The Manuscript Handover

There it is in my hands, the only physical copy of my book. After giving birth to it, nurturing it, changing it, and searching for its heart, it's finally leaving to begin it's journey toward publishing. This is Robin, our daughter, encouraging me to hand it over for her to edit. It was wrenching to let it go. Sure, I'd scrutinized every detail but the time had come and I knew it! Still the range of emotions I felt were a surprise.

Writers are like that they tell me. The manuscript handover was a momentous occasion and a cause for celebration but I ended up sleeping that afternoon for three hours, completely spent. Robin is a published poet and has edited many manuscripts and I know she's a good editor. She's kind and communicates what needs changing in a way that's productive not painful. I knew all this, but I felt terrified, elated and proud all at the same time.

The last two years since picking up my proverbial pen on August 12, 2022 have been the most challenging and inspiring years. Imagine looking over the shoulder of a fellow human about to embark on the expedition of a lifetime. You’re there as life events fracture this sensitive soul into pieces and when they enroll strategies to survive. The strategies worked so well they hardly noticed when they stopped working. You travel with them as mystical visions provide the clues needed to put their fractured self back together. It is the awakening of a slumbering human who did and sometimes didn’t submit to their soul’s nudging. In the end, they wanted what most humans want—to experience the fullness of a meaningful existence. The human you're travelling with is desperate to achieve that but doesn't know how to get there.

Sequestered in my apartment in front of the computer, I wrote eagerly. My heart was full of the process I’d undergone since birth but hadn’t unpacked or understood until my sixth decade. In six months I had a 50,000 word manuscript. At least I thought I did, but what I really had were jumbles of intentions, memories, dreams and visions. Sure, there were spurts and starts but quickly I learned there was more to writing a book than I thought. For six months, I was overflowing with the joy of writing before the real work of birthing a book was in front of me in black and white.

Reading the book again and again and again, it became clear that those streams of words, sentences and chapters wanted to be something. It was like it had a heart but somehow it was hidden. I told everyone the book was about Finding, Recognizing and Falling in Love with your Soul and thought that was a good title, but those words just described what I’d been struggling to do for a long time. Sure, it was woven into my life at the points I’d allowed discovery and growth like when I realized painful times were teachers and I was enrolled in a kind of Life School. But that title didn't cover the essence of this book.

Home, the word and the concept, played a huge part in my life. Maybe it was because I always lived in homes owned by our church when my parents were pastor and pastor’s wife. There was another meaning of home that poked its head into my existence every once in awhile. This was the home I knew resided inside that felt full and peaceful. This was the home I didn’t have and yearned for. I wasn’t aware of that either, at first. I struggled with the concept and decided to become a real estate agent. I’d help other people find their home.

For fourteen years, I helped people stage, buy and sell their homes. One astute and intuitive friend said I was really searching for my own home. At the time her words hit me hard. Who was I fooling? Is that all I was doing? My veneer began cracking as her words rang true inside. Those cracks taught me a lot about myself, so I thought my book was about Finding Home. It is about that, yet there was something more.

Lately when people asked me what my book was all about, it was easier to just say it was a memoir and not go into too much detail. Readers understand memoir. If pressed I'd say it was a ‘how to’ book about searching inside for meaning, but that didn't completely describe the book's heart either. In frustration, I finally deleted all the ‘how to’ sections. How could I offer a book that was based on me showing you how to find meaning when the whole premise of this book is to encourage you to search inward to find those answers. Reading this book may help you. You have a ring-side seat as I change course and travel inward excavating my life, but again, I had to concede that my book wasn’t the cornerstone of yet another online course and start again.

I edited fiercely, chopping and rearranging sections and chapters into a loose chronological order except my life was anything but linear. Interesting, then, that all the visions I’d written in my journals were labelled and dated. There were a series of them that occurred in a clearing in a forest. As I read them again, it was clear they spoke about pivotal moments of growth. In a flash, I recognized they were the backbone of this book, but not the title nor the heart.

After six more months of revising, I needed a break. Whenever I need a break, I usually turn to a creative activity and this time I designed and prepared over twenty possible front covers with different titles and artwork. It was fun to do and looked suspiciously like procrastination, but still my book would not reveal its heart. One of the covers mentioned a remarkable adventure. The book was full of remarkable adventures, indeed, but Lewis Carroll’s estate might have something to say about Alice’s Remarkable Adventures in Wanderland.

Finally, I let it all go. In the book I share a poignant vignette about how a very young Alice dreamt she’d found a rabbit hole and stayed there to see if she’d have an adventure, just like Lewis Carroll’s, Alice. My concept of a rabbit hole morphed from having an adventure to a safe space to think or a place with no distractions so I could follow a thread of curiosity to its conclusion.

In the end, my safe rabbit hole changed, again, as I realized I was hiding from everything out there. How could I maintain my boundaries or even have any without my rabbit holes? Who was I outside that safe space? At last I'd found the beating heart and the central theme of my book. I'd written this question in the book, "What if she could fall up a rabbit hole in space just like Lewis Carroll’s Alice fell down a rabbit hole on earth?" The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to fall up that rabbit hole to face myself, ALL of myself. It was so much harder than the manuscript handover. I'd just written the Introduction and these five lines stared back at me as if to say, do you get it, now?

You may need to fall UP the rabbit hole

to do the hardest thing you’ll ever do—

see the naked truth

of who you are

and love yourself anyway.