THE REAL REASON I WRITE. . .

. . .is that I realized I could do it all, literally, while  lying down.

I’ve aspired to write from the time I was a kid making stapled-together notebook paper “books” about girls and horses and dogs. It took a few decades for me actually to give myself the permission to undertake anything so creatively, financially and personally risky as trying to become a published author.

I wanted to start with a memoir. A particular concept for that came to me one night in 2015 as I stood under the shower; water is my most enduring muse. I started typing in fits and starts shortly after that. Because my outdated laptop was dying a slow death, there was little progress. Which was convenient because I found lots of other excuses to avoid showing up to write.

In the middle of 2016 my husband Paul got sick. Really sick. My iPhone was my one constant companion during days and nights waiting with him in doctor’s offices, visiting him in hospital rooms and keeping him company in chemo infusion centers. In between those times, at home, I had Paul’s old iPad that I inherited when he upgraded his.

As the disease progression and increasing doses of pain meds took Paul further and further from me, I took refuge in writing. I had the Pages app on both my phone and tablet. The “hunt and peck” method of typing was a little laborious at first, but it took me into a zone where I could forget, sort of anyway, that my world was disintegrating.

I sat in a chair and wrote while he was being treated. Then, when the treatments failed and I was told that it was basically time to take him home to die, I lay in bed writing next to him while he was awake or in the other bedroom while he slept. It was a comforting position, lying in bed. I felt physically supported and emotionally safe.

Paul passed away in July of 2017. In the aftermath of that loss I found myself unable to write with the speed and the fury and the focus that I pulled from myself during the long days and nights of his decline. Yet I did eventually manage to turn it all into a book, which is in final editing stage as of this writing.

Then came Covid. Initially, the whole stay-at-home thing was a relief because I’m an introvert at heart who nevertheless had spent the first years of widowhood in extroversion and activity. I felt obligated to live a life of extreme service and adventure in order to assuage my survivor’s guilt by living the life that Paul would have wanted me to live—and also to avoid marinating in the persistent, upsetting flashbacks of his illness and death. By the time they closed everything down in March of 2020, I was running on fumes.

In late 2020, deprived of the distraction offered by people, places and things, I started a long tumble down a rabbit hole of anxiety that was not helped by the endless news coverage of Covid, the election and the aftermath of the election. For over two years, I struggled with physical and emotional symptoms that were scary and exhausting.

A little over a year ago, a longtime friend emailed me a draft of a book he had written, I Am Pink, a tale of love, loss and redemption set on the island of Kauai. Serendipitously, I happened to be on that island when I received the email. Which isn’t at all surprising. I’ve been to Kauai many times; each visit somehow gives me a key that unlocks the next door I’m to walk through.

Greg wasn’t happy with the editing guidance he was getting so I offered to help him ready the book for release. I was still struggling at the time, so I thought the project might serve as a temporary refuge from the all the other, unwelcome visitors in my head.

Throughout the summer and fall of 2022, I edited. I started out making strictly grammatical and spelling changes, maybe swapping out a word here and there when I thought another would work better. And then I got a bit more adventurous, adding dialogue, a little tension where I felt it was needed, or a metaphor for a feeling that couldn’t otherwise be adequately described.

I did all of this on my phone’s Google Docs app while lying on my bed because my iPad’s battery was starting to drain too quickly. I eventually had it repaired but found I preferred my phone because I didn’t have to hook into anyone else’s internet service. I could lie down anywhere.

When I started adding chapters, Greg graciously made me a co-author. I continued to work in a prone position, no longer because I had to but because I wanted to.

I Am Pink, released on June 7, 2023, is about taking the road less traveled. About the peril, the joy, the messiness, the adventure, the romance and everything else that comes with choosing freedom and vibrancy instead of clinging to unworkable formulas. So often, what passes for living really isn’t.

I confess my preferred writing position not because I want to portray myself as some sort of terminally unique eccentric. I say it because the limiting formulas of what’s acceptable or usual or normal span all of life’s pursuits, whether we’re talking about how we learn, who or how we love, how and whether we parent, or how we create. If someone told me that I had to write while sitting at a desk in front of a desktop or even a laptop, I wouldn’t have written anything and I wouldn’t be writing now. I’m more me when my wordplay happens while reclined.

I think we all want to be who we truly are, especially as we’re doing what we love the most. I don’t think there’s a “right” way to do anything involving matters of the heart or self-expression. It is just so freeing to drop the formulas and reimagine new pathways to meaning.