Perching on the Verge: SHOPKEEP

Author Calls First Draft of Latest Opus ‘Complete’

It’s still Winter 2021, but I’m done with the draft of my memoir Shopkeep. That’s well ahead of the target deadline of ‘sometime in the spring,’ which is no way to set a deadline. In fact, it’s completely antithetical to the method I teach my writing students, which is to set firm deadlines and goals.

But then, such advice is for aspiring scribes in need of acquiring discipline. This writer’s discipline already produces results. Once I sat down to this work in a meaningful, focused manner, its completion within a relatively short timeframe represented a fait accompli. Besides, who doesn’t love to talk about themselves?

Chuckle—future readers of this will understand that writing it was often more painful than fun.

And as we always say, ‘finished’ is relative. Let’s face it, as I put this memoir together in a more coherent form I’ll discover not only what’s missing, but what should be cut either for the sake of brevity, compassion or propriety. For now, however, the final word count on the first draft of Shopkeep stands at 96,055.

For the numerologists out there, this seemed the right point at which to cease composition—1996 was the year Mike & Susan offered us the store, and I sit telling the story of what happened in the quarter-century since from my vantage point of 55 years of age. When I come in here in the morning and complete my meditation, I no longer feel an urgency to add more information to the manuscript. The temps are rising and the garden calls. But as for the numerology, when you train your consciousness to look to the mirrored world-surface you inhabit for information and messages, they come to you. Only yesterday I asked the universe: am I done with this project? Is this over? May I go?

Bonus image: here’s the happy boy with the hardcover MoHG proof again. Not a bad season for this scribe who claims to hold a perch on the verge of hanging up his book-writing spurs.