Photo by Brian Hillard. All rights reserved.
How does it feel to have your most agonizing moments made public? To fess up to some of your less admirable characteristics and describe times when you weren’t exactly Prince Charming?
Truth? It feels pretty good.
Someone asked me recently how it felt to have written not just about my physical efforts but the emotional impact of running across America. And, more to the point, what it’s like to have other people read it: my agent, my editor at Penguin, and (sometime during April 2011 when Running on Empty is released) the general public.
It’s definitely exciting because I can finally say that my memoir is done and you’ll soon be able to read it. In fact, I just finished reviewing the first proof of the book, all laid out so it looks like a book. It does feel good to know that what’s on the page is so forthright, yet I have to admit that this experience—this exposure—is also a little weird. The 2010 documentary “Running America” shows some of the story, so I’ve grown accustomed to having people see it onscreen, but the movie barely scratches the surface of my personal experience.
