Count Down to Publication VI

So, here we are, in a kind of holding pattern of waiting/waiting/waiting for reviews and feedback from the media on Found. And I've just talked to the last person...who is in my book...about the fact that the book is coming out. My mother. Better to say my birthmother, because she is that and of course, we haven't known each other for many years.

When we reunited, in 2008, I told her I had been writing a memoir that was about this part of my journey and likely would write about our meeting. She was very generous and told me to "just write whatever you want, I trust you."

That comment was made at the rosy beginning of the reunion but of course, as is common with reunions, the process made a hard turn, personalities clashed and old pain surfaced on all our parts. She and I took time apart and didn't speak for almost eighteen months.

During that quiet time, I finished and sold Found and it is coming out in March. Finally, my mom and I have begun a slow re-establishing of relationship. So, suffice it to say, I think it's pretty important for her to consider reading the book. And I respect that she might not want to. I've protected her privacy and the privacy of her other children and I have been very careful with all that went down in order to keep the spotlight on myself. But it's a sticky area.

When you write memoir, you are talking about your own experience and mulching it for meaning. That's the goal of the well-wrought memoir, but in the end, the people you include as part of your journey will have a different perspective. Of course. No one among us sees a situation the same way. We all have different perspectives and viewpoints and will even go to the death insisting that our truth is THE truth. Which is, of course, ludicrous. Ultimate truth is bigger than experiences like meeting someone and having a cup of coffee together and getting every line of dialogue exactly right in the rendering of that meeting.

This is the debate of the memoir writer and what has so many of us so frustrated that we just throw up our hands and say, "forget it, I'll write fiction instead."

Too late.

In my own case, it's too late. I have chosen to write memoir and must take the heat of the debate. I also try to do the best I can to be open but also to be diligent in protecting my art/my truth/my experience and the meaning taken away. That is my work.

After our careful conversation, my birthmother has opted not to read the book and I respect her decision.

Another day closer and I must remind myself that one day, not to far from this day, the book will release and this will all pass away like a wave on the sea. This is the way of the world. All of this is fleeting. All of this will pass.