When I was 18, I was offered a chorus role in a summerstock production of Hair. The director wanted me to do the song “My Body is Walking in Space”—one of my all time favorite songs—but she wanted me to perform it nude.

 

Six feet tall, pear-shaped, with a flat chest and long, thick legs, I wasn’t living in a standard beauty queen body. I lived in a body that was, according to conventional wisdom, wrong. The director tried to tell me that the pairing of my androgynous body and archangel belter voice was perfect for the moment. I just couldn’t do it.

 

I was in the front row on opening night when a short, curvy coloratura soprano who weighed about 300 pounds strode naked to the front of the stage and delivered one of the most transcendently beautiful moments of theater I’ve ever witnessed. That fat nude soprano didn't just sing, she soared. She stunned. Her fearlessness was mesmerizing. She left the audience in tears, everyone on their feet, and I was close enough to see that she was weeping, too, her face a study in pure, transcendent joy.

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I wrote my first novel years later while undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The cancer had presented in my neck and chest, destroying my ability to sing, but I found my real voice when I started writing. As I struggled through the negative self-talk and rejection familiar to every first-time author, the fat nude soprano started showing up in my dreams. Summoned by my subconscious, she came to remind me that you get only one shot at the opportunity to be yourself, one lifetime to fully inhabit who you're meant to be as an artist. And that lifetime might not be as long as you think it is. 

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I was still bald when my first novel was picked up by a small but prestigious literary press. It's not hyperbole when I say it saved my life. Thirty years later, I'm not cancer-free, but I'm free in all the ways that matter, and my most recent remission has lasted far longer than anyone predicted. As a solo author and ghostwriter, I've written more than three dozen books, and I've tried to bring my fattest, nudest energy to every single one. 

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As a reader, you feel it when a writer is costumed to deflect criticism or trying to disguise a flabby plot with an empire waistline of clever prose. Authenticity, not perfection, is the quality that makes fiction and memoir writing rich and resonant. A stretch-marked mother. A gut-shot thug. Star-crossed lovers holding hands at the precipice of disaster. Stories are made interesting by trouble. Characters are made beautiful by scars. Why would we expect anything less from the writing life?

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My Fat Nude Mission Statement

I plan to spend however many or few years I have left writing with all the valor, self-ownership, and generosity of that fat nude soprano: ungirdled, unbridled, unadorned. I strive to expose my soul and embrace my fear, weakness, uniqueness, and even my regrets, because at the core of good writing – plump, juicy, fat nude writing – is the torn and mended heart of the writer, laid bare. 

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