Little Story #34

I made it through the little story project month with a few little story posts before it started. It's been ... um ... interesting. Much harder than I thought it was going to be and I thought it was going to be hard. There were a few times when I didn't have any ideas. Then somehow ... miraculously ... I'd start typing. That was affirming.
The reason I did this was to get my writer muscles back so I could rewrite my book. I will (theoretically) self publish and hope to sell enough to pay costs. My aspirations are not too high.
Some of the little stories are in the book. The focus of the book is my experience of being fat and deciding at a fairly young age not to diet. I'm always hoping my writing has an impact on how fat people are seen. But I have friends who make fat jokes, body shame children, valorize thinness when I'm sitting there. I don't want people to not say things in front of me if they really feel them but the fact that I  hear so many same old shit things suggests that my message is not getting through.
Still I feel like I need to make this effort. I need to have the book in my hands.
The little story project gave me a sense of timing. In school I wrote in the morning. These days I'm getting ready to swim four days a week so I don't have time. Three mornings a week I can write and I can write in the afternoons. The project helped me get a groove going.
I'm not sure if I'll keep posting on the blog but I hope I do. I'm trying to think up a food blog project.
When I was writing in the MFA program I talked about wanting a therapist on one side and an editor on the other. Most of us did. Writing the little stories has been painful at times. I sort of stirred the soup to find them. My feeling is that you never get over things. You live with them. You don't let them run you around. Sometimes they rise up when you don't expect them and you just have to take the fall. And then. The trees sway in the wind. The first blackberries taste so good. A friend sends a video of her daughter spinning in a new dress. Life calls you back into the moment.
I am so grateful to the friends who read and left comments or likes. It's always fun to get those but during this push it was like vitamins.
So.
Yesterday I opened the book. I was surprised to find that I'd written an introduction a few years ago. I forgot about it and it was pretty good. Then I went through the first two chapters, which are the most rewritten and edited parts of the book because I always start at the beginning to work on it. And then ...there was no more text.
Freak.
Out.
I mean I have hard copies of the book and I thought I had it on some flash drives so I knew all was not lost. Still, it was a moment. I found a flash drive with it. I have no idea if there is more recent work but ... oh well. I worked a little bit.
So....