The Memoirist Idol

The Question I Can’t Stop Asking Myself

Am I letting myself be led by fear or by love?

Are you walking around every day with a musical or a memoir stuck in your head?

Not someone else’s, but the one you’ve been writing for oh … the last five to ten years.

I recently watched the Netflix original movie “tick, tick … Boom!” with my wife and teenage son. It tells the story of Jonathon Larson, the playwright and composer who wrote the script and songs for the Broadway rock musical Rent.

The movie focuses on Larson’s struggle to complete his first musical Superbia by age 30.

I’m 53 and feel the same ticking urgency as Larson to accomplish my writing dream.

Since watching the movie, I can’t stop thinking about a question that Larson’s friend, Michael (Robin de Jesus), asks him about his writing:

“Are you letting yourself be led by fear or by love?”

My complicated writing journey

I gave up writing for 15 years, mostly from being too engrossed in teaching. There isn’t much energy left as an introvert to write after teaching all day. You’re just too exhausted.

I worked as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines in my early 20s and enjoyed querying editors and crafting stories on the topics I had selected like women motorcyclists.

I had a job as a sportswriter for a newspaper after graduating from college. I was fired because of a typo on a horse racing gambling odds section and I became an English teacher.

It’s taken me 30 years to say it … but it hurt losing that job since it involved writing.

I always told my wife I’d write a book if I had the right subject. She suggested I start a Word Press blog after our son was diagnosed with autism at three and write about what I was learning about our son and being a father.

That was ten years ago, and I’ve been revising my blog posts into a memoir with a coherent storyline, subplot, and an emotional arc for myself and my son for the past seven years.

He has to grow older for me to finish the book.

A vocational crossroads

I’ve been out of the classroom this past school year on medical leave due to having an auto-immune condition that puts me at risk for exposure to COVID-19. Not teaching this year has helped me to see how much I love writing.

In the past seven months, I’ve published 333 stories on Medium. I’ve also completed 80 percent of my memoir, and I want to finish it so I can teach others what I’ve learned. But I can’t finish until I complete an emotional arc.

And you can’t rush that.

The question, “Are you being led by fear or by love?” is a very familiar one to most people. You can’t live long before you have to make decisions on doing what you love or settling for less in a job and we often choose economic security over doing that thing we love to do.

It’s a question I’ve avoided for many years and have not given it the serious thought I realize now it deserves. I was at a similar vocational crossroads 17 years ago. I took a break for three years from teaching middle school to become the director of a 24-hour crisis hotline.

But when the hotline abruptly closed, I was faced with the vocational dilemma: Go back to teaching or pray for God to open another door more aligned with my interest and talents?

I made a knee-jerk reaction to return to teaching, putting my resume out to several school districts without thinking about the vocational direction I wanted to go in my life.

Back at the same question

Now I feel I’m back at the same question:

Will I be led by fear or by love?

Throughout my life, I’ve gotten several signs in unexpected places I’m supposed to be a writer.

I remember taking classes a while back for a school counseling degree. On three occasions, an instructor in our cohort program shared an “exceptional paper” with our class, and each time the paper turned out to be my essay.

It was a strange validation of my writing since I was taking courses in a counseling program.

A similar thing happened when I was asked to teach lessons in a recovery program: I found myself writing lessons like each was a story.

For the last ten years, I’ve been revising my memoir on weekends, late at night, or during breaks in the day; another sign has been that I always feel only 15 minutes have passed when I’ve been writing for two or three hours.

Most of all, writing is what I love to do most and it’s when I feel the most alive in my life.

Writing is a dream that I’ve been afraid to pursue most of my life. I’ve let other people impact my attitude toward writing and I don’t want to let anything stop me from writing.

“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” — novelist John Irving

This quote sums up the dilemma in my life. Like Jonathon Larson, I have to find the grit and determination to write the stories I feel living inside me and not be held back by fear.

Larson died the night before his musical Rent debuted off-Broadway, and it went on to run for twelve years on Broadway with 5,123 performances, grossing over $280 million.

He died of an aortic aneurysm after coming home past midnight from the final rehearsal, but I like how he was doing what he loved most up until his last breath. And it has made me think: Will the same thing be true for me?

We’re not guaranteed to live a certain number of years. No one knows when our last breath will be, and that’s why I feel an urgency to keep on writing. Plus, it’s what I love to do.

I believe if we ask ourselves the question, “Am I being led by fear or by love?”— it could be the catalyst to change the course of our lives.

I’m hoping it does for me.

Thanks for reading my story.

I enjoyed reading Kristine Laco’s story, “A Turtle Saves Christmas.” I liked how the story showed her determination to find an almost hard-to-find gift for her daughter and how her persistence was rewarded by a kind person.

Or check out my YouTube video on one simple tip to improve your writing.