Dilemma: Is authenticity book suicide?

I ponder. I play. I muse. I write to discover what I know.

It’s always been a whole lot easier to write about life unedited in the privacy of my journal than put it out for all the world to see (and scrutinize). It’s considerably easier to let my pen flow unabashedly and discover what surprises, delights or terrifies me on the safe lines of my composition notebook than to share it in a public forum. Somewhere along the way, however (probably in said journal), the idea of a blog and ultimately a book began to emerge. Since then I’ve often battled the tricky space between writing to discover what I know and writing what I think, you, the reader might want to hear.

It’s a crazy balance, because when I get caught up in You, I lose Me. The wild thing is that experience has shown what my faithful readers seem to love most is the unedited, messy, transparent and authentic Me. The pieces that have landed home most often are not the carefully crafted, publisher-worthy submissions, but rather the scrawled and messy gems straight from my morning pages. So, what's a girl to do?

The performance pressure is mounting, since I’m in the final (sort of) publishing stages of my book (working title: Ponderings) and the promotion has begun (kind of.) My social self says that everything – every word, comma, spelling error, hairstyle, breakfast menu, social agenda, perfect turn of a phrase and more – is a commentary (pro or con) on this book. Please say it ain’t so…

If true, this poses quite the dilemma, because at this point I absolutely cannot stop myself from writing and this blog has always been the raw version of greater things to come. My inner being still yearns to toss these unedited, heart-inspired missiles out into the stratosphere to see where they may land. As I was journaling this morning, I remembered the lifeline and savior that writing has been for me. Putting my words onto paper and out into the world is the essential breath for living my authentic life.

Some will say that continuing to write in this way is book suicide. So be it. Others may say it’s brilliant and that’s why they’ll buy my published words. Fabulous. Bottom line, I will continue to do things my way which is the only way I know how to do it. As far as I can tell, it’s working for ME.

I ponder. I play. I muse. I write to discover what I know.