As anyone who knows me knows, I’ve been working on a memoir “about my neighborhood” for over two years. It’s really much bigger and more intriguing than that, but that’s its code name. It’s like when you’re driving through Los Angeles and you see cardboard signs with arrows that say this way to “Clearasil Commercial Shoot” which is really secret code for the latest Brad Pitt movie.
Anyway. There has been a lot of interest in the Neighborhood Book, but not enough to keep me going, and for now… I am deciding to cut my losses and put it aside.
The truth is, I met another project and I’m crazy about it. I get up at 5 a.m. to work on it and when friends text me to go to lunch at 7 a.m., I think they’re weird, but then I look at the clock and it’s 1 p.m. and it’s just that I’ve been that absorbed in my work for hours.
There is resistance, though. A mini outcry. The old project is like the boyfriend that everyone has gotten used to–actually people really like him and want me to keep seeing him.
I don’t know what to say. It’s not him, it’s me. Maybe someday we will get back together and work things out. I just need space to work on this new book (that I’m really, really excited about). We’re in the throes of ecstasy, but I know I need to act like I at least feel a little bad for leaving that other project. (Clearasil? Neighborhood? I’m already forgetting its name!)
Speaking of misleading cardboard signs, the new memoir takes place in L.A. It may sound like an acne commercial, but it’s totally Brad Pitt.
