best advice, which I knew full well, but it always helps to be reminded: read dozens of other memoirs and mine them for tricks on how to make my own work. She provided a nice list so I can get started. I see a trip to the library in my near future. With a wheelbarrow.

The problem I’m having with this whole scenario is that I am psychotically impatient to get this thing done. It’s making me completely crazy that I don’t have a book to sell right now (and I’m the last of my writing posse to do so, which doesn’t help.) I desperately want this book to be written and to be working on a proposal. I can’t bear the amount of time it’s going to take to do it right (although I’m fully aware I have no choice — it’s going to take as long as it takes.)  The other side of the coin is that I am ON FIRE to write right now, but I really need to be spending as many hours reading as I can before I’m going to really have an idea of how to write this thing. But reading doesn’t feel like real work to me. I know in my head that it is, that the writing can’t happen without the reading but…urrrggghh. I want to write.

It’s a quandary to be sure. Perhaps I will put reading on my calendar like I do with writing deadlines. A certain number of memoirs by a certain date, checking off my list of titles as I go. Yes, that might make it feel more like legitimate work. And I will keep a compendium of things I learn from each one.

This has already been such a wrenching process. I feel like I have whiplash from the number of times I’ve changed my mind about what I’m doing. I can only hope the second book is easier.

I just had the hugest epiphany. I was sitting on my couch, and I started to read a book, and then some sort of massive neural solar flare thingie happened in my brain and suddenly everything I’ve been struggling with in terms of the memoir became clear. Absolutely, sparklingly clear, as if someone implanted the finished manuscript into my brain and all I have to do now is type it.

You might have guessed by now that I decided to write the memoir first, before the poetry manuscript (see yesterday’s post.) Originally, it was because I have 56,000 words of memoir already written, but now that point is moot because I won’t be using a word of that 56,000. Yes, that’s right. I’m starting over entirely from scratch. I might be insane, but I think I had to get all that out of the way so that I could get to what this memoir is really supposed to be, which is something completely different than the childhood trauma memoir I started to write. You might remember a week or two ago when I was musing about whether I could write about trauma by using humor. (Because, honestly, it was running out of gas as a serious memoir.) I tried, in fact, by rewriting the first chapter, but it didn’t really flow. I made a new outline of scenes that would work better with humor, but it wasn’t coming together as a narrative. And then BAM! The epiphany. And now I know exactly how to do it.

So, here’s what I can tell you: There will be no trauma (at least not real trauma.) It’s going to be hilarious. I’m going to give away all my deep, dark secrets. And you’ll feel much better about yourself after you read it and realize that nobody on earth is a bigger dork than Laurie Junkins.  Oooooh yeah. My greatest hits of good-intentioned dorkitude, from my childhood dreams of being the next Liza Minnelli, to Bad Fashions I’ve Known and Worn, to the time I decided to indulge my inner Martha Stewart and become the perfect housewife–which resulted in my son barfing up my “delicious” meatloaf onto his dinner plate after a single bite.  It’s good stuff, people, and the kind of thing I do best. (Writing humor, I mean, not being a dork. Although they’re really hand-in-hand.)

I have never been so excited about a project. Now, if you wouldn’t mind seeing yourself out, I’ve really got a lot of writing to do.

I am having an unprecedented surge in writing productivity lately. I attribute it to three things: 1. the remarkable successes of my two inspirational writing buddies, Tanya Chernov and Kelly Davio, who are cranking out the manuscripts faster than I can say to my kids, “Put some socks on, it’s only 20 degrees outside!” 2. NaNoWriMo, for obvious reasons, and 3. the poetry workshop I did with Kim Addonizio, which just ended last week. You already know all about my NaNoWriMo experience, but the workshop was just as productive in its way. I wrote six new poems, which will soon be in submitting form thanks to the excellent comments from Kim and my workshop buddies. I would highly recommend her workshop to anyone who has some skill with poetry. It’s definitely not a beginning workshop (which is something I valued greatly) but for medium to advanced poets, it is super helpful.

Given those six new poems and the new poems I’ve written earlier this year, plus a couple of old ones I went back and revised yesterday, I feel a new manuscript taking shape. Or, rather, pieces of my old manuscript combined with some new stuff in a fresh way that goes in a whole different direction. My poetic voice has really changed since I wrote that MFA thesis. Not only that, but when I go back and read some poems from then that I thought were finished, I can see clearly now how to make them work better. Apparently my brain has been working this year, even during the months when I didn’t write. This is the second time I’ve had a long dry spell and then come back to it feeling like I’d taken a big leap in skill.

So it’s all good, right? Well, not exactly. Now I have a quandry that I’m having a hell of a time sorting out. See, I have two goals for my writing, and I feel equally excited about both. One is to finally write the poetry manuscript that’s been hanging in the back of my subconscious for months, and feel really good about submitting it for publication. I feel like I’m in a good place in terms of skill, motivation, and clarity to do so.  The second is to finish the memoir and pitch it to an agent. This project has been hanging back there for a few years, and I’m halfway done with a draft, plus I’m getting more clarity about the theme, voice, and direction of it with each day that passes.

I have a lot of confidence and enthusiasm about both projects, and I can’t seem to figure out which one should take priority.  I’m not sure I can work on both simultaneously and maintain the kind of eat-drink-sleep-breathe-the-project intensity I’m going to need to do it right, so I have to pick one or the other to focus on first, but which???  It’s driving me nuts. And I am not a patient person by any means, so I desperately want both of these projects to be finished yesterday. Heh. It’s making me crazy that I’m stuck in this zone of indecision instead of plugging away.

