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I’m seventy-some thousand words into the first messy draft of a memoir. I’m seeking to put into coherent shape my journey through my trauma with the cult and the spiritual wilderness and recovery journey it became the catalyst for. This year the draft has slowly turned from a document of random scenes and memories into a more cohesive narrative that has some sort of chronology. I have an outline now with highlighted holes left to fill and each week I keep chipping away at them. Some days this is extremely encouraging. Other days it instigates a bevy of questions or doubts about my skill—or ultimately my identity—which is conveyed onto the page as narrative voice.

In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr claims, “Each great memoir lives or dies based 100 percent on voice” (35). Oh dear. I read that and immediately fear what I lack in originality or brazenness or poetic word choice. Maybe it’s because I’m an enneagram four, I’m constantly tempted to believe that everyone else’s lives or writing are more purposeful or meaningful or better crafted than mine. And the truth is there are a multitude of writers out there that will be more adept at their skill, will have more gripping poetic language, will sing louder off the page. When I consider that, I’m often tempted to stop.

Who am I to attempt this? I think. Who is going to want to read what I have to say? Will my work have value even if it’s not the best in the field? When I compare myself, I often want to quit. I read a novel by Susan Choi recently titled Flashlight. Her descriptions lifted off the page with such vividness my own scene work felt muted and flat in comparison. Or I read memoirs of authors who have dramatic stories to tell. Their voice may not be the most inventive, but when they’ve lived and escaped North Korea to tell the tale, the sheer details of their story remain utterly gripping. I fear I lack both of these things.

Karr notes, “A memoirist starts off fumbling—jotting down facts, recounting anecdotes. It may take a writer hundreds of rough trial pages for a way of speaking to start to emerge unique to himself and his experience, but when he does, both carnal and interior experiences come back with clarity, and the work gains an electrical charge. For the reader, the voice has to exist from the first sentence” (35).

I began some rough musings on this book years ago when I was still in the thick of processing my trauma. I quickly realized I was too close to the event to begin such a monumental task. But those original pages are still coming in useful to my drafting process now because they offer raw emotional evidence of my journey. I tried picking the draft back up maybe five years ago and I was still too close to it. Still too angry. Beth Kepart writes regarding this in her book Handling the Truth, “If we don’t know what we love—if we’re not yet capable of it; if we’re stuck in a stingy, fisted-up place; if we’re still too angry to name the color of the sun—it is probably too soon to start sorting and stacking and shaping that memoir. Maybe we haven’t learned enough yet. Maybe we haven’t sufficiently tempered our disappointment with grace. Maybe we haven’t stopped hurting long enough to look up and see the others who hurt with us…Maybe we only have words right now for our mighty wounds and our percolating scars. And if that’s the case, let’s step aside, for those words alone are the stuff of litanies, screeds, judgments, and declamations” (58-59).

Five years ago this was still true of me. Now it feels like the time is right. As I started drafting last year, and even as recent as my stay at the monastery last month, there is what Karr calls an “electrical charge” to my work. Something about it feels urgent. Sometimes the words come pouring out. It’s time to get the story fully down on paper.

So how can I trust that urge?

On my good days, I do. I show up and keep putting words down, working to silence the inner critic that wants to tell me no one will read this or that it’s not beautiful or compelling enough to warrant publication. I keep writing and leave questions about details and shape and scene detail for a later draft. Right now I’m getting the whole messy thing down on paper in a first go. Word vomit. No one has to read it yet.

On my bad days, I want to give up. I want to have all those questions figured out before I even begin. When I express my fears to my call-me-on-my-bullshit writing friend, she tells me I can hone my craft and add details and make the pages sharper later. Stop worrying about those things right now. She’s right.

There are two sides to the questions I’m wrestling with.

On one side, it’s a matter of craft. And there’s nothing wrong with challenging myself and working towards honing my skills with sharper precision. If it’s a matter of detail in scene work and word choice, I can work to make those things stronger in revision.

The other side is a matter of identity or worth. Writing is a vulnerable thing. Especially when it’s memoir, because I’m putting myself on the page as a character. I’m opening up my journals and my experience to present them with crafted transparency. In this case, a question about the value of my writing feels like a question about the value of my worthiness as a human being.  Even if you’re not a writer and you can’t quite relate to my musings on craft and form, I’m guessing you can identify with questions of value and worth. We all tend to wrestle with these questions in some variation:

Why am I doing what I’m doing?

