Twenty-Five Thousand Words

And a few thoughts about them.

It’s very glamorous, this writing life.

I hit a major milestone this week. The first draft of my memoir manuscript has reached 25,000 words. Holy. Smokes.

Of course not all of these words will end up as-is in the final version. And I have a lot more written that I have to finesse into my revised storyboard. But my first 25,000 words are drafted. And that is worth a moment’s pause.

Several thousand of these words cover some fairly traumatic material. Material that I knew had to be written, but avoided like the plague for weeks. Here are some things I did instead:

1. Read a bunch of books.

2. Re-discovered press-on nails.

3. Washed, dried, and folded approximately 34 loads of laundry.

4. Took naps. Both cat and full-length.

5. Cleaned my deck with a toothbrush.

When at last I planted my butt in my desk chair and began to fill in the gaping hole in my manuscript, the process was not what I expected. I thought it would destroy me. And I really wasn’t in the mood to be ripped to shreds. But it didn’t. In fact, writing this stuff had the opposite effect. It didn’t tear me apart. It put me back together. It started to heal wounds that I didn’t even realize were still raw.

The toughest chapter of this manuscript is now 22 pages long in its rough draft form. I didn’t realize how much power I could take back in 22 pages.

My best friend asked me whether, when I write these stories from my life, I feel like I’m on the outside looking in or like I’m smack dab in the middle of it all again. The answer is both. I am both the person in the darkness and the one shining the light.

That is a powerful place to be.

So what now? I take a moment to soak this in. And then I solicit feedback. I do some re-writing and editing, some further cultivation of self-belief.

And then? I keep going, no matter what.