A Pause with Purpose

On the Work that Required Silence

I haven’t published here since late November.

For about a year and a half before that, I wrote here every other week. My rhythm was steady. Then I stopped, not because I ran out of things to say, but because I circled back to my memoir. A memoir I’ve been writing for ten years. That may sound like a long time, but in memoir land, it often takes that long to get the story all the way down.

Around the time I stopped publishing here, I was met with several moments that quietly shook my confidence. I found myself confronting different ways stories move into the world, and what each one demands of the writer. Taken together, it left me unexpectedly deflated. I missed a few deadlines from a sudden loss of momentum.

And now I’ve reached a milestone: I finished my messy first draft.

It wasn’t easy. Some of the most difficult chapters were still waiting for me at the end.

My shift from essays back toward the memoir was necessary. The work required a different kind of focus with longer stretches of silence and a willingness to stay with material that couldn’t be explained quickly or neatly.

The draft isn’t polished or publishable. It’s emotionally dense and structurally imperfect. But it exists. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. The story has shape now, which means I can begin the real work of restructuring, revising, questioning, and strengthening it.

As I neared the end of the first draft, something many memoirists talk about happened: the thematic spine of the book revealed itself only after the final chapter was written. I won’t share it yet, but it clarified what the story is really asking.

I want to acknowledge the support that helped carry me through this stretch: Memoir Nation, led by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, and JanYourStory, a group of memoir writers who have been showing up twice a week for months and, more recently, every day this month to write for one to two hours. This consistency and support helped push me through some emotionally exhausting work.

Writing this first draft demanded something different than this space. Substack rewards clarity and immediacy. My memoir asked me repeatedly for containment and patience. It asked me not to explain myself but to show. Show. And then show some more.

I am grateful to you for the space to step away. I want you to know that my absence wasn’t empty. It was simply a different kind of writing.