Who tells your story




You may have noticed I haven't been blogging as much lately. You may be happy about it, yay that crazy widow finally ran out of stuff to say. Yay shes finally over her grief. Nope nope nope. Neither of those are reasons I haven't been writing. I actually have been writing. I have been doing a lot of writing. I just haven't been blogging. You see it appears there are only so many hours in the day. I think I mentioned in a previous blog that I have been sleeping a lot better these days. I don't really know why that switched, one day I was just able to sleep again, mostly. I suppose some people would say its just because so much time has gone by. Maybe? Three years and five months is a long time to adjust I guess, although I don't feel adjusted, I've just been sleeping better.

Sleeping however has seriously cut down on the amount of time I am awake, which cuts down on the amount of time I have to blog. 3 am was always my best blogging time. Now I'm wasting it sleeping. That means of course I have to use regular daylight hours for writing. What is up with that? Furthermore it turns out I really like writing. I try to write everyday, if I go more then about three days without writing I really start to miss it. I sound like Dan, ha, he was always writing. Everytime I here that line from Hamilton "Why do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like your running out of time?" I think of Dan, Dan was always writing like he was running out of time, and then he did.

So I started this blog two ish years ago. For reasons I still can't figure out people have responded to it. So much so that several have suggested I right a book. Can you guess what my response was? "Uh I am not a writer, Dan is the writer. Dan is supposed to write a book not me. I only blog so that I can sleep. Dan is not here. Dan never got to write his book or books, Dan is dead. Dan is dead and I can't get that story out of my head. 

I went to therapy in January "I keep thinking about writing a book about Dan"  "That's a great idea" my therapist says. "Uh no it is a horrible idea, we are talking years of work to write a book that I don't think anyone is going to buy, much less even read for free. Hell I probably couldn't even pay people to read it" Then she got all therapists on me "So why do you want to write a book then" "Because I can't get the story out of my head. I have to write it out, I don't really have a choice."  "So then why does it matter if anyone reads it or not?" touche therapist touche, also I'm pretty sure thats exactly what you said about me writing a blog.

I started a facebook group with a few of my closest friends. "Uh I think i'm going to write a book. This group is to encourage me to do so." My friends were excited. I posted bits and pieces, asked for advice. I felt like it was one of those things where I could stand there and pick my nose and they would all say "great nose picking Jenny" in other words they were extremely supportive.

So I wrote. I wrote day and night. I wrote like I was running out of time. I wrote about Dan and him dying, and the adoption and of course Baby Girl. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I blogged less because I was writing. In about six months I wrote 172 page book. It is my soul written out (well typed out) on paper. It's just the manuscript. It's just me trying to write out how we dealt with this immense grief. I put a disclaimer in the beginning 'This is a very very very rough draft.
Spelling, grammar, tenses, participles, capitals, fragments, run on sentences, other fancy writing rules were not taken into account. I didn't even try. I just wrote the story out. That all it's just the story.  Paragraphs need structuring. Chapters need structuring.'

Now what? I wrote my soul out, what do I do with it? Of course in a perfect world I would sell ten million copies, get on Oprah and Lin Manuel Miranda would turn it into a record breaking musical. That would be cool. Honestly I will be impressed with myself if I can get it e published on amazon and five people pay 99 cents to read it. What do I do? I have no idea how to edit. I have no idea if I should try to find some sort of agent or if I should try to publish it myself? I have no idea if it's even any good. Do I start submitting it to random places in hopes some random person likes it and shows it to there boss? Do I just leave it as is, posting chapters in my blog? Who knows? I guess I am up for suggestions if you happen to know or have connections. If you personally know Lin Manuel Miranda or Oprah, hey hook me up.


I wrote a book. I told Dan's story. It's about:

TRUE LOVE
DAN DYING
BABIES  THAT STOP EXISTING
SURVIVING
GRIEF TANTRUMS
HOMELESSNESS
VILLAGES THAT ARE CITIES
WRITING

I wrote about you Dan. I wrote everything down. It didn't bring you back to life but it told your story. You will not be forgotten. I love you Dan. All my love, all my life, Jennifer.

P.S. Now that I'm done with that I can go back to blogging more.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here:  Carry on Castle

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