I’m tossing my book -- and why that’s a good thing.

A few weeks ago, I thought I had finished the first draft of my memoir, and I was elated.  

For about five minutes.

That elation quickly turned to pride, turned to fear, turned to doubt, turned to shame.  As I began to review the draft, starting from the beginning, the negative personal commentary began its long and relentless rant.  ​​

This writing is terrible.  I can't believe you thought you wrote a book.  You’re not a real writer.  You suck.  Etc, etc, etc.

I recognized the self-criticism as stemming from the innate insecurities I’ve held my entire life about creating beautiful things.  For decades, I didn’t think I was capable of it.  And then I began to write, and people began to respond, and I felt like maybe… just maybe… I was wrong.  And it’s not that I hadn’t reviewed my book before; in fact, it had only been a handful of months since the last time I’d looked at it.  I hadn’t thought it was crap then, so surely it wasn’t crap now.  I was just being overly critical, and overly sensitive to my criticism (which would have me crawling from computer desk to living room floor, sick with shame and disappointment), and I needed some space from the thing.  

Yes, that was it.  Space.  Friends agreed.  Take a break.  Clear your mind and come back to it with fresh eyes.

I closed the manuscript and did not look at it for a couple of weeks.  Instead, I found myself drawing zentangles and watching hand lettering tutorials, subconsciously searching for an alternative creative outlet to distract myself from the chastising mind.  (Which, by the way, works wonders when you’re in a creative rut/battle.  Find something less demanding and less intimidating, and keep expressing.  It soothes the soul.)

At the beginning of this week, I decided to re-engage.  Instead of asking myself to confront the digital file in its entirety, I printed out ten pages of the book to edit by hand, hoping that seeing it in print and tackling it in pieces would help me focus and alleviate the overwhelm.  Over the last few nights, I began to take pencil to paper, making changes, rewriting, analyzing.  Each session lasted no more than an hour before I found myself again, on the living room floor, groaning; in part due to the emotional difficulty of being thrust back into those first days after George died, and in part due to the bad writing I was forcing myself to edit.  

And then I had an epiphany.

It was a few minutes after midnight, and I had promised myself that I’d be in bed by then.  But my mind was running, and it needed to get somewhere.  Was I really being overly critical?  Or was this draft, simply, not any good?  I had practiced being objective.  I had practiced coming at this with kindness and compassion.  I had practiced not comparing myself to other writers, and believing that my unique voice had its place in this world.  So why was it so hard for me to read my writing?  What was the truth?

What I realized, in a flash of insight, while sprawled on my living room floor investigating the pages of what was once my tragic life, was that This Is Not My Book.  It went something like this:

- This is not your book.
- What?  Yes, it is.  I wrote it.
- No.  You didn’t.  The person who started this book is not the person who finished it.  
- Holy shit.  That’s why it doesn’t resonate with me.  That’s why I think it’s crap.
- Yep.  This is not your book.  You have a different voice now.  So you better get writing.
- Fuck.  
- (Laughter)
- (Laughter)

And that was the moment of truth.  Here's what came next:

1. Liberation.  THANK GOODNESS I don’t have to spend another minute revising/editing this painful thing.  I can toss it and start over.  
2. Gratitude.  Writing this draft was incredibly healing.  I would not have survived George’s death or early parenthood without this platform of expression.  It had a very important purpose.  And now I can put it to rest.
3. Dissolution.  The woman who wrote those pages is gone.  I am not her.  I literally feel her melting away, in this moment, leaving me to be whomever I choose to become.  There is a delightful emptiness.  A blank page.  A voice waiting to be born.

No fighting to hang on, no disappointment in my failure, no voices of criticism or shame.  Only acceptance and curiosity and wonder.  What will I create now?  What will my story sound like from this vantage point?  Who have I become?

My book, therefore, the one I thought I wrote three weeks ago, is not written.  And nothing is lost.  It feels amazing to be at peace with that.

To quote Rosie Revere, Engineer’s Great Great Aunt Rose (highly recommended for all ages):  “Your brilliant first flop was a raging success!  Come on, let’s get busy and onto the next!  ...Life might have its failures, but this was not it.  The only true failure can come if you quit."