Everything I’ve written lately has felt like shit. As I read back through it in hopes to find nuggets to harvest for both my memoir and this Substack, I feel a slight sense of nausea.
Nothing has flowed. I’ve cobbled together 30 pages of random thoughts over the past few weeks, and none of it feels good. There was no flow. I couldn’t find The Zone.
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I launched my memoir program in February, and I’ll admit to being massively distracted by it and by life in general. I enjoy teaching and coaching immensely, but it all requires more time and brain-space than I anticipated. I’ve learned a lot.
It’s also given me massive clarity about my priorities.
I wear a few different hats throughout my day and I’m not always able to task-switch into creative mode from the mom, housekeeper, grocery-shopper, chef, and the shuttle-driver duties that take priority every day. Plus coaching calls and class planning and IT stuff that needs done. I mean, I love it, but sometimes my writing time and focus is way, way encroached and it’s a battle.
I know it won’t always be like this. My kids are teenagers. They won’t be here forever. A big part of my daily responsibility is cooking decent meals for the family and keeping enough food in the house because THESE CHILDREN NEVER STOP EATING. It’s astonishing.
Anyways, my point is - there are seasons to life and creativity, ebbs and flows. I think the trick is knowing not to panic, to allow yourself a little grace and space while you stay present and engaged with life and with what is showing up for you to process.
Life itself is a creative act, and everything that shows up is material.
So far, I have about 50k words drafted on the Library Confidential memoir.
It needs A LOT more work. I’ve started plugging in all of the essays I’ve written here, in addition to the other writing I’ve done on it, and I’m starting to build the structure of the draft - dropping things into a main document where they make sense for now. I have a lot of scenes left to write.
There’s going to be a lot of rending and tearing and rewriting and stitching together again.
I’m hoping to have a readable, flowing draft in a couple of months. I’m thinking another full year before it’s completely ready and through the editing and production phase. Which means I need to start playing with cover design ideas for it, as well.
I’m just assuming I’ll self-publish again, but you never know. I’m contemplating whether I want to try to pitch Library Confidential to an agent with hopes of finding a traditional publisher. I like retaining the rights to my work, but I’d also like to see if I can do it - get it sold and traditionally published - just because I like the challenge.
As I’ve been going through this busy period, I’ve been thinking about all of the people I’ve known over the years from having worked at the library.
I lived and worked in the same community for almost 18 years. I’ve written about a few people - but there are so many more who touched me.
One family - Krista and Matthew (not their real names) - would bring their 3 small kids to the library for storytimes, sometimes together, sometimes separately.
Once the kids were big enough, the family biked everywhere in our “bike friendly” university town which had been enriched for years with added bike lanes and other safety improvements.
Krista and Matthew had their fourth child, a boy, about six months after I had my son, and our two boys ended up at the same Spanish dual-language program in our district and became best buds starting in kindergarten.
Krista was one of the first people to know when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I ran into her at Target two days after the phone call while I was still in a state of shock and disbelief and I just blurted it right out.
Over the past decade there were playdates and birthday parties and sporting events with the family. The three oldest kids - the oldest now in college - would volunteer for Summer Reading, and then throughout the year they’d help with the setup and tear-down of some of my programs at the library.
Of course, the pandemic changed a lot, and kids grow up. Our boys are going to different middle-schools now, but they keep their friendship alive via their devices and video games and the occasional airsoft/waterpark outing.
In late February, my husband got a text from Krista.
We were outside together, me and my husband. We were talking about the flowerbeds, and he was moving the water hose over to our Palo Verde tree. He pulled the phone out of his pocket at the buzz buzz, paused, and started reading the text out loud to me.
I’ve been with this man for thirty years now and I don’t see him get choked up very often, but his voice cracked as he read the message from Krista.
Matthew, the father of those four beautiful kids, had been hit by a car while riding his bike early in the morning near their house. It was bad. He lingered for three days in the hospital and the children got to say goodbye. He was 55 years old. He had passed the week prior, and she was letting people know what had happened.
The horror of this news buckled my knees, and I sat down on the rock wall in our front yard and started sobbing. When I finally stood up, my husband hugged me and I sobbed some more on his sweaty t-shirt.
The grief I feel for this family is one of the most acute, heartbreaking feelings I’ve ever experienced.
It surprised me, actually.
I met them because of the library, because of the community and familiarity it provided over the years. My place of employment was a part of their weekly routine. I watched those kids grow up.
