The pains of being a writer

I thought that writing a book would be hard, and to my surprise the words have so far just flowed. Trust me there is much editing to do, but it’s been really exciting. But then one day the realization occurred to me that I was going to run out of stories. My life is pretty bland on a daily basis. I don’t like to go out all of the time, and to make matters worse I feel as though I have a terrible memory. Some days it takes all of my energy just to remember what really happened. Which, was when I learned the lesson that, we as humans really do remember things differently, and I was going to have to come to terms with this, or not write anymore.

I rarely take the time to read some of my work to Michael, but one day I decided I needed to know if this was really funny or not. Was I insane to wrap so much time and energy into this project if it was all in my head that it was going to make the New York Times Best Sellers list?! So I read him one of the chapters I was working on at the time, to which he did indeed laughed a few times to my surprise. It was after it was over though that he made a comment about how I remember things in my own little way. What did that mean? Was I totally off? I’m trying to make an accurate representation of what really happened, but how can I do that when I don’t remember “it” how  “it” even happened?

So I ask him how it had happened to which he clarified a few of my points. I thought about it and decided to change the points so they would be more accurate, but when I looked back on the story, that isn’t how I remembered it. I had to change it back. It was at that moment that I better understood that it was okay to see thing differently. That is how life is. See, this book is about the way I remember the events. These are my truths, this is what I know. So, I have had to learn to come to grips with the fact that I am just writing it the way I remember and that if someone else who read this story was there, they may remember it differently. And, after you read the book, you can clarify those events, after all I’m going to need a second book and one of the chapters will be called “Schooled” from when you all come and tell me how wrong I was.