Jacket Notes | Melinda Ferguson: "I am the no filter queen of confession, but this was tough"

I started writing Bamboozled in 2017. Then I got blocked. One year passed. Then two. Then in year three of avoidance, in 2020, we found ourselves in the midst of what felt like something out of a godawful dystopian episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

Though it had always been lurking in the background, death now became the front-row theme of our lives. It greeted us each day as we woke up and masked ourselves, as we watched endless numbers and stats, were told of new variants, travel bans, quarantines — it was death that greeted us and said: “Howdy. I'm here.”

Time took on a sinister new meaning with ever-changing lockdown levels and restrictions. And so while I shuffled about in slippers, I found myself taking notes again. By early 2021, in the second year of the pandemic, I sat down to some serious writing. I began to feel birth pangs to explore my own inner world and this unrecognisable new world that we'd been hurled into. I was consumed with asking questions and uncovering answers. I found myself inspired by the idea of trying to find joy and freedom.

My greatest obstacle was myself. Writing a book can be brutal, but not writing it is worse. Someone once said: “It feels like banging your head against a wall until you finish it.” Trust me. It does. An unfinished book is like an unattended tumour. It grows and nudges and leaves you internally disturbed. It gnaws at your soul, grinding away in the background.

As a publisher and writing coach I know all the excuses us writers sell ourselves. I am an ace at telling other authors not to listen to that voice. But with this book I found myself at times giving my power away to the voice that whispered: "What will they say?"

As I watched myself twisting, turning and avoiding, I found it funny and surprising that someone like me, who usually has no filter and is a rampant confessionalist, could worry so much about what others may think. In my first book, Smacked, I had no issue telling the world that I had used drugs as a twice-pregnant mother, that I had exchanged sexual favours for crack, that I had stolen my mother's engagement ring and pawned it, that I had forged signatures on cheques and had bled on a pavement screeching for a fix — and that I had sold my soul and morality for heroin and crack.

I, the queen of confession, could write about all these shameful and scandalous experiences, yet when I tried to write about my fears for myself and our world, about my eight-year healing journey with psilocybin mushrooms, about vulnerability and my deep spiritual quest for joy and freedom, for this book, I was frozen out of the ballpark of words.

Objectively, I found this fascinating. So I wrote.

Bamboozled by Melinda Ferguson is published by Melinda Ferguson Books. Click here to buy a copy.