For a writing and visualization exercise, I recently spent time in my Room of Deepest Truths. This exercise comes from The Fountain, a platform created by authors Chelsea Bieker and Kimberly King Parsons. I joined The Fountain after an introductory call with Chelsea and Kimberly, and the ethos of the platform really has shifted something (a lot of things, maybe) in my writing practice. The Fountain uses writing prompts, visualization exercises, meditations, and a supportive community space to encourage a sustainable and (dare I say) joyful writing practice. It’s actively disrupting the common narratives we hear about writing: that it’s grueling, masochistic work; that it’s lonely and/or competitive; that the only solution to the hardness of actually writing is to force yourself to write X number of words a day. The list goes on and on and on.

The Fountain arrived as part of my life just as I committed to a complete overhaul of my book. Last year, I wrote about querying literary agents; and although I received a high number of full manuscript requests, I didn’t receive any offers of representation for my book. I had three close calls! And eight or so other kind-of-close calls! That’s not nothing, but it kind of felt like nothing. I thought, at the start of 2025, that I should tuck this memoir gently into bed and wish it goodnight. Say goodbye for now. Focus on a novel, something more sellable for publishers.

I’ve tucked my memoir in at least four times now and it won’t stay down.

I had a goal to apply for two of the most prestigious writing workshops in the country this year, both occurring this summer. And while I planned on submitting for fiction— a novel about a friendship dissolving during a bachelorette party — fate kept getting in the way. First there was the faculty list: Ingrid Rojas Contreras teaching at Tin House for nonfiction, Melissa Febos teaching at Sewanee, also in nonfiction. Their nonfiction work is excellent, and their titles are ones I use as comparative books for my memoir. Then there was, I’m not joking, a revelation in hot yin yoga one night where the truth seeped out of my pores, sweat and tears mixing in a puddle on the mat beneath me. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning.

The revelation: the book needs to be reformatted, reorganized, rewritten. The book isn’t finished.

Last year, had I confronted that truth, I would have cried stubborn, heartbroken tears. I wanted to be done with the book, to land the agent, get things moving. And I have compassion for those feelings. I’ve worked so, so hard on this project and I’ve managed to write an entire book. That’s a real accomplishment, and it’s hard to admit that there’s more to do. That it’s not ready.

But the revelation didn’t hurt me. It held me. In my fear and anxieties over how the fuck I’d rework a memoir-in-essays to a chaptered memoir, in my outlining frenzy where I quite literally hand-wrote 18 different options for organization, I just felt absolutely sure that what I was about to do, the work I was about to commit to, was right. The game had changed: I was no longer a baby writer trying hard to get enough words to constitute a book. I am a real writer, award-winning. Now it’s time to make this book the truest version of itself.

I applied to Tin House and Sewanee for nonfiction. I rewrote my beginning chapter, created an artist’s statement. And in the months of waiting for an acceptance or a rejection, I continued to write. The book, now supercharged with that lightning strike of truth, keeps calling me.

In the visualization exercise I’m instructed to envision my Room of Deepest Truths. This is where how I actually feel about my writerly identity, my book, and my creative capabilities live, unimpeded by stories I’ve learned from elsewhere. What came to me wasn’t really a room but a garden. An arched doorway covered in ivy, barely visible in a hedge. I saw girl me, white-haired, skipping down a well-worn dirt path in a forest. When she came to the door, tendrils of gentle green pulled her inside. Inside, the garden was colorful and fragrant, flowers galore, tall weeping willows and wrapping bougainvillea. Girl me giggled, watching dragonflies turn translucent in the sunlight. Girl me also cried. Her emotions were obvious, overflowing like the garden.

This room feels deeply inspired by The Secret Garden, a movie and story I was in love with as a child (still am). Mary, in the story, can’t really connect emotionally with any of the people in her life after her parents die. She’s lost in grief. But grief, her primary emotion, is not one she shows. Anger becomes her mask. It’s only in the garden, which she finds by accident, where Mary feels unburdened enough to actually and honestly grieve. The grief isn’t all tears, either: Mary learns that when she’s in the garden she feels close to her dead mother. She plays and wonders. Grief, joy, hope, anger, fear— they’re all present in the garden. When she leaves her room of deepest truths she masks again, anger taking over.

The fears that percolate surrounding my writing and my book aren’t powerful in my room of deepest truths. Paranoia, which tells me nonstop that my family will be upset with me for writing about what I’m writing about; fear, which tells me constantly that the truths I’m revealing in the book aren’t ‘worth’ it; anxiety, which tells me this isn’t my story to tell— they all work so hard. I’m close to a dream’s fruition, and that closeness is terrifying. There’s so much unknown in this process and I know my brain is just trying to protect me by filling in the unknowns with answers it doesn’t really have. The answers I plug in are not nice. It’s like I’m preparing myself for the worst (family being upset, no publication, rejection, etc.) so that if those things happen I will… be less hurt? That’s obviously not even true; in my experience I just end up hurt twice. I talked with Lindsey

A story I’ve accepted as truth: I am too sensitive and sensitivity is bad. I don’t need to illustrate where that story comes from. It’s everywhere, any time a young girl cries or whines. I learned early in my life that the depths of emotionality I felt weren’t really comfortable to share with others (unless they were also uber sensitive). And, too, in my family I felt at times insane that I was the only person who wanted to know the Truth about my father’s drinking, about his family history. So I wore a mask, let it become my face. I feel myself put the mask back on before walking into Walmart when I’m home in case I see someone I used to know.

Sometimes when people ask what I’m writing I even mask the way I reply. There’s no easy, non-sensitive way to explain that in 1966, my paternal grandfather tried killing my father, his two siblings, and his mother via dynamite for life insurance money. My book examines that incident, court trial, and after effects while also narrating my relationship with my father and his alcoholism. I sometimes say ‘sorry it’s so heavy’ or something similar when I explain but why do I do that? I’m not actually sorry— the people who ask get to move on. I’m the one in the court documents reading, lump in my throat.

In my room of deepest truths that mask falls away and I’m a live wire of emotion. Sparking with rage and glee and loneliness and curiosity. I can remember moments where my sensitivity prevailed: moments of authentic human connection, moments of actual awe. There’s no way anyone else could write what I’m writing. I feel sure of that there. There’s no question, in my room of deepest truths, of if the story I’m telling is worth it: the truth just exists, waiting for me to excavate it. The story just exists, allowing me to be its shepherd.

Yesterday I got the email that I’ve been waitlisted for Tin House! I’m really, really proud. Obviously a full acceptance would’ve been even more exciting, but this is a major accomplishment and is worthy of celebration. I think, had this waitlist happened last year, before this expansive work I’ve been doing, my feelings would be very different. I’d be stressed, overly attentive to my email, incapable of writing until I found out. But the pace and flow I’ve gotten ahold of, at the start because of these applications, is what is most important to me. It’s precious to me, this intuitive intimacy I’m experiencing with my book. It’s fun, it’s devastating, it’s otherworldly.

I wrote in my journal yesterday that writing has felt like sitting in a sunbeam. Maybe I won’t always feel this in flow with my work. But now I know that Room of Deepest Truths exists, always. It waits for me to arrive.