On July 14, 2009 I took a deep breath and looked at the sentence I had just written down: “You are a beautiful mess.” Were these the last words of my book?  A 12-chapter creative non-fiction venture of my life, done?  No, they weren’t and it wasn’t.  I picked up the pen again, “Thanks be to God.” That was the end, and I meant it.  I began to cry and what followed were two hours of bawling my eyes out.

It was out of me.  All 65,000 words. Out. I wanted to run to Kinkos, print it out and hold all of those clean pages in my hands. The words of a my college professor, Dr. Spencer, haunted me in that moment, “If you live by technology, you will die by technology.” I had about eight yellow writing pads full of ideas and first drafts, but I edit when I transfer them to my Mac. So there was a pressing desire to leave my sacred writing space and start the real editing process on paper.

(my desk after finishing the first draft)

Something stopped me though – I had just written a book. A book about being aware, slowing down and marking life’s celebrations. Was I really going to dash out the door and miss this moment? There was a tug-of-war happening in my soul, but my reflective side won out. With the little energy I had left, I grabbed my art journal and created two pages. I filled them with a few people’s names, a mentoree’s beloved note, and pieces of art from my workshops with whom I had spent time with and gotten to know some amazing women. I caught my breath and made space…then I ran to Kinkos.

When I took the over one hundred single-spaced bound pages of the first draft home, I wanted to buckle them into the car. I smelled it, hugged it and proudly basked while I showed it to my husband.  It was a weird experience because writing is incredibly personal.  Not a lot of people know what to ask or how to respond when you tell them you are writing a book.  Is this something she’ll grow out of?  Is this just a phase?  Is this the “actor” thing and then she’ll come back to reality?  No, this is my life and I had a huge chunk of it on paper, staring back at me reflecting my journey to me and the world.  This was not something to be taken lightly, but part of me wanted to just lock it up and not share it with anyone.  To protect it meant I wouldn’t have to share. I kind of wanted it to be a phase.

I knew that wasn’t the case though, so I began the painstaking process of editing.  It was like discipline, “No, you can’t say that.” “No you can’t put that there.”  Good comments were few and critiques were many.  I devoured the first draft, with my husband, in two days. In the words of Anne Lamott, it was a shitty first draft… but it was a complete draft nonetheless.

On May 27, 2010 I turned in the final draft to my publisher.  Over ten months after it was “done.” Getting to that point was laborious and I found myself in bed at 7:30p.m. that night — spent, exhausted, brain fried, and content. I put the book on the bus — I let it go.

In the past few weeks people have asked me about writing: How did you do it? Where are the initial drafts? What do you do with all of those yellow pads? What was your process? How do you feel? This blog is an attempt to help me process these thoughts and more, so I appreciate you hanging in there with me.

I didn’t study writing other than being a hungry reader.  I wrote academic papers galore in college and graduate school, but I didn’t major in English.  I chose Communication Studies and Business. Additionally, my StrengthsQuest results state that my number one strength is Communication. I like to communicate, but I am an accidental writer.

There was a desire to write a book in me from an early age, but I didn’t know about what. It was just there on my bucket list. Slowly, God revealed a bigger plan for my life that is A Beautiful Mess (that is another blog). I started writing in 2006 and 2007 and the blogs from that time, well, they just make me laugh.  I’m not making fun of myself, rather, I realize now, four years later, that practice really does help.

I wrote two chapters the summer of 2007 and stopped. There are so many opinions on whether or not to wait until you have a book deal to write. I shopped around a very methodological book proposal and waited. And waited longer. There were so many nos, some explained and some not.

Finally, someone took a chance on me. ConversantLife.com signed me on to be one of their writers and I dove in head first. They wanted to publish my book! I blogged for a few months, sitting down every week and disciplining myself to eek out some kind of article. As I continued to do this, questions began to be asked about how much of the book was written. I have eight weeks off in the summers, so I had set aside the majority of that time to finish the book, but not more than those two chapters had been written well into 2009.

As summer approached, all of a sudden I froze. I pulled out those first two chapters and was mortified. I had sent these to a publisher? As Elizabeth Gilbert says in her TED talk, writers think their drafts are not only bad, but “they are the worst things ever written.”  I kept remembering the stories I grew up hearing about my temper tantrums in the mall and running into the street as a toddler or being a mouthy teenager… this truly was my terrible child. Would it get better?

I almost stopped then and there and made up my mind to write a workbook. I didn’t want to be judged. However, my publisher gently reminded me that my story needed to be told.  So just over a year ago, I sat down each day, pulled out a yellow pad, a pen, and wrote and researched for six hours almost every day. I showed up. It was my job, my life, my story. For two months I went over notes, remembered women’s sacred stories, and used a lot of ink. Then I put it in a Word document. In a way, that was the easier part of this process. After I was done with that, came the focus group read thrus and the dreaded rewrites. Month after month, I found myself buried in my words, trying to make sense out of things that weren’t making sense to others. But over the past few months, the book began to talk — in a way it revealed itself to me.

Transitions came more smoothly (I rush through transitions in life and writing), concepts were more clearly defined, and new parts of my story came to the surface. It was messy, but beautiful and I stand before you today proud to share my story in the matter of a couple months with all of you. It’s not all of me, but a part of me and I hope it touches you.

To celebrate the birth of my book, both of our birthdays, and our five year anniversary (all which span a concentrated two week period), my husband and I are escaping for two weeks to a part of the country known to be a sacred place for writers: Cape Cod, Mass. I’m thrilled to be able to get away after sitting in front of my computer, hours on end the past two weeks (let’s be honest, three years).  I have plodded through my own words time and time again and the fabulous wordsmithing of my editor. I’m ready for a new season, a season of sharing.  And to start, I must share some quality time with the Creator and my biggest fan, my husband.  Forgive me if I do not blog while I am away… I may or may not be inspired to, but I hope you understand.

Thank you for faithfully reading, yours truly, author, Kristin Ritzau.

(Pictures – Messy desk: Kristin Ritzau; Books: Megan Lundgren; Writing hand: Sean Thompson – all images copyrighted, do not use without permission)