You Mean I Have to Write Something?

Months ago, Barbie very graciously asked me to write a speech for her wedding.

Me being me, I humbly agreed and then twirled ideas around in my head almost like how someone would wind hair around their finger. I was gonna write this... no, that! Perfect! No, wait, what if I did this!? Even better! And so on, and so on, and so on.

Of course, now it's mid-May, Mercury is in retrograde, and I am still piecing together fragments of sentences--which are now like broken or split ends that have snapped off due to overaggressive twirling.

Note to self: Do not twirl ideas anymore.

It's not that I am afraid I'll have nothing to say. Everyone who knows me, knows that the only time I have nothing to say is when I am incredibly angry. It's just that there's this jumble of words in my head and it kinda feels like I have to push a wasps' nest through my fingers to get them out.

OK, fine, I kind of lied: The real issue is responsibility. People have to listen to me talk about Barbie and Chad for five minutes. They have to not yawn. Or hear cliches. Or listen to me do a walk down memory lane. Or wonder how I know some mythical Barbie and Chad they don't know. And--what matters most to me--it has to do both Barbie and Chad justice. This is their wedding, after all. The last thing I want them remembering when they are on the dance floor is that I gave some awkward speech about... say.... "trust," complete with an over-the-top performance art moment of me grasping my hands together, as if in desperation to connect with the audience. (For the record: I would never give a speech about trust. Or forgiveness. Or constancy.)

The ironic part of all of this is that I love the puzzle of it. How do these ideas connect or bond? How do they break apart? What doesn't belong here? Is this funny? Does this even make sense? There's a structure and a flow to the creative process that keeps me in awe. Even when I know the basic premise I am writing about (which I do in this case, thank you!), there are still so many directions it can travel.

With that twirling of ideas done, I can concentrate on making sure what I say matters to them--that it resonates beyond a simple declaration of sharing their happiness. I may not successfully avoid all of the cliches, but I am feeling more confident that what I have brewing on the page will not cause any awkward reflections on the dance floor. And if it does? Well, that's why there's alcohol.