Who is it for?

What meaning does it hold?

Maybe for you it’s a job or a relationship, a commitment to volunteer somewhere, or a matter of spirituality. We all want to know the way we are choosing to spend our time and energy on this planet matters. So what makes my writing matter?

This brings up questions about readership. Who am I writing this for? There are somewhat opposing philosophies in the writing world about audience. I’ve had lots of conversations about writing as hospitality—making room in your work to make space for others. Jonathan Rogers advocates for writing in a way that loves your reader and making choices about the writing to serve the reader’s experience of your work. There are others who contend that the writer’s job is to write and be true to the form of the piece; it doesn’t matter what people think of it when you are done. Their response is not your responsibility. I can see validity in both these approaches and suspect that my own philosophy will wind up as blended aspects of both.

Why am I writing this book? In some ways I’m writing it for myself as a way to coalesce a long journey into one narrative form. I’m still processing and reprocessing my experience. It’s still evolving me into a new kind of person. I’m still questing for understanding as I write it all down and inviting the reader along with me. I’m also writing in the hopes it will serve someone else.

What do I have to offer in my writing that no one else can offer? What makes what I have to say unique? What am I good at that I can lean into? I’m never going to be Susan Choi or Mary Karr or Sarah Bessey or Anne Lamott. I can only be me. It’s like a saying my mom has painted on her guest bathroom wall: Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. Sometimes I struggle with accepting myself. Is who I am interesting enough? Wise enough? Creative enough? The urge to compare is strong. Maybe you can relate in your own version. Engaging in the act of writing becomes an act of trust with myself. Don’t try to copy or emulate. Be the best of who you are and shrug off any judgments that may come from others who are still insecure enough in their scramble for worthiness that they put others down in their desperate climb to the proverbial top. (In the realms of what really matters, does a “top” even exist?) I may never land on the bestseller list. Or who knows? Maybe I will. I’ll certainly never know unless I write the actual book and help it find a way into the world. But even if I don’t, that doesn’t mean my voice doesn’t matter or is uninteresting or can’t support someone else through their own wilderness.

Karr writes, “As you start out in rough drafts, setting down stories as clearly as you can, there begins to burble up onto the page what’s exclusively yours both as a writer and a human being. If you trust the truth enough to keep unveiling yourself on the page—no matter how shameful those revelations may at first seem—the book will naturally structure itself to maximize what you’re best at. You’re best at it because it sits at the core of your passions” (50-51).

Sometimes I distrust my poetic craft. But I do know how to lean into vulnerability. I think that’s one thing I do well. I’ve set out to display the messiness of my story in its raw transparency. Reading through journal entries from twelve years ago, I’m appalled at what I thought and wrote, the dysfunctional behavior I rationalized in the name of religion. It’s embarrassing. But yes, those things are going onto the page. I’m not going to hide my poor theology or immature choices because they are part of how I became who I am today. Maybe they can offer courage or wisdom to someone else as well. I want to reach out and hug the reader as if to say, you don’t have all your shit together either? Well, you’re in good company. Look at mine. I want to say some of the quiet part out loud.

Maybe there are other aspects of my voice that serve my writing as well. But for now that’s the one I know to lean into hardest. This is what I know to offer, part of my post I can hold. And that’s all any of us can do.

There are lots of amazing accomplished people in the world. Scrolling social media is often a mistake for my self-worth because it’s a kaleidoscope of everyone’s best projections of their identity into one place. I can’t help but glance through and think, wow, I wish my body could be that fit, my publication list could be that long, my vacations be that exotic, my house be that artistically decorated, my diet be that healthy. Maybe you could do with a break from the feeds as well, because they tend to just invite comparison and discontent with who we actually are. I can’t be all those things. I have limited time and energy. But I do have a book to write. What’s in front of you to do that genuinely rings true with the best of your core identity?

My two cents? Lean into who you already are. Grow, evolve, go on a journey to become a better human being, sure. But don’t try to be anyone else. Everyone else is already taken. You are the only person who can be you. If you don’t offer to the world what you are uniquely positioned to offer, then ultimately we all miss out. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or showy or even feel exciting. Sometimes it’s a pile of dishes washed with tender kindness. Or a pause in the grocery store to help a struggling stranger. Or a story put into words for the benefit of someone else. To pursue whatever is yours is an act of trust with yourself and with the Divine. So is letting go of everything else.

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Shalom.