Unraveling

Here I sit, once again editing, editing, editing.

It oddly doesn’t trigger me to read the content anymore. It is a Trauma Memoir. So that means, every single time I have had to edit this book, I would have to on some level, relive what happened to me. 

Now, surprisingly, the charge has dissipated. I read the content, and I am actually unflinching. That means I’ve either on some level, healed what I went through or i’ve become desensitized.

At this point I am more concerned about disturbing the receiver of the story and if they actually have capacity to let it land, then I am about feeling the weight of my own story. I know it’s weight, I’ve carried it my whole life.

I have edited this book far too many times to count now. I don’t know the regular round of editing but I began the book with a burning passion and no awareness of the process of writing or publishing a book. It took me two years to write the first draft, then only started working with an editor after the first draft was written.

The first editor was new in the field as well and did not give me direct or accurate feedback. We got about six months through then after she had no feedback for me after reading the climax of the book, I reassessed if I wanted to work with her and I discovered through my own research that my memoir was one hundred thousand words too long.

This resulted in searching frantically for a new editor. As I spent two weeks straight completely butchering and cutting out half of the books content.

Which in writing the initial draft, it felt like discovering, uncovering, and bringing fragments of myself back to life through the writing, mending and blending all of these experiences together and reclaiming those fragments of myself that were frozen in my body.

Chopping it up, felt like taking part of myself, and telling it— “Sorry, your act was good but you didn’t make the cut.” In a sense, I felt I was shrinking myself again.

I changed the narrative inside my mind to “refining.” Like what you do with a painting, sculpture, or art piece. The refining process is necessary, and instead of choosing to view this process as parts that didn’t make the cut, I chose to view it as enhancing key points, and giving those other parts a different job. Perhaps they can be stories for Substack.

When I found another editor, she gave me a lot of really valuable insights into what was working and what wasn’t. Including the entire timeline and structure of the book, which in my mind, was artistic beautiful chaos. Invoking the feeling of what I went through as you read it.

She felt it was unreadable. So I butchered it again, putting my artistic splatter of events back in chronological order. I could see her point where not many people would want to be tossed around a timeline that chaotically. It works for movies but may not for my book, the story it’s self is intense enough. I didn’t want to wear out my readers, and I wanted them to be able to absorb the story I was giving them.

I had a few close friends read it, as well as some acquaintances. All giving me positive feedback, they were able to see me in a different light, and even my closest friend reported knowing all these things about me hit different when she experienced these moments through my eyes. It shifted my readers and touched them in ways i would have never expected.

An average memoir is less than 90 thousand words, I still have 700 to delete and the feedback I received mostly asked me to explain more, not less. So this last edit has been quite the challenge.

More or less, it’s coming up on publishing time soon, and I have been uncertain which process I should take, self publishing or traditional.

I have wanted to keep my integrity to my work intact, and I don’t think I can handle one more request to shrink the story to make it more “marketable.” Yet in the same sense, a part of me really wants it to do well in the market place.

What I am uncovering in this process is my need to please.

Please everyone that reads it, to meet every need of every reader. Which I know is insane. That in and of it’s self is trauma response.

More adaptations uncovered.

My fear of disappointing, confusing, or agitating readers. The “not enough, or too much” wound flaring up in me.

Yet, I have a small quiet voice that is growing louder. That has been molded and shifted by many circumstances of being shut down, squashed or mangled in my speech.

I get to choose now. What I say and what I don’t.

Of course there is the general guidelines for “good writing” vs “bad writing”—does the story unfold at a tasteful pace, does it arc correctly, is it easy to follow, does it hook you in, are there redundancies that make the story lose potency, are there overused words etc?

I know these guidelines and do my best to use them as a template. However, there is something about a persons story that is there essence. If you really read someones words there is a resonance in your own soul. An attunement, a feeling of congruence that can only come from honest writing.

The beauty of writing a memoir is no one gets to decide what is relevant or not for me to share, that is my decision, my knowing, and my journey. This is part of the soul reclamation process.

The extraordinary thing I love about this journey of the memoir is I finally was given the opportunity to be fully and completely honest. When for many years I had to live a half life, a partial self, snipped, cropped, and edited to fit my abusers desired version of me, which he then would reject anyways, because he could sense it wasn’t the totality of me. He could never handle the truth of who I was.

I get to carve my own path forward now, I get the chance to describe the texture of my experiences that have shaped me in detail with my soul guiding the way. I get to let the rivers of words run through my scorched earth and hydrate it again. I get to sing the song of my life into an art piece.

I’ve decided to begin writing my proposal, and even if I end up self publishing. The act of writing a proposal is proof to myself, that I am worth it. Weather a publisher resonates with my work or not, is up to the universe to decide. The fate of my book is not up to me. I have to trust that at the right time, it will be ready to enter the world, and to meet the right people.

My largest fear is of course, cruel critics that do not understand my story, that lack compassion and live to rip people apart. On some level, if that happened, I fear it would validate shadows of my own wounding that lurk inside me. There is a part of me that even fears the success of my book, because the larger the reach the higher the risk to be burned at the stake.

Yet, I question isn’t this a significant reason why I wrote my story? To both stir and shake those that need the earth to quake a bit in their paradigm, and to serve the individuals that are navigating trauma in real time, provide hope, perspective, lived resonance and empathy.

That is the surrender of exposure, many will oppose you, but it’s a risk that is necessary to gain connection to those that you touch with your words. For even the few friends that have read the draft of my book, it moved them in ways I would have never expected. I have to trust that spark, and let it light a fire.

I know ultimately that writing my memoir was the most cathartic experience along my healing journey I could have found.

There is an unraveling every time we write, we enter ourselves from a new angle, because like a river, you never step into the same river twice. As you tell your story, each moment you re-read it, you see another layer of dimensionality reveal itself. You understand yourself in ways you never could before, and others see you in a new light as well.

Perhaps this is why reading it now I don’t feel a charge in my body. The writing carved a path through the pain.

So write something about your experience today, let it unravel you.

Thank you for reading.