“I write for an hour every morning, no matter what!” my friend Delia says. How I admire her discipline! Life fuels my writing and life gets in the way of my writing, too. I know that every writer has his or her own means of getting their work done. Delia wakes up in the wee hours of the morning and sits down at the computer in her snuggly pajamas with a hot cup of coffee to keep her focused.
Other writers, like me, juggle multiple projects and find they can only write when a space opens up in their busy schedules. As a Singer, Actress, Artist, Writer, Producer and Artistic Director, I wear many different hats from morning to night. As a result, I don’t get to work on my memoir for an hour every morning, much less every day. Sometimes weeks or even months go by and I am unable to go near my memoir. At times I am consumed with rehearsing for a concert and, at other times, I am immersed in an art project.
Currently, I am in “admin mode,” on behalf of Symphony of Soul, a charity that I founded 18 years ago. I like being in this mode and moving things forward, crossing things off the “to do” list and following up on phone calls and meetings – to a point. But as a fundamentally creative person who needs to express herself in order to feel happy, the admin tasks fuel only a very small part of my spirit. It’s really the artistic endeavors, such as singing, acting, drawing, painting and writing that intoxicate my soul with a profound sense of joy.
When I put on my writing hat, it’s like I’ve turned on a faucet that I can’t turn off. The writing flows out of me like a rushing waterfall and it’s so all-consuming that I write for 12-18 hours a day for several days in a row. I am on track to finish my memoir soon, so I am anxious to turn on the faucet and get back to it. Even though I am in the thick of admin mode on behalf of Symphony of Soul right now, the “soul” of the memoir vibrates within me every day. After all, Symphony of Soul itself, and much of the backstory behind it, features rather prominently in my memoir. In fact, “Symphony of Soul” is in the working title of the book!
However, the memoir isn’t really about the inner workings of the charity. It’s actually a glimpse into my innermost self, my early childhood wounds and my struggle to blossom and step into my personal power as a woman. It’s also about the way in which those experiences led to the formation of the charity and the countless ways in which the charity has blessed me and changed my life for the better. The memoir is my own inner witnessing of the threads of my life that have mysteriously woven themselves together in a beautiful pattern called “Symphony of Soul”.