not eternal salvation, but i'll take the momentary relief where i can find it.
i started writing in my imaginary journal this morning--don't have a physical one, just stupid scraps of paper, mostly in the margins of newspapers or scraps of brown paper bags, whatever happened to be available, so this time i created a "journal" folder on my pc (please don't look there if you're ever visiting me, ok?)--and this weird chain of mental leaps led me to the memoir i wrote in grad school.
(the chain involved my family, of course. those people don't have a clue who i am, sometimes. they totally missed what the memoir-events were about, they never heard a word i tried to explain, because they had these preconceptions about me. and it's all there. maybe if i sent them each a copy. then i started to worry if the writing was good enough. heeheehee. laid it all down ten years ago, and i knew i was really still learning to write, not ready to create a real book, anyway.)
so i pulled it up and read 30 pages just now. no, the writing is a mess. but really wonderful in some ways, too. just as candid as i recalled, and the emotions come through more powerfully than i even hoped at the time. no sense of pace or audience, though. i jump around all over the place, shorthand all the action so much every reader must have been lost. they passed this crap? heeheehee.
encouraging, though. i have the goods there, it's going to be a wonderful book some day, and i know how to make it so much better now. SO much to be filled in. and slowed down. god, was i in a rush then. i guess my whole life has slowed down.
i'll never write my elvis costello phase. maybe i could have done it in spastic song lyrics, maybe it would have worked that way, but in a book, that crap was indecipherable. that's ok. i can do it now.
feel so much better about my writing again, about my world again, my life again.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
writing. only salvation i know.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
