My Many Mistakes

I started out trying to write a second memoir in 2021 after I had lived with my cohabitant for just a year. I was looking for a new project and I thought I had a grab bag of funny stories about our trade-offs and unexpected physical chemistry. The working title was “Olds in Paradise”, and it was going to be “written for the market” as one of my writing coaches is fond of saying. But I just couldn’t do it. First, obviously, it was a huge invasion of our privacy, and second, it was too fresh. I lacked the long horizon perspective that I had when I wrote my first memoir several years after my husband died. It’s much easier to write about dead people. I don’t have to wake up in the morning and face my deceased husband over coffee. He might have had something to say about the way he was portrayed. But I’m not co-writing my own memoir. I’m not asking for permission. I can’t. And yet…love is a tangle. It’s not easy to write about someone you love when you also want to be funny, and poignant, and relevant. So, I decided to write fiction. It was an experiment.  

I dug out a short story I wrote in 2006 called “The Nanotube Toothbrush” about a woman who buys an internet-connected robotic toothbrush that comes with a customer service avatar. But my beta readers back then didn’t enjoy the read. They had no frame of reference for all that technology. It wasn’t relevant to them. They weren’t interested. They didn’t think it was real. They thought it was science fiction. I thought it was futuristic. But you can’t argue with your readers. By 2021 internet-connected devices, robots, and avatars (aka, chatbots) were mainstream. So I built my new novel on that short story about the intersection of technology and a woman’s personal life. Her mistakes are costly. Also very entertaining. 

Writing is a solitary experience and, if I’m not interested in my own thoughts, I can’t do it. I can’t write for money. I’ve tried. Obligation sucks the life out of me. I want to feel like I’m exploring new territory, if only inside myself. Writing my first memoir about my 32-year marriage was like an archeological dig. The further I got into it, the more I learned about myself, my relationship with my husband, and what went wrong. Add a demented mother, a cancer diagnosis and a charming small farm, and my life felt like a Rubik’s Cube. I made so many mistakes, I could never get the pieces to match up. Some of the mistakes are regrets. But some of them are hilarious. 

Now I think about how different my life would be today if I hadn’t made those mistakes. I didn’t think we needed couple’s therapy. I refused to go on vacation. I didn’t go to see his big show. Was the marriage breakdown my fault? On the other hand, I couldn’t stop cancer. He was diagnosed in June, and he died in January. I couldn’t stop that. See what I mean about Rubik’s Cube? One action from me might have changed everything, but which action was it? The beauty of fiction is that I get to choose. 

In 2021, when I thought I would write a second memoir about my current relationship, I couldn’t see myself with clarity. I saw so many things about my partner that were interesting to dissect, and easy to joke about. But there has to be some tension in a story to propel the reader through it. What’s going to happen next? I tried, but I couldn’t invent the tension. It was smooth sailing on the Love Boat, which is sweet, but not very intriguing. At least not to me. When I wrote my first memoir, I was solving a problem. There was a mismatch between my identity and my reality. That cognitive dissonance was painful. Writing a memoir was therapy. But in 2021, mid-pandemic, I was huffing male pheromones, and high on endorphins, happy as a clam. My inner tension was mostly about controlling my own behavior, trying not to be too judgey and hyper critical of his lifestyle. Our story lacked depth because it was too early, and I was too close to it for insight. Without a meaty conflict I had no story. Thankfully.

So, my new book is fiction, a meaty husband/wife conflict that’s a mash-up of the relationship mistakes I know all too well and the advent of the personal technology that concerns me. It’s possible to love someone and still make a mess of things. There are potholes in the road of life, and sometimes our myopia has us digging into what we should be jumping out of. I’ve always been one to dive in headfirst to whatever interests me — a farm, a man, a story. Every choice is a steppingstone. My many mistakes are teachable moments, as long as I’m willing to reflect and I don’t lose my sense of humor. Where will my mistakes take me? That curiosity launches the journey of the protagonist in my new book, a story where my fiction meets my reality. She wants to make mistakes. That’s why she interests me.