I just wrote a book that I never thought I would write. And now I am now writing this post that I never thought I would write.

As a writer I have written on food, lifestyle, travel, family, work, and love. I have written nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that one day my life as I knew it would be over and I would write a book about caring for a loved one, suddenly suffering a life-threatening illness in a coma, in the intensive care unit.

The process of writing a book like this, as you who have written such deeply personal work know, was simply painful. The first draft, writing about facts of the incident, was in some ways healing, as I could put the pain on paper. Then came the edits. It was hard to read the manuscript again. The talented editor asked me to “show, not tell,” and to add details and go more into depth about certain feelings, times, and places.

I did not want to, and fought her tooth and nail. If I dove deep, I relived the nightmare again and again and had to recall every single moment of pain. I resisted. I was afraid and, honestly, I was exhausted.

And yet: what do you do when the book chooses you?

I edited, I cried, I cursed, I wrote, I wept, I worried. Sharing such a personal event was hard. I spoke to other people who have written about gut-wrenching topics. It was like looking in a mirror: You have to do what you have to do.

I tried to compare myself to people suffering from worse trauma, worse pain, and who have written about it. Instead of helping, it frightened me even more and made me feel that I should be stronger than I was being.

I keep preaching, when I teach, that as a writer I have often found that my calling guides my path. Well, here I am now—the calling is pulling me down a path I did not want to go on.

I feel like I have let everyone down. I feel this need to be stronger. Writing this book requires me to show my vulnerability…and yet, what I want to feel and show is that I am strong: I can do this. If I can get through this, you can, too. But did I really get through this? A wise writer, Haruki Murakami, said, “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

I struggle to find my identity and my balance as a writer, my peace as a spouse, and my vulnerability as a human being.

Then I get an email from a reader. She is in the hospital with her loved one who is really sick. She is terrified. She feels alone. I mail her the book.

As I tackle my fiction now, after this experience, I ask myself what I have learned about human behavior and how we all react in different situations. As a result, my approach towards my characters has changed radically. Instead of writing up character profiles (what is their star sign and what color is their hair), I do something I had never done before (and may sound slightly insane but…): I take my character out to coffee. I make a date with a character and then go sit in a coffee shop or a bookstore or wherever I feel this character would go.

Then I open my notebook and ask them all the difficult questions: [Read more…]