finally, I figured out what I'm doing

So I was busily editing my stories for my book, trying to ignore the massive doubts I was starting to have about my book.

I met with my publisher Tony, and he was having the same doubts. Uh oh. I tried to talk through the point I wanted to make with my book, but I couldn't even do that very well.

Tony suggested I write a piece about the motorcycle accident that led to my pursuit of extreme sports. I sat down on Saturday morning to write it.

I wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more. It was horrible. I'd never documented what happened when I went through my two horrific knee surgeries. After everything was said and done my career was in tatters, my husband had left me, and I had been forced to leave San Fran to work on the east coast. It was really hard to write about all that stuff. At the same time, what was wrong with my book is that it was just about stupid adventures I'd had, with no personal information. It's going to be really hard to let people read the stuff I'm writing now, but at the same time it's cathartic. Though the past two days have been really hard, emotionally, because I'm dredging up all this stuff I've been suppressing.

I finished the story in about 4 hours of intense writing. I then spent all night Saturday (until 1 am) and all day Sunday revising and trying to make the story funny.

Tony liked it, and liked my new idea for the book. I'm going to introduce each story with a piece that explains what was going on in my life and why I chose that particular adventure. The interspersed pieces will be a little cliffhanger and will help add some cohesion to the stories.

I'm pretty excited about the book now. I'm getting my first piece workshopped on Wednesday. I'm the first to go. Should be interesting.