Since announcing that I have a book being published, a common question has been, how long did it take me to write the book?
I’ve not really known how to answer this.
But this is what I do know.
My upcoming book, SHE: A collection of you, me, her, is a product of the blog I started almost five years ago; Fly In My Wine.
I distinctly remember like it was yesterday, sitting on a shitty rug, on the floor of my lounge room. My new computer was in front of me and my wine was at hand. I was researching what a blog was and how to have one (I’m still unsure). I lifted my wine to my lips and was confronted by a fly, swimming luxuriously (or drowning, whatever). I wanted to write a blog about the big issues in my little life. When I saw that fly, that’s what I saw, a big issue in my little life. And so, my blog found its title.
Fly In My Wine was created at a time when I was in desperate need of deeper conversations. This was pre-kids (so imagine my desperation now). Back then, all I wanted was to sit around a big table with well-travelled people and talk about REAL stuff, the big issues (I might have overindulged in Elizabeth Gilberts ‘Eat, Pray, Love”).
But guess what happened. When I started writing, all that came out was short truths (FYI – nobody responded. No comments. Zero. Zilch. There was no conversation). My mum (yes, Deborah with her literary wisdom) told me that what I was writing was vignettes: otherwise known as pieces of emotive writing that could fit on a vine leaf. I started writing a lot of vignettes. Then I had my first child, and motherhood inspired more vignettes to shoot out of me faster than the low flow of breast milk.
Eventually, somebody asked, ‘Are you going to write a book soon?’ As I looked back on my adventure from starting Fly In My Wine, the adventure that changed me overtime from a wanderer to a lover, a mother, and now all the things verging on a wonderer, I realized, I had written a book.
In short (after that long spiel), it didn’t take that long. Once I realized that what I had written was essentially a journey of four major roles I and many other women take on, then it came together. I feel like SHE was created organically, with the exception of my having to actually experience those four roles (inclusive of wine and poo).
I could say it took me five years unconsciously to write SHE, or I could say it took my three months, consciously. It doesn’t matter how long it took me, what matters is that I did it. That SHE is here. And soon I get to share her with you.
T x
FlyInMyWine 