She Says Yes to Me!

Originally Published January 31st, 2020

Friends, I have amazing news! My memoir, The Part That Burns, has been accepted for publication by the boundary busting Split Lip Press. The book will come out next year, and I could not be happier!

I have been working on this book—in many forms and iterations—for more or less my whole life. I wrote it in bits and pieces, stitched it together, tore it apart again, reimagined it, started over, and started over again. It’s been a fragmented novel, it’s been a conventional novel, it’s been an even more conventional novel, and finally it transformed into a memoir in fragments. So, if I have been telling you that writing is inefficient, and that we need to write our way into the story we are trying to tell … well, I guess I’ve been swallowing my own medicine.

I’m also jumping up and down for joy because not only is it an amazing feeling to see this book find its place in the world, but I’m also newly energized to dive back into my novel-in-progress and complete those last few chapters so that I can start rewriting that whole manuscript again, start to finish, haha. Ah, writing.

Anyway, I cannot cannot wait to celebrate this good news in Ixtapa with those of you who are joining me there for our Equinox retreat for writing & yoga. For which, by the way, we still have three openings, and boy oh boy would we love to have you. We are able to work with you on a payment plan if needed. We just want you there if it’s your moment to dive deep and invest in your writing and yourself this year.

And if you are ready to do that, be sure to expect changes. This work has changed everything. From the moment I began to put my writing first. Or at least, stopped putting it last (after all, I have a full-time job and a large family full of people I love with all my heart). In other words, started taking it very, very seriously. It’s not just that I started publishing my short stories and essays in literary journals, or that I finally finished this memoir or started a novel. It’s that it changed me. I am more myself than ever before, and every day growing more into the person I hope to become. Writing is a transformative process, one that makes all other things a little more possible.

As Goethe said—or else it was a lesser known fellow named John Anster, there’s some controversy about that: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

In celebration boldness, and of everything that is possible—for you, for me, and for all of us in the year to come—I’ll share this poem by Kaylin Haught, a favorite of mine:

God Says Yes to Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes