From 15 years of trying to write a book, here is what I learned.

In 2007 I declared I wanted to write a book. This remained my ultimate professional need and want. I wrote books, sure. Books that stayed on my laptop. In grad school I wrote three versions of the same book: a memoir and semi-reported book on growing up with crooked bones and my single mother who suffered from type-1 diabetes.

In some ways, that is the book I wanted to write. I wanted to write something to understand my life: what it meant to have 10 surgeries before I was 18. What it meant to watch your single mother become disabled and spend so much time in a hospital. What it meant to watch diabetes creatively destroy her body and mind.

So, I tried, and tried. I know the difference between the words coming out easily, and being forced out. This book was being forced out. Mainly the sections about my mother’s life — the raw details of her background and life, her inner thoughts and struggles were not there. I couldn’t write the story because I lacked the details. It proved to hard to make it into a narrative.

In addition, there are certain details that I truly don’t feel comfortable sharing. Many teachers of non-fiction writing will say that when you hit such a sign — the urge to not write about something — that you should keep writing. Face the dragon. Enter the cave. Sure, that’s good advice, but I simply don’t want to share my true thoughts or try to write about something in a true way without being able to excavate the details of other’s people’s lives. I don’t want to make those details public. I just don’t.

Some dragons are meant to keep in the cave.

But because I’ve been trying to write this book; trying to write a non-fiction book about my life for over 15 years, I learned a lot. I’ve read a lot. Below is a syllabus of books if you’re interested. This is for any kind of fiction or non-fiction writing. Maybe you all will feel better about your own dragons.