Working the Steps

So, I’ve been doing the black/white thinking again, which always comes from the ego nature.  Do I self-publish, just finish out the book, and pick up the checks in an hour? LOL, I’m not that stupid. Maybe.  But of course, Gandalf the Magician is Grey. The Middle Pillar, The Middle Path. Nothing in excess. My Book Doctor says, you have the chops, girl, it’s all right here, now SLOW DOWN. Forty years ago, my  Teacher of Teachers David, told me that my karma was to learn patience, and I thought my life pay-off would take until I was 21, 25 at most. Now I’ll turn 60 on May 1st of next year and I still don’t grasp the waiting. The Great Work indeed. It’s just that my ego is wearing down, although my mania keeps on throbbing, 20 hours a day. Luckily, it’s not a matter of self-publishing or Random House, the urgent throbbing issue I’ve pondered all week.  Hey, they in the expensive suits never did it right anyway, even with my first, The Main Event. That was on professional wrestling and Vince McMahon promoted it in his own arenas and TV shows. The Dial Press did doodie. Sure, the books looked nice, but the re-printing took forever, the product never arrived when I was there, and I could go on. All the white glove prestige still stands though. Even today. Until they slap a fancy cover on it and take 90% of your earnings, you can’t really be a writer, an author. Self-published? Gawd.  You must be bad. Fifty Shades of Why Can’t Everyone in The World Stop Talking About This?  Because Rachel, the Book Physician is right. It’s a fluke. A Powerball ticket. Like the one pretty girl who comes here from Kansas (I live in LA, right near Hollywood Blvd., which isn’t Hollywood) and becomes a movie star without knowing someone or being the daughter of someone else. A fluke. You have to write a good book. My professor/mentor John, who liked to put his hand up my skirt (hey, this was way before Anita Hill and sexual harassment as a concept) said: “you have to decide, do you want to be rich, or do you want to be great?”  I always thought both would be fine. But Gandalf is gray,grey, whatever. LIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE is a fine first draft, well, 3/4 of a first draft. It has several problems. I don’t even need a doctor to focus light on them, but then again, Rachel is brilliant and a mighty fine writer, so much so it would be nice to have her sit with me one day a week. I was an editor for 30 years, and about the writing, well, you can go to https://www.amazon.com/author/robertamorgan and see I am an author of more than one book,  also you can go here: http://www.robertamorgan.com and learn all about me, at least on the surface. They’re both near the very top layer of the onion’s skin. Living Under The Influence now, it exposes the 2nd through 25th layer, and Rachel, darn her, caught me right away. Well, there’s so many more, aren’t there? The whole thing, Roberta, is that you’ve had this amazing and tragic life, being SO honest no one ever wrote this way but BS you’re not, things just don’t jive. Making things a little too nice, too packaged and just when you can’t deal, oops, off you go to another chapter in time and place, which is one excuse for why you fought for non-linear excerpts from the 1960’s through to the present, from the suburbs of NYC to Los Angeles via London and Miami Beach, till the bitter end. Yes madam doctor, I run from the worst of the truth in myself but mostly in others. Hell, we all do it. Drugs, lovers, booze, divorce, talking too much, spending, moaning, whatever–stay away from the real deal here. But this book, what is special was not that I messed around with Jagger or had a radio show the night OJ ran, or went to Woodstock, or got a DUI because I had a nervous breakdown in LA. What made and will make this book a different memoir is that it’s a big life I’ve had and will continue to have, and it’s time to pause and write about it all, like the fourth step of AA, the complete moral (hate that word) inventory. THE TRUTH. And yes, it will hurt me writing it, and hurt others when it comes out. But they must be written as scenes, not like reportage. Right down to the core of the onion. They will set me free and hopefully, will touch people about the human condition of pain, survival and possible redemption. That the Higher Self can win against the ego nature if it is ever vigilant, moment by moment, no matter what crappy things happen to us at however young we are. Or whenever. The first polish has to be redone from the top. It seems, LOL, that I was not only slurring my speech, courtesy of modern psychotropic drugs. I was slurring my words on the page! Withdrawing as I wrote, Rachel was astonished at how I went from competent to okay, to good to WOW as she read my 300+ms. I’ll tell depressed and anxious writers in the future not to take all those pills, or they’ll slur their prose! When it comes down to it, I won’t be able to bail my love and I out of an-all-work-no-play situation in flash time. I always told my students and writers to count on at least three drafts, a good year or more of crafting. I knew that, yet I didn’t. The ego remains the child who steals the cookies and hopes she won’t get caught. But she will, and yet she tries for decades. When she learns, she can move on. Satan or God can publish this book. Doesn’t matter. It’s the book that matters, the only thing which counts for anything in the equation. Not the links, clicks, likes, shares, tags, blogs, websites, publicity, apps. The Book. Everything else stands in service to that, as it should be. Lose sight of that, and we’re lost. Wish me well on this journey; it’s getting closer to the last chance Texaco.