I'm writing a what????

Okay, I'm in warm-up mode...doing those star-jumps and stretches....getting ready for the main event starting tomorrow. (need to get an early night tonight so I can actually start before noon tomorrow).

As many of you know I am picking up the story that I wrote during my first attempt at Nanowrimo in 2004. I halfway succeeded so I have just over 25k of words. It's based on my pizza delivery days as a young innocent uni student. There's a bit of fiction thrown in there - the customers mainly - but everything else is based on real life, real people....gulp....my life! My sexual awakening. My education in sex, drugs and rock n roll.

Is it any wonder that I got cold feet and stopped writing at the end of November 2004? It was cutting too close to the bone and I was feeling way too vulnerable. Do I really want to reveal myself like this?

Yesterday, in between answering customer calls at work (it was rather quiet and there was long gaps between calls), I read a fair chunk of what I wrote all those years ago. Suddenly it got very hot in there. My own writing was making me blush and transporting me back into my first lover's arms.

I've got to face it now....I'm writing a sexual memoir. And like the 'characters' in the story, I need to go all the way. I need to keep writing when the writing becomes too difficult or too confronting. I need to be honest and I need to be completely vulnerable. I need to not only relive that ecstasy of first love, but also the pain of having it all ripped away. Because I know this story does not have a happy ending. But I survived. And grew.

Last night, in preparation, I pulled out an old journal. Some written during the time of that first love affair. Some in retrospect. Then a list of diary entries, snippets of conversation. I typed all this up and ended up with a timeline of 5 pages. I won't be deviating from the plot of the story because its mine. And it ended exactly as it was supposed to.

Years ago, I did a writing exercise where you write the words 'I remember...' and then finish the sentence with whatever first comes into your head. I filled a heap of notebook pages doing this. I found the notebook last night and typed up all the entries that were relevant to my pizza days. Another two pages of reminiscing. (BTW, I totally recommend this exercise)

This morning, I found my photo album of these days in my shed. I'm going to scan the pics and post them to my phanfare album so friends may see what we got up to. Curiously, I don't have a photo of me and my first lover together. All the photos were taken after the relationship imploded. I think I was too busy living and loving at the time to capture a Kodak moment.

With all this reading to get my head back into that time, all these thoughts about my first lover, I was prepared to dream about him last night. It didn't happen. Instead I dreamed of another lover in the interim, a lovely guy who set me on the right track when it came to relationships. It was a nice dream about recapturing friendship - however oddly in the dream he was the manager of a retail store, despite the fact that he is now a psychologist in real life. Perhaps the dream was a sign that I need to send him an email.