Only now/now what?

I keep the promises I make. Always. No matter what. Which is why I rarely make them, and I think really hard about them before I do.

I promised my therapist that I would write about my grieving process. In many of our sessions, she said I needed to do so. She said that it was important. She didn't ask me to promise, but I did.

And I tried, but it just wasn't working. Nonfiction isn't my thing, never really has been. I can write little things (like, say, blog posts) but I can't carry the momentum of a memoir. Especially not about something like my mother's death and how I've reacted to it.

So, I decided to do what I do better and write a novel. Only, I realized that if I was going to write a book about grieving, I needed to first write a book about loss.

And that's how I started writing what I call "Ramona's book" (but what is titled Only Now) almost two years ago. Yesterday, I wrote the last parts I needed to write to bring me to a complete draft. Tonight, I smoothed over the first big edits I wanted to make to get myself a draft I feel is presentable to my writing partners (and to read all the way through myself).

I've written for 83 consecutive days, and I have a draft of a book that was really hard to write for a lot of intensely personal reasons. I deserve a break.

But I made a promise, and I haven't written that book yet. That doesn't mean I have to write it NOW, but this is where things get dicey.

I promised I would write a book about my grieving process (the misadventures and the pink letters and the red notebook and trapezing and all of it). I know that I will grieve the loss of my mother every day for the rest of my life. But I also know that my grieving process is going to take a pretty substantial turn in less than six months. July 17 would have been my mom's 60th birthday, and that is the day my sisters and I have agreed to scatter her ashes in her favorite place on the planet. That means no more misadventures.

And that doesn't mean I can't write about them (in a fictionalized way) afterward. But here's the thing: It's going to be a big freaking deal for me. ...And I feel like I need to have "Ramona's second book" -- the book I promised my therapist I'd write -- done by then. It just feels like something I need to do. (Kind of like ALL of the things I've done to try to make myself whole after Mom died.)

Tonight, as I was cleaning up some stuff in my last chapter, I stumbled across a line of dialogue that I knew was the title for the second book: Now what?

I don't know that it's a sign from the universe or anything like that, but it's enough to convince me that I should at least try to do what I know is insane:

I should try to write a book in less than six months.

The more I say it, the more it feels like a promise....