Starting small

I gave myself a challenge over the weekend: write ~1500 words on how my view of death has changed through experiences cancer. Doing my best to write while ignoring the nagging editor in my head, I plodded on until I’d reached my target. The end result had veered into unexpected territory and was rough. Like 80 grit sandpaper rough. But I did it.

There is a book in me, I can feel it. It’s a little tingle of knowing, like the ache in your bad knee before a thunderstorm. My confidence keeps oscillating - I can do it! to What am I thinking?! and back again, on repeat. 

So maybe, I’ll start small and write 1500+ words on some element of this memoir that’s inside of me, some concept that I’ve been mulling over. The essay can be the proof-of-concept, the justification to do more, to go bigger. I know I can spit out 1500 words, but can I polish them into a compelling essay? This will be the test.

There are a lot of books in our house because we are avid readers. Depending on the subject matter and length, I usually have a pretty good idea of how long it will take to read a book. For example, Crying in H Mart took a single day (because I couldn’t put it down). Contrast that to Sapolsky’s Behave, which I’m slowly working through, having picked it up 2 weeks ago (there are so so many footnotes and I need to read them all). 

I have no frame of reference for the time or effort involved in writing a book. The project manager in me needs to quantify it. So it’s been helpful to think about the scale of essay-to-book, in order to wrap my mind around the sheer size of this endeavor. 

• Most of what I write here is very short form, usually 500-700 words per piece

• So two posts would equal a 1500 word essay (something I can certainly write)

• A book, by comparison, might be 80,000 words (Crying in H Mart, according to Google is 83,107)

• Therefore, at minimum (before re-writes/edits/etc), I need to write 53 essays

Clearly, a bit simplistic, but this model should help me plan out my time and set goals accordingly. 

A big part of this writing journey will be developing skill with a new form of writing, for a larger audience with broader themes. To date, most of what I’ve written has centered around the comings and goings of sabbatical Jonathan, which is fine, but the primary focus has been on that experience, not the bigger, more universal elements. In general, I leave it to you, the reader, to decide what those are. Now, I need to articulate them, connecting experience to theme more explicitly.  

There’s so much to learn, and I’m seeking out help from writers who have written memoir, and books on writing. Currently, I’m enjoying Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down to the Bones, which offers great advice for anyone seeking to understand more about life through writing. The prose is strikingly simple and full of acorn sized insights. Reading it reminds me of my first time through Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which is an another brilliant little book on writing. There’s a copy sitting on a shelf somewhere in this house and I will find it.