For some reason it feels very English to have one cremation and one wedding to go to-back to back. Tomorrow is the cremation, Friday is the memorial, and on the following Friday there is a big family wedding. I’m just glad it’s not the other way around.
There has been a lot of death related issues lately, and very little writing I’m afraid. However, I’m starting to feel normal again. Yesterday I even baked bread, a sure sign that things are starting to even out. I also went to bed at 8.30 pm, a sure sign that this is still exhausting.
Right before my mother in law was taken to the hospital, I’d been working like mad to send this memoir off to a memoir competition. I was so proud of what I’d written, and I felt optimistic and cool about the outcome. Well, I didn’t win, and nothing could have made me happier. In the light of death, dying, and dealing with death and dying stuff, I all of a sudden developed a strong aversion to the book. I praise the Lord it didn’t get accepted or -God forbid- published. It’s not the kind of book I want to be remembered for. It’s not the kind of book I want people to read. It’s not what I want to be doing. I have no idea what possessed me to write it, but maybe I just needed to get it out of my system.
My husband Ben was talking to garden guru and writer Monty Don about the process of writing. Monty said that he wrote four books before he got published. His sense was that you have to write the bad stuff out of the system in order to get to what you’re meant to be writing. Something like that, I’m para-phrasing, but I think he might have a point.
This is also why I’m not, at the moment, so keen on self-publishing. What if I had self-published all those dreadful short stories I wrote all those years ago, not to mention my plain horrible NaNo book? No, better wait until I’m certain my writing is ready for public consumption. All I can say is that I’m forever grateful my shockingly bad memoir will never see the light of day.
What was I thinking?