Article: For weeks after I had...

For weeks after I had turned in the manuscript for my first book, Trail of Crumbs, to my editor and before the time it went into production, I felt this excruciating need to email my editor every 20 seconds with the subject line: One more change or One more change…please don't scream. (And this is before I was introduced to the production manager.)

When you write your first book you feel compelled to write everything, as if this were your one and only chance to prove to the world that, yes, I am a writer and I have something to say. But, actually, what you don't write is just as important, especially when it comes to the memoir. Does a painter put everything into one painting?

At the time that my publisher printed Advance Reading Copies of Trail of Crumbs for Book Expo America, I had already started revising and updating my not-yet-published book. But then the unexpected happened. A few months after worrying about every typo and every word I wished I had written, I started to receive letters from readers—enthusiastic booksellers, an artist about to change her life, a young woman in a relationship not unlike the one I write about, and a catering manager who had randomly found an advance copy of TRAIL left behind in a hotel after a book convention. What they had in common was that they were able to pick up where I left off—to take something for themselves, whether it be a recipe or a phrase or a deeper understanding of their own journey.

Valéry, the French poet, said that a poem is never finished—it's abandoned. It seems that my book on many levels (as a young girl, I was left in a marketplace in South Korea) fits this idea as well. Like when giving up a child, I hope that my book will go out into the world and not be met with too much cruelty.

There is something magical, though, about writing a part of your life and then discovering how it touches a stranger. Especially when the stranger is able to imagine herself, or see a part of his life in your own experience. My wish is that this book, even after having been abandoned, will live a life of its own and continue to find a home in the hearts of others and grow there and possibly offer something unique, something that was wasn't written by me. Because being able to say just enough is perhaps more important, and more difficult than trying to say it all.

Copyright © 2007 by Kim Sunée