The Chimpanzee Ate My Manuscript

My new author photo?

I’m having one of those crappy writing days. You know the ones…when you’re typing away, then you go back to read it and it seems like a chimpanzee had commandeered your keyboard…or maybe your cat walked across it? What is this senseless drivel streaming from my fingertips today???

This may be the problem - I am close to finishing my second memoir, What Doesn't Kill You. I’ve got 80,000 words, with only five chapters left to polish, and then it’s pretty much done.

I have worked on this sucker six hours a day, five days a week, for one year. Now that I’m close to finishing it, I should be elated, right? Well, I would be, if my internal Woody Allen wasn’t obsessing about what I’ll obsess over after I’m done obsessing over this book.

I’ll miss my love-hate torturous relationship with it. I’ll miss the ranting and moaning over it (though my husband surely won’t). I’ll miss the way its blank pages taunted me.

And of course, as always, there’s the fear of putting my whole self out there. I’ve already got a first Memoir (Only Good Things) sitting in a drawer. Only a handful of my close friends have read it. It took me eight damn years to write, but even against the protest of my writer friends, I couldn’t risk releasing it into the world- at least not yet- for the harm it may cause to others involved. It’s kind of explosive, and I am trying my best to live a kind and compassionate life.

In the interim, I’ve put my writerly self out in the world in drips and drabs- through essays and blogs and songs. But now it’s time to tell my whole story. This one will not be kept in a drawer. My agent has already given me the go sign and is awaiting it.

And that is the most likely reason that the chimpanzee has taken over the keyboard today.

But take heed, inner Chimpanzee- for you will be avenged!