WHY WRITING? WHY WRITE A CANCER BOOK?

This is gonna be short because I’m writing a cancer book.

See what I did there? Didn’t say writing ‘my cancer’ book. Cancer book is more than enough.

The whole ‘my cancer’ talk is a bad track. Who really wants to claim it like that.

Instead, I’m giving it a good thrashing, plowing the cancer field like an Iowa farmer on a corn ranch. Since it started on my telling tongue, it’s only fair to talk it do death.

That’s my whole book deal, doing something with an experience too common to far too many. It’s an experience that needs another angle taken, another lens focusing, an experience that sucks like there’s no tomorrow, but still doing something with it.

Not that I’ve got a book deal, not yet anyway, but part of my plan is blogging and writing until I do. Like the band that get’s paid to leave, which was the informal name of my band since it didn’t have a formal name, I’ll be the writer paid to stop writing.

Paid to stop writing about non-revenue stuff is the goal, but is it realistic? I’ll know more after my book goes to the publisher, after I shop it to an agent, after I finish editing and line editing and doing the work laid out by my hired gun editor.

I’ve never liked the term ‘editor.’ Too official, too smart, too everything a writer ought to know but somehow ignores for the sake of ‘story.’

What’s left out when most writers complain about editors is that editors are writers. Funny loop, right? Writer/Editor and Editor/Writer. Which hats fits best depends on where things are in a book.

Where are things? Thank you for asking.

I’m 90K words in with three re-writes, eight pages of fixes from my favorite editor, and one line edit away from submitting the work.

I hear you asking, so I’ll answer: Yes, I’m working on my non-fiction proposal, my memoir proposal, and taking notice of new ‘hybrid’ memoirs.

And blogging, always blogging, but now it’s about supporting the book.

When I was a student the first time I was a scholarship athlete taking coach recommended classes to become a PE teacher and a coach.

Didn’t work out.

The second time I was a student I was a fiction writing English major working toward becoming a professor.

That didn’t work out either.

The third time I was a news writing history major and it worked out the way it’s supposed to with a graduation gown and diploma at age thirty nine. It was a mixed blessing of not having to listen to radio ads beginning with, “Thinking about finishing the degree you started?” and the joke about waiting so long to finish I’d be taking classes with my kids.

What did I learn from such a diverse educational path? If I became a teacher I’d be in school the rest of my life, was my freshman fear. Little did I know I’d be in school the rest of my life, anyway. It’s a life-long-learner thing.

As an English major I looked forward to reading and writing and more writing and reading, then more, well, you get the picture. Instead, I met a woman who dated Italian princes and D1 football players. And me. I changed plans, dropped out, and ended up living in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, NY.

In other words, I was in writer’s heaven.

My history major push was the most serious. I was married, two kids, and my job paid for classes pertaining to work. Oddly enough I sold the idea that all of my classes pertained to work. Flunking out, dropping out, or leaving money on the table, wasn’t an option I considered. I felt the responsibility to accomplish my educational goals instead of taking the usual dumbassed route I knew so well.

English major/fiction writer came into focus at the end. History is written by the winners, those with a voice, the sort of voice that celebrates surviving long enough to write history.

That’s what my book is doing, history, a history of reflection on what it meant to comply for the non-compliant, what it meant to embrace modern medical treatment while married to a naturopathic doctor, and how to navigate the emotional and physical barriers that jump up unexpected like some kind of horror house fright night that goes beyond spooky.

I’m not writing the book on my blog, so I’m getting ending while I’ve got writing momentum, but one last thought: Cancer is like going into an escape room with others and trying to find a way out. The doctors and nurses and techs have an idea, a plan, to follow.

My book will tell how to follow their plan and escape with your life in tact, the life you remember, maybe a better life.

But still, fuck cancer. Talk soon.