Spumoni

So if you haven't seen my latest freak-out on Facebook (other than the one where I freaked out because I'M ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), you won't know that I'm being published! I submit short essays to a website, and one of them was selected to be published in the site's upcoming book! For pay - I get 1% of the overall profits! It comes out in April, so I'll post details on Facebook and here when I learn them!

I'M AN AUTHOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My ultimate goal is to write a book, but that's harder than it actually sounds. You would think that, as a writer, I have plenty of ideas floating around in my head just waiting to be jotted down in consecutive and make-sense-ical order whenever I find the free time, but it's much more difficult than that. I found a graphic on Pinterest that sums up what writing a book really looks like. I've attached it below:

The hardest part about saying "I want to write a book" is coming up with an idea that you actually want to write a whole book about. People say, "Write what you know," but I know lots of things. I know that putting up Christmas decorations always lasts longer than taking them down, but it's so much more fun to put them up. I know that a Chevy Silverado doesn't fit into places as easily as a Dodge Nitro (I still have a chunk of that curly-haired kid's taillight after I crunched it off with the bumper of my Chevy pickup). I know that regular Coke tastes better than Diet Coke, but the diet lemon-lime generic soda they have in the break room at work tastes exactly the same as the regular kind. I know that Corelle dishes won't break until you say "Look, they don't break" and Frisbee one across the room.

See? I know lots of things.

But how do you turn all of those insignificant gobbets into a book? And that's not the only problem: how do you turn shit like that into a book that people will actually read?

I've overthought the idea of writing a book since I was little, when I was eight years old and typed out a short story in Microsoft WordPad about a little mushroom named Mort who was kidnapped by evil eggs. (Or maybe they were pickles. I don't remember.) To me, before you start writing, you need to have a clear idea of where you're going. It's like going on a road trip: hardly anyone starts out on a journey without a map and a clear destination.

Unless you're a hipster trying to "find yourself." And have unlimited gas money.

The other thing about writing is that I constantly keep my audience in mind. Rare are the moments when I type something just for me. I've kept a handwritten journal since I was in high school, and it's between those leather (faux leather - calm down) covers that the true "me" can be found. I don't live in fear, like I did when I was little, that someone would come in and read my journal. I know, even if I leave it out on the kitchen table (to my mother's chagrin), nobody will sneak it into the bathroom and skim over my inked-out ramblings. But when I sit down at my computer and start typing, it's usually for an email or a blog or something that requires me to remember who I'm writing to and why I'm writing it. And when I start typing, I censor myself and say, "Nope, can't write that because ____ is going to read it."

Hence why you'll rarely find swear words in my blogs. My journal is full of "fucks" and "shits," but because I'm friends with pastors and all manner of sensitive people, I keep those out of my online posts.

The best writing I do is found in my journals where I know no one else will see what's there. And the idea of putting that writing - the most unadulterated version of myself - out for the world to read is daunting. To throw those most delicate areas of my mind before the masses for inquiry and critique terrifies me - not because I am afraid to hear what people say about my work, but because for once I will be laid out bluntly before them. For once I will be seen for who I really am, not as I present myself.

Now that you're wondering if I'm a psychopath or worse, I promise that's not it: I don't know how voodoo dolls work, and I don't have anything dead boarded up in my walls. But I've been told that I see the world differently. And for years I've harbored a secret dread of being found "odd" - that complex courtesy of the brat from Girl Scouts who creeps into my mind when I let myself be me and calls me "weird."

Maybe that's the next part about writing. I read a quote by Sarah Jio that says, "Write what scares you. Everyone tells you to write what you know. It's the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, I've found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even...I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: 'Write What Scares You.' I've learned that tapping into the hard stuff - whether it's the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories - is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar."

I'm terrified to let people into the mind in which I live.

So...welcome.