It’s something I didn’t understand when I started in the profession - that staying in one place, in one community for a long time, you get to know people. You interact with their kids. You run into them on errands. You become friends outside of work. You meet their parents. You watch them grow old over the years.
And when bad things happen - you grieve. The thought of those four kids going through life without their dad just guts me. It fucking guts me.
As I’ve processed Matthew’s death these past two months, I’ve realized how it connects to my memoir, why I need to write about it, and where it fits into the story. It’s actually a really important piece - a symbol, a metaphor.
And this is why I tell my coaching clients that memoir is supposed to take time - real life sometimes creeps in and informs the work in a big way - and you need time to process it.
I also realized that part of me grieving for Matthew and his family is really that I am grieving for my old career, too.
I miss it.
But I don’t miss it.
(But I miss it.)
I’ll always be a librarian at heart, sharing stories and inspiration.
But now, I’m a writer.
(It’s still about sharing stories and inspiration.)
I started a spreadsheet and listed out all of the other books I want to write, and a few screenplay projects that I’m chewing on.
I have three more ideas for memoir/narrative non-fiction book projects. Those feel most comfortable - probably because it doesn’t feel impossible. Memoir and non-fiction is my default zone, for sure.
But then, there is this other massive story, a fiction book-series that has been bugging me for YEARS. And by years, I mean DECADES now - I started thinking about the story in 2004.
So far, I have 22 “parts”, grouped into five different eras. Which might make for an awesome TV series, but I think I need to write the books first. I also have two other screenplay projects that I’ve been poking at.
Part of the trouble with writing screenplays and fiction books is that I have NO IDEA if I can actually write screenplays or fiction books. I tried writing some fiction last year and I feel like I shit the bed when I did. It didn’t feel good at all. Writing fiction felt weird. I felt kind of silly.
But, for as icky as it felt, I’m positive these stories need to be written.
And I’m the only one that can write them.
I’ve got to learn how to do it, and I’ve got to get over feeling weird.
Being a writer feels like being naked in the town square on full vulnerable display, warts and scars and all - and then being able to look people boldly in the eye as you stand there with your bits hanging out.
You might feel weird. Heck, they might feel weird, but you also have to be brave and face it - it’s part of being an artist. It’s literally learning to be comfortable in your own creative skin and not give AF what others think.
And there is this very basic part of me - the part that was raised by shrewd, Sicilian immigrants - that when you share your vulnerabilities, you show your weakness to the world. And if you show weakness, you become an easy target. You open yourself to criticism and judgment and bad ju-ju. You shame the family by telling secrets, or the truth. You always want to negotiate from a position of power. If people perceive you as a victim, you’ll continue to be victimized…shall I go on?
All of that baggage - that very basic bullshit programming that I learned as a kid - sits on my psyche like a large heavy stone. It’s bigger than imposter syndrome - it’s a survival instinct learned through generations and somehow encoded into my DNA.
I mean, this is my most basic internal battle - besides the battle for my time. How to be vulnerable and open when your instincts are tuned for protection.
But I also know that old saying - the obstacle is the way.
I reckon that I’ll figure it out, regardless.
The stone might actually be a huge gift.
Lately it feels like my writing time has been encroached upon relentlessly, mostly by my own overthinking and fretting, but also by all the other things. Car repairs. Vet appointments. This n’ that. Too much mental multitasking.
If I’m to make any real progress on the writing that I want to do before I die, that time needs to be reclaimed, defended, and protected at all costs.
In my mind, my writing time needs to be a massive castle fortress surrounded by a wall of impenetrable granite. Fortified with a moat, raging bonfires, spears and arrows, complete with multiple trebuchets throwing boulders, and massive cauldrons pouring boiling oil over all the chores and distractions that come for me.
Maybe I’m being overdramatic, but some days, it does feel like a battle. The war on my focus.
Even if at war, though, I’ll imagine myself sitting naked, comfortable and peaceful in my tower, unbothered, in my zone, drinking my coffee, a cat snoozing in the sunshine while I write something grand and beautiful and worthy of the struggle.
Which, in reality means that I’ll be working fully-clothed at my desk in the middle of average suburban house with an open floor plan and no privacy, chasing The Zone, nervously drinking my coffee with earphones and a playlist as defense against the next inevitable interruption which might very well be a cat. Or a dog. Or a husband. Or a kid.
But even with all that, and maybe in spite of it - I’ll still aspire to write something grand and beautiful and worthy of the struggle.
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