Does writing the story change the writer?

Writing has always been a two-step dance for me, an improvisational hallelujah followed by a patterned pas de deux. I’m mostly pas de deux these days, my partners a developmental editor and a couple of beta readers who have generously and kindly offered suggestions to make my memoir better.

It began in the summer of 2016, as I spilled out my story as I remembered it, aided by decades old journals, into ten sloppily filled spiral-bound notebooks in a two-year, morning after morning, dedicated practice. Those ten notebooks of 199,000-plus words became a 120,678-word Scrivener manuscript draft, which became a 103,343-word second draft, which then—change the whole damn structure—morphed into a 101,559-word third draft, and then a 96,981-word fourth draft.

Now into draft five, I’m at 93,538 words and still revising and editing. Still attempting to make it better. I toss out unfixable mistakes and hone others into “make it work” sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and sections, occasionally stepping outside the boundaries of the manuscript page and back to the notebook for a deeper dive to discover what I want to say or what I meant to say. Or what, if anything, I even know about what I am trying to say.

In the doing of all this, I travel back to the time my husband was alive and bringing up avocados from the orchard on the hillside of our Jamul home. I travel back, in memory and photographs and decades old travel books ordered from eBay, to the time after his death, that I wandered around Europe, the Soviet Union, and then India.

On this day, as I continue to revise the manuscript, I mark the date. Thirty years ago today and a few months shy of my planned year-long sojourn, the intensifying first Gulf War sent me back to America.

My journey and my story was and is a search for who I was, who I became, and who I am now. The writing changes the story and the story changes the writer. Can we ever say, “This is who I am” and be certain of what we say? Or do we forever revise our story, to make it—and ourselves—into something better?

Structure—from bones to days to writing

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, a disorder in which the bones become increasingly porous and brittle. My skeletal structure is more subject to breakage than others who don’t have this condition. A small seashell I keep on the windowsill next to my kitchen writing table reminds me of my “lacy” bones, and to take good care of my physical architecture—take the medication, do weight-bearing exercises, use caution with certain yoga poses.

As for structuring my days, one of the greatest takeaways I got from participating in Creative Mastermind groups with Dan Blank, is the idea of “time-blocking.” Time blocking is how I can structure the parts of my day when I don’t have a regularly scheduled obligation. If I want to work on a new project—block out the time, if I want to write a blog—block out the time. Design a new workshop, prepare a class, study a book—block out the time. Time blocking works. Especially if you do it! (I’m still working on this one, Dan.) (PS Dan is starting a new group July 1. Go here to find out more.)

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Dare I Call Myself “Writer”?

All my life, since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. Dreaming myself “Brenda Starr, Reporter” after that beautiful woman with voluptuous red hair, who, in the Sunday comics traveled the world to exotic places, chasing after stories for her newspaper. There was also a mysterious man—Basil St. John, who wore a patch over one eye and raised black orchids.

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