Well! It’s been a hellish couple of months. I have not gotten nearly as much writing as I’d like in and promoting my writing? HA! What a quaint idea! So imagine my surprise when someone actually bought my book.
“WOW. I sold something to a stranger without begging or meeting them…” I was so proud.
I had no idea that it wasn’t a stranger. In fact it was someone that was in the book whom I did not tell. Why? Pretty much because I had worried since publishing it that she’d take it badly. I in no way wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings or demonize anyone but I had to write my lived experience as if I were living them – in other words my descriptions of her evolved with my story from light-hearted and happy, to fucked up, and then it wandered back to a place of understanding. I honestly expected a firestorm… I’d heard all sorts of horror stories about how things can go bad when you publish a memoir. Hell, I’ve heard accounts of writers writing fictional stories of their home town that they get 50 years of shit for. So I didn’t tell her.
She still found out. And e-mailed me…. but it was a near obsolete e-mail so I didn’t receive it until a full month later. That didn’t help matters.
So what happened? Well you might be surprised but…. nothing. If she was upset she didn’t say so. She did want to know what I thought of her now but that’s only fair. If anything I hope reading the account of our shared trauma may have been healing in some way. It was for me. As for what lies in the future? I don’t know but I’m going to keep pushing forward.