I’m going through my Word files and organizing drafts of chapters into a whole manuscript. Some of the material in the drafts surprised me–I had somewhat forgotten what I’d written before, specifically the chapter drafts written during my spring 2017 sabbatical more than a year ago. An average memoir length is 80,000 words (about 200 pages, the same length as my dissertation); some chapters are 10,000 (rough) words. The “broken” relationships from high school and college are particularly hard for me to write about, especially in how they relate to my depression when I didn’t even name it as depression, just thought that was my personality and my (questionable) choices. Thus, this quote from Carrie Fisher (RIP) is comforting, especially as Carrie heroically lived with and wrote about her own bipolar disorder.
Art by ArteColoridodeRaquel: I love so much about this image: Princess Leia/Carrie Fisher, Fisher’s quote, the Latinx style of art
Jane Hseu 