I have set a deadline for finishing the first draft of my memoir. I set it by using left-brain planning. I took the total number of words, and I divided it by the number of writing days left in the year. Is that a reasonable number of daily words? Yes? Okay, that’s the deadline.
I’m back to thinking about the two sides of the brain, because this week, I ran into an interesting quote by Jonathan Rowson, a chess master and author. I found the quote in a podcast called On Being with Krista Tippett. In the podcast, Rowson says the left side of the brain is about focusing in and narrowing down.
The right side is about backing up and seeing the bigger picture. In Rowson’s model, the focusing and narrowing, the need to find reproducible algorithms is prevalent in present culture. We hear about metrics, analysis, and evidence-based medicine.
Rowson is advocating spending time in putting things into context, into a larger perspective by taking time for “soul-searching and working together and lots of things which, culturally, are somewhat disempowered at the moment.”
My Right-Brain Perspective
My book coach is helping me with the right-brain approach to my memoir. She is helping me to step back and look at the big picture. I spent weeks deciding what doesn’t need to go into my memoir so I can tell a focused story.
Then, my coach asked me a question that a reader might ask. “But how did you get to your beginning point? Beyond the guidance of your mentor, what’s the deep level that attracted you to taking care of young patients dying of AIDS?”
I didn’t know, so I turned to writing. I turned to writing during lots of distraction. I had to prepare to travel, and I had to prepare to give a presentation. I had to stay present during four intense days of being with my tribe, other women who understand the value of writing and sharing that writing.
More Distractions
I needed lots of energy and stamina to get back home when my flight from Toronto was canceled because of thunderstorms over Philadelphia. I got on a later flight on standby, and I celebrated when I got my seat assignment. I was in the very last row of the plane, but I didn’t care. I was not going to have to spend the night in the airport!
Still, I managed to write. In the early morning of my last day in Canada, before my presentation, before my flight home, I turned in nine fragmented and disjointed pages to my book coach. And in her supportive way, she said, “Yes, your pages are fragmented, but in a good way. You’ve provided yourself with lots of raw material to dive into over the next weeks.”
And she’s right. In writing to answer this deep question, I found myself writing about my relationship with death, starting with the death of a pet when I was quite small. I wrote about my exploration of hospice as a second-year medical student. These are places I didn’t expect to go in this book.
Organic Growth
These pages may not make the final cut. They may be backstory about the protagonist, important for me to know as the writer, but not necessarily important to the reader. My manuscript is a living, breathing organism.
Fleshing out the spine of the outline is taking some surprising and self-revealing turns. I didn’t get here by dissecting and analyzing. I got here by taking a step back and doing some soul searching.