Chasing Down the Pages

A second intense, long day of classes and chatting with writers at the Wordcrafters conference and I feel like I could sit down and write my whole book tonight and never stop. I worried that at a fiction conference I wouldn't get enough to help me with my narrative nonfiction, but I was dead wrong. I already knew I wanted to use fictional techniques, and my writing group has always worked on my pieces just like fiction for that reason, and that carried through the workshops too. Nobody glazed over and said, "oh, you mean memoir," as if that were the thing old ladies do when they have nothing new to say. No one even seemed to see me as an old lady!

Every topic, discussion and lesson translated directly to my work, and since I am only comfortable listening with notebook in hand I right away started to jot things down. Quickly I formed the habit of putting the general tips on the left side of each page and my specific ideas for my project on the right. As I went from room to room the pages filled and now I have 24 pages of very specific plans for each and every part of the book I will write. Furthermore, now I know that I will certainly write it.

Going into the first day, which was Thursday evening, I was saying to myself (in my habitual conversations while walking or working) that I wasn't focusing on publishing, that I loved the research, that I was only writing the book for myself anyway....These are all the usual excuses we make when we are afraid we would rather fail from inaction than from hubris. I knew that, so I didn't say them out loud once I got there. All of these people were publishing, or published, and they weren't all that different from me. They were creative people, I am creative, and I feel that I am a good writer, especially when I bother to edit and remember to use what I have learned. So I just pretended to be a real writer for the first night. These big shots with lots of books that are bestsellers did things like accidentally drink my wine, touch my Jell-O, laugh at my clever repartee. They were friendly even though they were surrounded by their real friends. Some even told me intimate things about their real lives, and we connected like people do. Ones I knew liked me more, and I liked them more. We had a community. And we have books.

Magic happened. Maybe it was in the first few hours, and I couldn't tell you what started it, but now when I look at my notes I have it all there. I have the structure, I have the beginning, the end, the scenes, the characters, the vision. I already had the passion and the material, but now I am sure that I have a book. It's not just a thing I'm working on, it's not a memoir, it's not an essay here or there, it is a fully-feathered story with a narrative arc and all of the elements that make a compelling tale. It has suspense, it has depth, it has real marketability, and it is mine to make happen using all of the magical techniques that are there to use.

With what I gleaned from the minds of these experienced and hard-working writers, I have something real, compared to the maybe-fantasy-dream-someday pile of papers I had before. Someone I respected even said words like "fine" and "good." Those are the pats on the head I so needed, the taking me seriously that I have only had in my intimate group of four with whom I have been meeting for decades now.

Sure, I get compliments on my meeting minutes, and I am a great speller and can put together an articulate opinion, but my creative writing rarely gets read. I have these blogs, these unedited ramblings of mind that I toss out effortlessly to promote this or discuss that.  I have folders and files of pieces I've written for myself, all in preparation for a next step I have been unwilling and unable to take. But these writers shared themselves with me. They told me all the things they learned that helped them, and they helped me and the others in the room. They said so many useful things! I also have piles of papers and books and materials to study, all given generously by those who created them and lived by them. I am the luckiest person right now.

I'm not holding the manuscript; it's still in my head and in my notes, and it will be many long months before I do hold it up ready to take the next step. I don't know what that will be. I do know that I have had a wonderful time being me, in the midst of what might have been some terribly intimidating people, but now they aren't so scary. I showed myself and they received me kindly, even enthusiastically. They liked what I do, and they liked what I say, and some of them even accepted my friend requests. I wore Jell-O and shared it, and some of them were properly amazed and delighted. And the Jell-O was just a sideline. They liked the inside of my mind.

It feels like there is nothing so wonderful as that. I will go to sleep a happy, lighter woman. I will rise up early and go catch one more class at 8:00 am. I am the richest woman in the world at this moment. I hope I remember this feeling when the drudgery sets in and I don't have time to write and the writing is crap. I hope I remember how naive and untrained I can sound on the page and how hard it is to pound it into shape. I hope I can be humbled and still keep in mind the euphoria. I hope when I stand at a podium and talk about my writing, I can be of this much help to someone else. What a world we imagine, what a story we tell!