Embracing Life’s Deadline: Crafting Your Legacy Now

What makes life rich and meaningful?

Towards the end of his life, an interviewer asked Norman Mailer (American novelist, journalist, playwright, filmmaker, and Pulitzer Prize winner) if he had any regrets.

One may think he’d list some common regrets: more time with family, less time working, or more time in nature.

Not quite, his reply,

“I have three or four more books in my head; I wish I had written them.”

A few years back, I had one of those wake-you-up, epiphany, life-changing dreams.

I was already a few years into writing “Blank Canvas” when the dream hit. I was working on the book, but not on the book, if that makes sense.

A memoir, a well-done memoir, is all about the truth and uncovering deeper and rawer layers of that truth.

It’s about stripping away the superfluous, taking off our masks, and facing the worst versions of ourselves.

It’s uncovering what we don’t want to admit to anyone, including ourselves, and then writing that.

I was writing, but I wasn’t writing that.

I was confusing the production of words with being productive.