My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

Things have been crazy lately.   I’ve finished my MA, started looking for a full-time job, and gotten an agent and a book deal, all in quick succession.   It’s all happening really fast, and it’s almost all good news; as my friend pointed out on Facebook when I announced that I had a publisher, I’m finally profiting from my all-consuming neuroses.   They’ve always been the source of my self-deprecating humor, these nerves of mine, but they were never much good for anything else until now.   Suddenly, I have an audience for my particular brand of crazy, and everyone around me seems to be thrilled on my behalf.   I should be thrilled too, and I am , I keep insisting… well, my logical brain is thrilled. The thing is, in my heart I’m terrified.   Publishing a book about my body anxiety publicizes it, and while I’ve always been one for publicizing my issues on a conversational level, I’ve never really had to deal with a large audience before.   ...

    Yesterday, I wrote a piece for class about my childhood in Manhattan Beach, and more specifically about how my brother and I used to sneak out to the mini mart down the road and buy candy behind my mom’s back.  I tried to make the piece funny, but I think it just turned out uncomfortable, because that’s exactly how I felt writing it, like I was peeling back my skin and showing the world my big gaping flaw: I like sweets.  In fact, as a kid I was mildly obsessed with them, but even now I’m a huge fan (as evidenced by my baking blog ).  And I hate that my sweet tooth makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong, because to me it’s the strongest evidence the prosecution could cite in the case against the fatty– clearly I wasn’t fat because I ate too much asparagus.     And it doesn’t matter that I love asparagus now, or that I’ll often pass up a rich chocolate cake for a plate of grilled zucchini, because the fact remains that I also stil...

So as I think I may have mentioned, I have to write a book for my MA in Creative Nonfiction, and I decided to write a memoir about this whole GB experience, including childhood stuff and family dynamics in addition to the process of surgery and the mental and physical results of the change.  I thought it would be so easy.  I mean, I spend 90% of my time thinking about my body anyway, how hard could it be to put those thoughts down in the form of an interesting, structured narrative? NOT, that's how easy.  I haven't written one single word of the book, and I'm having a really hard time starting.  And the longer I put it off, the more afraid I am of failing at my goal to write a funny, frank narrative; I'm terrified it'll end up as a 'poor me' memoir, and I'll have proven my dad right in saying that this project is self-indulgent and useless.  And that's not the only surprise stumbling block... When I tell people what I'm writing about, they al...