The beginnings of an essay have been rattling around in my brain and not getting clear as quickly as I'd like. So the answer is to start writing and hope the ideas start to coalesce.

The process of writing "Shameless" has been a long and multi-faceted one, but what's striking me most about it right now is that there are so many ways in which writing a book about shamelessness has worked in me and affected my thinking about shame.

This evening, I attended the weekly writers' Schmooze (a drop-in happy hour event I started about 3 years ago), and the subject of "magical clothing" came up. Magical clothing consists of your favorite items to wear, the items that make you feel good about yourself, boost your self-confidence, that make you feel good when you look at yourself in the mirror.

At first, it seemed to me that I couldn't really identify with that idea. I haven't bought many new clothes in the last few years, mostly because money has been scarce and there were always more important things to spend it on. But for another person, I'm sure clothing would have taken a much higher priority.

What I said aloud to the women gathered this evening was that some years ago, I'm not sure how many, I began working toward the goal of becoming the wise woman living in a hut on the edge of the forest, and that to that kind of wise woman, clothing isn't of any importance.

While this is completely true, and something I feel good about, I'm guessing that to some degree it's an opinion borne of necessity, and that if I'd had all kinds of money, I might well have become a wise woman living in a hut on the edge of the forest with a walk-in closet containing a lot of beautiful garments, the kind of garments I see in the Pyramid Collection catalog, for example.

But what this says to me is that I think I've taken at least some of the shame I've felt in my life about my appearance. There was a time when I felt ugly most of the time, and I don't feel ugly any more. I can't honestly say that I feel radiantly beautiful either, though there are moments when I do. But it's as if appearance just isn't very important any more. I've known that that's true in my view of the men I've dated, too - I really don't care what a man looks like, it's his personality that matters, and how much he cares about me.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, the title of the book might change, and we'll be doing some test marketing on that. But whatever the title becomes, it will certainly be something about shame, because that's what the book is about. And the fact that I've been writing a book about shame has had a lot of impact on me over these years as I've written it. I've lost count of the number of times I've thought to myself, "How ironic that I should feel shame about such-and-such since I'm writing a book about shamelessness."

I'm still not feeling very clear or articulate on this, but it's late and time to stop for now.