Permission to Cruise

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I posted the above video on the socials this week—I made it two years ago when I finished a(nother) final draft of my memoir and felt just like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. This week I completed another final revision of my memoir, and felt the same way. Like Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay’s characters, I might start a prostitution ring, or I might just keep writing. I’m sure a prostitution ring would be more lucrative, but I’m better suited to creative work on my own.
 
I’ve been working on this book for, oh, ten years. I started with a book of essays, learned how to write memoir, and turned the book into a proper memoir, and then I sharpened and sharpened and sharpened. I drilled down to what the book was about with help from editors, courses, the voice of JB—my screenwriting program’s director—who still lives in my head asking, “But what is the STORY?” Everything superfluous went into other Scrivener files. Finally, I said, “It’s time.” 
 
This past week, I spent many hours going over it (again) with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there weren’t any errant commas, spaces, the all-too-often unneeded “that”—the usual mechanical shit. 
 
Anyway, it feels good. Slide across the room in your shorts good. 
 
I am curious and harbor a love for the next shiny thing, so distilling a part of my life into one overarching story arc was a killing of darlings of epic proportions. Don’t get me wrong—the book is bursting with all my favorite details about life, like a guy with a bad bob hairdo yelling at me, wrestling sound guys for microphones, and apocalypse-resistant landscaping. But for once, those details are related to the central story! Huzzah to me! 
 
Here’s the thing that’s hard to remember in this hustling/bustling get-it-now-make-it-happen-yesterday culture I find myself in—deadlines are great and real, but we are human, living, breathing, creative creatures and are all on our own timelines. And if you’re in it to prove your worth or win at capitalism, writing is the wrong line of work anyway. 
 
We need to pay more attention to our own rhythms. The tides don’t give a shit if capitalism wants them to move faster.
 
A few years ago, when one of my favorite bands, Blonde Redhead, came out with their first album in nine years, Sit Down to Dinner, Jenny Eliscu did an interview with frontwoman Kazu Makino for Sirius XMU. I was on my way home, driving down Cassia Street in Boise and turning onto Aurora Avenue just as Kazu said:
 
“I feel like I’m lacking a sense of time, so I’m doing things at my own good pace, but it seems it’s quite slow for the average person…” 
 
For some reason, hearing Makino say it—a musical hero of mine, who has always done things her own way—made my shoulders relax, and I exhaled. She makes music that is not palatable to everyone, but those of us who love it, we LOVE IT love it. Makino and her bandmates have consistently put albums out over the thirty-plus years they’ve been playing together. Over thirty years, the work adds up, even if you take a nine-year break. 
 
Hopefully I’m not like a writerly cicada—emerging with a book once every thirteen to seventeen years. For now, I’m going to luxuriate in the feeling of finishing and slide in my socks into the next act of my own story at my own pace.