I am a terrible, terrible writer. Look at me: I have all the blessings of time, a reasonable income, an agent–and still it has taken me months to revise the last draft of my memoir and get it to the agent who has already expressed that she would like to sell it.

They aren’t big revisions.

The memoir has, at this point, taken eleven years. Two years to live it and nine to write it. Isn’t it supposed to be faster than this? Don’t good ideas come out, get whipped through a few drafts, sweat sweat write write and out the door?

Evidently not.

As it turns out, I needed five years of distance before organizing the journals into a book. Two years of drafts. A year of waiting. Another year of polishing and querying. In that timeline, why not take another three months to determine how, exactly, I am…