It Takes a Real Friend to Tell You ...

Head hurts. Eyes puffy. Nose stuffed. Rough morning.

I might as well warn you now that I’m posting right now as a way to wake myself up, so I’m not sure if I’ll reach a point or even entertain. Let’s see where this goes.

My friend Jay is curled up like a shrimp on the couch, where he landed last night. I stayed up in the twilight with him because we were too scared to sleep. A cop chopper (ghetto bird) patrolled the area around my house for so long that I began to think a fugitive might be hiding out in my garage, along with the Razor scooters and an avalanche of sports paraphernalia. Skinny shards of ghetto bird spotlight crept along my living room walls. I panicked and double-checked all the locks. You’d think I’d be used to this by now. How the kids could sleep through it all is a mystery to me, especially Pigtails. Event the light whoosh of bills and magazines falling through the front door mail slot wakes her sometimes.

The boys are watching Saturday morning cartoons from beneath their blankets. How funny is that we think it’s so cripplingly cold in the morning here in Southern California? We’ve become such weather wimps. Pigtails is curled up in the warmth of her daddy’s armpit in bed. She’ll need to be decontaminated upon waking.

So last night Jay and I went to a trendy seaside neighborhood in the city called Belmont Shore. My husband stayed home and put the kids to bed without incident, or so he says. I believe him. He’s far better at parenting than me. Much more patient.

Anyway, Jay took me out for a latte and to look over what I have written for my book so far. Literally seconds into the first page, he looked up and said, “Whose idea was it for you to write a book? What did they base your ability to write a memoir on – your blog?”

“Okay, I suck. You hate it, don’t you.”

“No, it’s just that you use so many 10 cent words. It’s all over the place. I’m already confused and I’m still in the first paragraph.”

This doesn’t bode well. My completed first three chapters are due on March 8. Scary.

Yeah, yeah. I can already hear people saying don’t put so much weight into one opinion. Of course I know not to. But I’ve had a really hard time liking the book so far too. The whole effort’s been a struggle. I guess I got cocky and assumed that after years of writing experience, and not that many years in reality, that the contents of my memoir would gush from me. Maybe my first stab would even be artful, literary, entertaining and cathartic all at once. So far, no dice.

Everyone who reads it says it doesn’t sound like me. That if they read the first two chapters independent of me they wouldn’t even know I’d written it.

“Why are you trying to sound so smart? I mean, you are smart but you seem like you’re trying to prove something to your readers,” Jay said, as we packed up our empty notebooks. We didn’t even take one note.

“We should at least draw a stick figure or something,” I said. “Maybe a few tally marks with a slash through them. At least make it look like we accomplished something.”

But that was not to be. We accomplished nothing. No, something happened. Jay helped me realize that I need to find my writer’s voice again. My authentic voice. Not a trumped up with a million fancy adjectives voice.

Have you ever heard of KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid? Well, that’s what I’ll be busy doing tonight, after all the day’s birthday parties, after the kids are asleep in bed. I’ll be out at the local café trying to simplify what I’ve already written. Trying hard not to try so hard.

In an effort to motivate myself and remember that I used to be a decent writer, I dug out my dusty old journals and newspaper articles last night. Seeing my by-line next to some hard-won front-page articles really made me feel old. Rusty. Put out to writing pasture. How could I have written so much better back then? When I was only 19, 20, 21? Has becoming a mom sucked all the creative juices out of me? Turned my writing to pulp?

Even my angst ridden journal from 1995 is better than my first stab at a memoir.

How do you get back on the horse again and ride like a maniac with abandon? Without constantly worrying that you’ll fall of in front of everyone?