DROWNING A LITTLE

“Writing memoir is hard. Everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little.” - Mary Karr, author of Writing memoir.

I was just starting to find out how true that was when I hired a book coach (Caroline Allen), which has probably been the most life-changing decision I’ve made in a while. She teaches me the technical craft, sure, but she also turns the whole storytelling process into nothing less than a reinvention on a soul level (not even exaggerating). The writing process is still painful at times, but now I have her as a guiding light to keep going.

I’ve been wondering why I even want to write a whole book right now, in an age where I could generate 80.000 words about my life on a random Thursday night. Writing is an absurdly slow process. Writing about your own life in a way that is both honest and ethical feels next to impossible. Not to mention the shame attacks and vulnerability hangovers after a deep writing session.

And still, it’s exactly what I want to be doing right now.

I use AI. I won’t pretend I’ve taken some noble vow against it. But I also deeply believe in the friction of the writing process. Friction is the birthplace of creativity, of beauty, of truth. The hours I spent trying to describe the moment I knew I had to leave my ex-boyfriend aren't just wasted time. It’s the reason that the words have meaning at all.

So I am sitting with the uncomfortable drafts. The chapters that live in my head but I can't quite catch yet. The moments that I finally have time to write, but nothing comes. Trusting that at the end of this journey, there will be a book that is so alive it breathes.

One small change for this newsletter: my book coach asks that I keep the manuscript pages closed until publication. So no more excerpts here (and the ones you read have changed so profoundly you would barely recognize them) but I’ll keep sharing the process and everything the writing stirs up.

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