Chapter Two: Vaporware from Wet
Sharing from the trenches of the 13-year memoir process
Dan Blank sends out a weekly newsletter, The Creative Shift that urges writers to share their creative process as they are writing, not just when their book is coming out. I have been slow to heed his call.
I started publishing books in 2004 when the advice was to save publicity until the book was published.
The world has changed so much in the last twenty years. There’s no sense in holding back anymore. I think it’s now all about building relationships with readers, not waiting to tell them about the book when it is finally ready. I want people to be curious and longing to read this book, so why not share about the creative process?
I have not been sharing for a number of reasons. The biggest one might have been shame. I started talking about writing this book in my newsletter ten years ago, so I imagine people are thinking, WTF, is this book ever going to be ready? Would they be mad at me, or annoyed? When I started on this memoir project, I expected it would take a year, tops two or three. I compared myself unfavorably to
, who took two years to write Wild, and who appeared to have written Eat Pray Love quickly. I would have never thought this book project would take so long. But then again, I had never written a novel before. A memoir is a lot like a novel. There are skills to learn, and depths to plumb.Lately I have been working on seeing my thirteen-year-investment-so-far in this project differently, to let go of the shame and see the journey in another light.
I know now that it is not unusual for a writer to spend a decade or more on a memoir. It takes time to tell a story from life well.
I want to see it as an asset to have worked on one project for so long.
Writing is a humbling process. Many people could be decent, good, or great writers if they were willing to work away at the same sentences, paragraphs, essays, stories, novels, over and over again. We creative nonfiction writers can work on a 1,000 word essay for years.
I have started to appreciate that my commitment to this project shows humbleness, patience, devotion, love. I have learned so much about myself, life, healing, and other people by being willing to work over drafts of the same chapters telling the same story for 13 years. I have so much gratitude for people in the writing groups I have been part of, teachers I have hired, and my literary agent. All these people have believed in me and this book-in-progress, working title Wet. No big creative endeavor is ever a solo effort. Writers need feedback to make their work connect with readers.
So with that, I want to share a video from a reading I did last night at Riff Raff, a fantastic cozy bookstore-cafe in Providence. Lit Arts RI, a great writers community nonprofit, hosts a monthly open-mic. Super simple. Show up at 6 pm. Put yourself on the list to read. If you live in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, definitely get on the Lit Arts RI newsletter.
This Riff Raff-Lit Arts RI monthly event is precious. The vibe is so supportive. I’ve gone once before, and read the first chapter of Wet. Last night I read chapter two.
It’s so fun, and gratifying, to take these stories that I have been crafting for years on my laptop out into the world. It’s a great way to come out of isolation.
One friend in my writing group has been pushing me to get more emotionally revealing in the opening chapters of Wet that establish me as a character: a woman in her mid-thirties who is no longer sure what she is doing with her life or who she is, before I set off on this big adventure of quitting my life in Silicon Valley and running away to Brazil in a journey of sensual healing.
In this simple video from the reading of chapter two at Riff Raff, you’ll hear me read about my professional ennui working in Silicon Valley, the habit I had of crying in the parking lot at 4:45 pm when I couldn’t take the internal contradictions of working in the early days of the social media industry anymore.
So here is the chapter. I would love to get your reactions, just as if you were there at the reading. Let me know in the comments what resonates with you. I would love to hear!
xo
Sasha
P.S. An incredible thing happened at this Riff Raff open mic. During one of the intermissions between readers, when we were socializing over drinks, I found out that one of the women in the audience, Laura, had read my first book Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics in 2004 when she was a junior in high school, when the book had just come out. She told me the book has shaped her life since. She didn’t want to come up to me to tell me all this, but she told her friend Hala, and her friend Hala made her talk to me. Wow, was I glad her friend pushed her to talk to me!
Laura told me she went to prom without a date because of Quirkyalone. The message of the book has always been to embrace your life fully, whether you have a date to prom or not. I went to prom alone in 1991. It was pretty amazing to hear that my blood, sweat, tears of confronting the horror of going to prom without a date in 1991 helped someone else do the same fourteen years later.
This beautiful meeting is the kind of soul connection that I live for as a writer.
Moral of the story: Never hold back on telling any writer or artist how their work has affected you and your life! It was a great moment for me, and I think for Laura too.