The last few days I’ve had a lot on my mind, but after I having an epiphany while I was walking to the train yesterday morning, everything feels right in the world again.
You’ve probably read by now that I’m working on my first book. Because it’s about my experiences with being fat, losing weight, and dealing with body image, I assumed I’d be writing a memoir. After all, these are my experiences, and the entire world will find them every bit as interesting as Lena Dunham’s. It never occurred to me that I could use them to build characters and create situations that were far more humorous or soul-crushing than what actually happened to me. I didn’t want to be James Frey. But yesterday as I crossed the street and started down the final block before I reach the train station, I asked myself, “What if it was a story?”
This might be a testament to poor planning, but I just never imagined my book could be anything but a memoir. Yet thinking about all the possibilities of a novel and all the places it could go that memoir couldn’t, it felt incredibly liberating, like I wasn’t under the memoir’s thumb anymore. I could get every bit as creative as I wanted. I could still tell my story along with telling a few new ones, too. Not to mention, I suspect I’ll have more success getting it published as fiction rather than nonfiction–which is to say it might take ten years to get the memoir version published as opposed to five years as a work of fiction.
Initially, in deciding to make my book a novel I felt as though I was sacrificing its authenticity, but after talking it over with one of my friends, I realized something important: characters can have every bit the emotional impact on readers as an author who speaks directly to them. It’s still going to be my story and my words, just presented in a different way.
At any rate, I’m very excited about taking my book in this direction. I already feel so much more connected to the story than I was before when I was struggling through each word in the previous iteration. It’s been years since I’ve actually sat down and written about things that I’ve imagined, and I think part of me was worried I wasn’t capable of doing it anymore. But I am, and it feels like I’m getting back to my roots. Because I am.
