First Draft

Finally, I have it!  I have it on a memory stick. And, I have it printed out in semi-book style so I can touch all 417 pages of it and show myself that the foundation has poured out of me.


"What?" you may ask. Well, please ask, "What?".  (A momentary pause).

The first completed draft of a non-fiction, personal tale. I may not actually be able to call it a memoir, because I am told that the literary form should be well shorter than 417 pages. But, whatever it is, or will become, I am proud that I said I would do it, and I did it.


It has been an inconsistent effort. I have worked as much as 8 or more hours in one day, and then not worked for days, in favor of whatever else falls before me. I have worked for minutes, or not at all. It was a great effort to go through some 20 years of journals and decide what got put into the draft and what did not. I had to be ruthless with that decision, as I will have to be ruthless when I sculpt the second draft, and perhaps the third. . . .I am afraid I might have made a mistake and left something "important" out.. Making those choices actually changes the story, and makes the truth interpretive and I have never been comfortable with that..


Be that as it may, I can now, officially give a nod to the cliche, "I hate writing, but I love having written."
It is truly not easy to commit to the action. By nature I am peripatetic. I am restless. I have a hard time being quiet, although I will say this year I have learned a bit more about t,hat, merely by being alone so much, while others work their regular jobs.


And boy, are there ever interruptions, even when you don't go to an office!  Well part of it is that I haven't quite figured out the schedule for a day. In fact, nearly a year into my release from the work world, I find that where months ago, it worried me NOT to have a structure, I kind of like it now. For now, or has it been always, I stay up  late. And for now, and kind of a new thing I can get up really really late if I want, and then decide what's next. My volunteer work is done more in the early or late afternoon.


I just haven't been in the mood to say, "up at 8, write for three or four hours" and THEN see what the day brings. Nope. I haven't. And, here's the truly terrific thing. I don't have to! What I have come to is that all the work I did in my life in traditional jobs and career--what did one of my friends say?  "That was then, this is now."  Then gave me the opportunity for now, although I did not realize it in that 30 plus year window in which I was furiously fretting about things that turned out no one cared about as much as I did or if they did care about it, it was a fiction, legal or otherwise, that I was really necessary to the process. Probably I give myself too much credit on the former theory and the latter one, well that was the humbling factor.


And what I am discovering?  As I learn humility, I become freer. I was wrong--all that grasping and what I grasped at was nothing more than ephemera.


What I have learned from the writing of my first draft is that whoever I was for that 20 years, while the core of the true self is still there, the crud I wrapped around that core and imprisoned it, seems to have been razored off or exploded off.  Or maybe it was shed because it was no longer useful.

I look at that first draft. It is rougher than rough. Wordy and repetitive. I wouldn't call myself a writer, just yet, but if someone asks me henceforward about what I do, for now, I think I'll say, "I write.".

It may all end up in my sock drawer, but so be it. Grist for the Mill--which by the way is the present title of the book.