Finishing the Book
...and letting it go
Currently, I am sitting at my makeshift outdoor office. The wildflowers I planted in late winter are blooming in my yard and driveway; my cat Edna is sleeping on her cat tree, which I can see through the window. I’m writing this instead of working on my revisions— a short reprieve.
Each morning I get up at 6 am, make my tea, feed Edna, stretch, and come out here to work (unless it’s raining). My little cottage office is bright as a dungeon, and it feels better to be outside where the birds keep me company. On Monday I attended the last class of my graduate career. I’ll turn in my last paper in two days, then begin working on my book list for preliminary exams. I’m so looking forward to sharing that with you and being in this space more often.
I was supposed to turn in my revisions in January. Then I got an extension for May. I’ll be done on May 15th (fingers crossed). My editor wants the book to come out next summer but that’s up in the air, all contingent on the quality of my work. Me? I wish I had the summer. There’s so much more I want to do with this book. I feel like a painter staring at my own painting, wanting everything to be absolutely perfect. Wanting my book to be a million different things when it can only be one thing. My first book.
I started the first draft in June 2019 and finished it in August 2020, at the height of the pandemic. The book has gone everywhere with me: Czechia, France, the UK, Seattle, and now Tallahassee. I’ve revised it five times— several of those were rushed revisions with tight deadlines. I’ve cut and cut and cut and reworked and rewritten, yet it’s form still feels too chaotic. On some days I feel like I’m creating a masterpiece. On others, garbage.
If I could go back in time I wouldn’t have taken that Fulbright. I’d have rented a house and given myself all the time and space to immerse myself in the first draft. But then I wouldn’t have seen Europe for the first time. I wouldn’t have some of the friends I have now. I wouldn’t be who I am in this moment. So, I guess I wouldn’t change that at all.
A first book, I think, is hard to let go of. Especially when it’s a memoir. Especially when it’s an historical and ecological narrative. Mine’s both. On my worst days I ask myself if I am doing my own story justice. I ask myself if I have researched enough to call myself an authority on anything. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching but it still doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve lived my entire life but it still doesn’t always feel like I understand myself.
Except I do understand myself more now. When I began writing this book, about the time I spent as a wildland firefighter, I couldn’t wrap my head around some of the things my younger self did. I’d ask my therapist: why did I sleep with all those men? Why couldn’t I see that I was queer? That I wasn’t attracted to them at all? Why didn’t I quit and go to college? I’d spend days writing scenes of my own past traumas, then weeks afterward snagged in the loops of old thinking patterns, feeling scared and ashamed, as if I’d done something wrong.
Yesterday I rewrote an especially traumatic scene and when I stood up I realized that I’d transported myself back there. I didn’t stay stuck in the loop. I made some lunch. I went for a walk and listened to a podcast. I came back to the scene and wrote in the narrative bits it needed. Bits from me, now. Someone who understands what happened, but isn’t that young person anymore. Who knows what lives in the past and what lives in this moment?
There’s this constant dialogue in the writing community; it revolves around the question of writing as therapy. Is writing therapeutic?
There’s this constant dialogue in the writing community; it revolves around the question of writing as therapy. Is writing therapeutic? My answer is: it can be. But only if we’re willing to linger long enough for self-understanding. My writing wouldn’t be therapy if I weren’t in actual therapy. Without my therapist I wouldn’t have been able to forgive my past selves, and without forgiveness I’d never have been able to write about myself with compassion.
Comparing my first draft to the current version of my book is like reading the writing of two different people. The first narrator was judgemental. The current one is forgiving— I see myself clearly now. I see how hard I fought to get here, to this moment, writing to you.
On a craft level, too. I see how I’ve grown as a writer. In the beginning I thought everything was important. That the reader needed to know so many things in order to understand me. Now I trust my readers to fill in the gaps. I trust that they’ll understand, as I understand.
I think I’ll hold onto that as I spend the next two weeks finishing the book. The accomplishment rather than the anxiety. The acceptance rather than the judgment, or the fear of judgment. Because I can’t write a perfect book. The book I’m writing is imperfect, just as I am imperfect. But it’s whole. And it’s almost finished. I’ll save the rest for the next one.
Tell me, what have you learned from your writing process? Do you find writing therapeutic? Or does it have a different meaning and function for you?
I read an essay years ago on the "writing is therapy" idea that was clarifying. It said that it can be therapeutic if you're actively able to create a narrative of what happened. I can't remember how well-researched the essay was, but there's a level of that that rings true for me.
The writing struggle has helped me break through some big challenges. Yes, it has been therapeutic. 😌