I received an email from a friend today (you know who you are and I love you dearly 🙂 She’d been reading my blog and suggested that it sounded like I was really in a twist about this memoir thing. She wondered if perhaps it was more of a ‘should‘ thing than something I really wanted to do.  And, if that was the case, maybe I should let myself off the hook.

I really appreciated the observation, and more than that, I love that it got me thinking and thinking and thinking and then finally I decided to start writing my answer because that’s how I usually discover what I truly think.

This much I know for sure; writing things through works better for me than just sitting and ruminating.

So… here I am writing and hoping that I can gain some clarity on the issue. I can certainly see how it looks like what she described, especially given all my moaning and whinging on the subject. But it’s a little more complicated than how it first appears.

First off, I would like to say that it really is a huge wanting, hell…a yearning, perhaps even with a capital “Y” kind of thing.

I really want to do this thing and I know it’s all my complaining about the discipline  required to actually show up at the computer that might confuse people into thinking this must be more of a should thing.

I think I’ve got it: I want to write this book/memoir and, in order to do that, I should show up at my desk and do the work.

And I think one more thing…perhaps I might also quit talking about how hard it is.

However, I take comfort in all those millions of writing books I’ve read, where even some of my favourite authors sound pretty similar to me; in that, it takes everything in them to actually get to the work, even though (in some sort of pretzel logic)… they love it and are way more miserable if they don’t write at all.

Maybe it’s just a writer thing? Then again, I could be full of it and am once again rationalizing yet another self-destructive guilt behaviour… Who ya gonna call?

Any writers want to comment? Help me out here.