Supersonic Freak-Out Time Despite the eighteen months it took to write this book, and the nine months of production and marketing that’s occurred since I handed it in, it somehow took me until this week to really get the message that it’s going to be a book. As in, sold in stores. Where people I don’t know will buy it. And then read it. And form opinions about it. And subsequently think they know more about me than they do. And talk about me by first name. With only a week left before the story I wrote is unleashed nationwide, this realization is starting to seriously freak me out. I know, I know: what the hell did I expect? If I publish a memoir, of course strangers are going to read my personal story. I mean, isn’t that the point? Still, somewhere between the excitement of “Woo-hoo! I’m writing a memoir!” and the intellectual acknowledgment of “This means I’ll be exposing myself and my family to public scrutiny” I forgot to imagine what it would feel like to be the object of so many strangers’ projections and judgments. Sometimes it feels bad. Mostly, it feels bizarre. This is my fifth book so the publication process isn’t new to me, but this book hits way closer to home. Not just because it’s a memoir, but also because it tells such a wacky personal story. (I always feel compelled to add that "wacky" part, as if by acknowledging that I know the story is unusual I can deflect or dissipate a reader’s judgment from the start.) In a nutshell, when my daughter was three years old, I took her to Maya shamans in Belize to get rid of her imaginary friend. I’m really asking for it with this one, aren’t I? Already, I’ve been portrayed as a gullible New Age whack job, an overreactive mother, and a woman who spent too much time writing when I should have been playing games with my daughter and taking her to the park instead. (That last one speaks volumes, I know.) Some days, I'm grateful for the controversy. At least it means people are talking about my book, even if it's to debate the merits of my sanity. Other days, I think I'd rather crawl back under the covers and hide. The astrologer I consulted with back in July said I’d be going through a process of initiation with this book. I’m being initiated, I wrote down. I was taking notes. “Initiated into what?” I asked. “Into a new way of being,” she said. New way of being, I wrote. “You sure you’re not talking about the publishing industry instead?” I asked. She laughed, and peered closely at the positioning of Saturn and Uranus in my chart. “You’re being tested and transformed right now,” she said. “You need to be prepared for negative energy coming your way.” Negative energy heading my way, I wrote. Be prepared. You know that part of the writing process, when you’re about 3/5 of the way into a book, closer to the end than to the beginning but not close enough to feel you’ll be done soon? That moment when you suddenly start wondering if anyone will ever read your book, and why anyone would ever want to read your book, since it’s such a pile of shit and you’re not even a halfway talented writer anyway? Virtually every writer I know reaches this point at some time or another, and the only advice we can give each other at that point is to just keep going. To keep plowing right through the mountain of self-doubt and self-recrimination because by that point, what else are you going to do? You’re in too deep. You just have to keep going. It’s like the laboring woman who reaches transition, decides this is all a terribly bad idea. and starts shouting that she wants to go home. I felt that way myself near the end of my second labor, except I was having a home birth so I already was at home. Instead, I insisted I needed a nap. My midwife said okay. I climbed up on my bed, closed my eyes, and managed to sleep through all of transition. Fifteen minutes after I woke up, my second daughter was born. I’m thinking that one of those naps might be a good idea right now. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I can lie down for a week or two, or maybe five. When I wake up, the book will be in stores, already selling or not selling, and the opinion-mongers will be on to their next exploits. What will be will already have been. The initiation phase will be over. A new way of being will be mine.