Perhaps I will leave it up to you guys. What project should I do first, and why, keeping in mind that I see these two projects as being relatively equal in terms of workload and time-to-completion?  You decide, and I’ll get to work.

When I did NaNo, I had every intention of keeping up the 2000 word per day pace and finishing the first draft of my memoir by the end of December. Ok, maybe January 15. You know, taking a week off for Christmas and New Year.  Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve written about 3000 words since December 1. Yeah, I’m pretty behind. What’s gotten in the way, you ask? Let’s see…a pulled muscle in my back, several doctors appointments for both the kids and me, a constantly traveling spouse (which leaves me with a lot more responsibility at home), Christmas cards, Christmas decorating, Christmas present shopping, and the requisite trip to NYC to see the Rockettes and go ice skating at Bryant Park (Rockefeller Center is too crowded.) December is an insanely busy month, let’s face it. Now I have to forgive myself for not writing much this month and make sure I get back on it as soon as the holidays are over.

Another thing I have been doing this month is reading about memoir writing. This is as important as actually writing, I believe. Reading good memoirs and reading about how to write good memoirs are like feeding the body lean protein and complex carbs before and after an intense workout. The workout is the writing. The feeding is the reading. Both are necessary for the end result. (Can I show you my “guns”? I assure you, they’re impressive. Oh, never mind.) Anyway, I am forgiving myself for not writing this month because the reading has been putting all sorts of ideas in my head about this memoir and the theme of it and the way in which I want to address some of the difficult subjects it raises.

The thing is, my natural writing “voice” is humorous. I find it very easy to write funny stuff, especially if I’m poking fun at myself. The memoir-writing book I was reading on the train into and back from the city yesterday was showing me how humor can be used to help the reader cope with disturbing subject matter. Not in a way that belittles pain, but in a gallows sort of way.  It talked about how, when you write about trauma, having an authentic voice is so important because the reader needs to feel confident that you are in control during the time of writing, and that you are able to write from a place beyond the therapy zone. I am truly over my trauma and think that what I have written so far is from that grounded place, but I wonder if it’s as engaging as it could be. My former blog readers tell me that I was funny and that they loved my blog voice — perhaps that is the voice that needs to tell the story of my youth. Perhaps instead of calling my book Good Girls Don’t Cry I should call it something like Girl Dork: Story of a Chronic Misfit and then make it hilarious instead of pathetic. Something to consider, anyway.

Either way, I suspect that even if I don’t write another word until January 2, the month of December might turn out to be fruitful after all.

I don’t know how other writers feel, but I find it very difficult to maintain interest in a long-term writing project. This is a major reason why I decided to switch my primary genre from fiction to poetry. I can start a poem and even if it takes me several days to write it, I’m usually enthusiastic about whatever sparked it for the entire process. Then it’s finished and I move on to the next exciting piece. (Revisions are another post.) But long projects? Ugh. I get all excited at first, write like a fiend, fingers burning up the keyboard, sentences unrolling like red carpets in Hollywood and the feeling is sweet, and then…one morning I wake up and look at my computer and pretty much everything on earth seems more interesting than working on my project. You know, like cleaning the cat box? Or maybe using one of those snake thingies to get all the slimy hair out of the shower drain? Or how about I offer to clean my 17-year-old son’s toenails with a toothpick? (Ew. I crossed the line with that last one, didn’t I?) The point is, after a certain amount of writing, it gets reeeaaaally…well…HARD.  And this is why it has taken me three years to really get going on this memoir business.

What I discovered doing NaNoWriMo (which I finished, by the way, with an insane 15,000 words in the final two days after taking an entire week off–GO ME) is that if you make getting the words on the page your absolute, number one priority and completely disregard every other aspect of the writing, then it can be done. You can get through the slog part of it. Which is, more or less, everything after the first fifty pages. (There have been a few dramatic parts that have gone faster…I’m generalizing.) The thing about NaNo is that nothing matters except words on the page. It doesn’t matter if the words suck, if your plot sequence makes sense, or if you even know what the hell you’re writing about. Because all of those things can be fixed after the fact, during revisions. During NaNo, and especially that final, two-day push of Doom, I occasionally found myself thinking I’m writing this in the language of a 3rd grader and absolutely none of it is original. Or I’m writing this entire story in chronological order, which is probably not the most effective way to tell it. Or I really don’t remember how this event actually happened, so I’m going to have to make some shit up and then people will burn effigies of me in the village square and I’ll be the new James Frey.

And then I would remind myself that none of that matters, because I can figure it all out later. I can rewrite with better style, re-order every scene, and ask people who were there what happened (I have a multi-page document of questions for my parents) AFTER THE ROUGH DRAFT IS WRITTEN. See? The hard part (for me) is getting the foundation on paper. After that is when the real creativity and skill come in.

By the way, if there is a slog part to revisions, don’t tell me, ok? Thanks.

So NaNo is now over, and I have around 54,000 words on the page, but I’m only half to two-thirds of the way through the story. Lots of slogging ahead. But those first 50,000 words taught me something super important, which is that if I sit down and write my 2000 words per day and care about nothing but WRITING 2000 WORDS of what I think my experience was, I can get this thing done. And it’s actually working.

Someone else will have to clean the cat box and attend to my son’s nasty feet, I’m afraid. I’m too busy writing.