I began a journey in memoir this summer. Three months in feels much longer and a lot harder than I’m prepared for every day.

Putting words to page isn’t hard. At present, I have 27,000 words which may realistically be around 20,000 when I weed out repeats, notes to self, and edit what I keep. For someone whose natural pace is 500 to 1,000 words, that is amazing. I practice telling myself that and leave room for the book to tell me its plan.

At the same time, I’m reading memoirs and a book by Mary Karr on writing it.

I spoke to someone recently whose family just released a joint memoir that based itself around journal entries. I could do it too; journaled for years. Something else is the stuck point.

There are good people in this world. I’m lucky to know some good ones. They challenge me. They encourage me. One told me I was like a poster her daughter had that said something like, “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words.”

I thought I knew what she meant, but years later I’m just starting to understand about the song and what it means.