What's in your book, isn't the real question

in or out, just write some pages! The rest is BS time wasting.

I don’t know what is in my next book, and I’m letting that slow me down. Know the feeling? Seriously, everything is up for grabs. Even my dog’s health.

I turned toward D, my finger wagging in the way I often imitate “mad mall Mommy” for my kids, pretending to scold, “My next book will NOT being about my dog’s tumour,” and the vet, vet tech and D and I all laugh. But it is only a half joke. (Loving Large, my 2020 memoir, circles the drain around my son’s diagnosis with a rare tumour.)

I’ve started writing the pieces for my next memoir. I write on Wednesdays and all the other days I help folks like you work on your pages, structure, stories or publishing strategies. I watch my clients claim a mixture of excitement and wonder and it sounds like, “I’m doing it,” they’ll tell me, “It’s coming out.” They marvel at the memories pouring, or the reflections on what they’ve seen with their coaching clients and get it on paper. It is a great feeling. Until it dries up…or they think it does.

Then life gets in the way and wants to have some sway. Maybe I should write this, or look at that, and “this idea keeps coming up.” The flow is challenged and that feels scary.

I’m having that right now too. Life events are so demanding that I’m wondering if they need to be included in the book…I wonder if they are insisting I include them—our rescue dog Cooper’s health challenges, my grandson is more fun than just about anything else on the planet…and he is a medical miracle, maybe that’s another book? Is this the book, is that the book, is the book I’m writing actually the book?

It may all be the book, but deciding is none of your business. Write everything.

I need a bucket load of my own advice. (Did you see me talking about how annoying long everything in writing and publishing seems to take. Let me know if you want me to do a series on that!)

I would tell someone else: Don’t let the efficiency and order monsters creep into right now. Early days are about exploration and following leads like a sniffer dog at the airport.

I have added some scenes to my list…and I will be picking at the edges of them. I don’t know if they are in or out, useful or distracting, fitting or outliers.

There’s something about the things I’ve chosen to keep, my severe childhood illness, my dream of being an illustrator, the lifelong troubled relationship with my mother… all of that will be in the running. So will my nearly lifelong obsessive love of dogs that did NOT begin with my family’s first dog, but flourished in an attachment to every dog since. I’m gonna look at that.

My advice to myself is what I would say to a stymied, stuck, floundering client who is getting nowhere (they think)…Listen to the surprises. Make note of them. Thank them for showing up and write what feels juicy. And learn from your dog…they aren’t wasting their time thinking about how long things are taking, they are wagging their tails in anticipation.

Reword. Reframe. Restart. This is writing too.