Sometimes the present is a lie. Sometimes we have to look back over the course of a year and remind ourselves just how far we’ve come. That the current day’s struggles or challenges don’t mean you’ve failed. Maybe what you’ve been striving for is just around the corner… These are the thoughts that drift through my mind at 3am, huddled on the edge of my bed with my Kindle app open. Simultaneously trying not to wake my husband while drowning my anxieties in the suspension of reality promised by my latest romance read.
It was a similar setting to this when I first got that itch to start writing again. I awoke from a visceral dream, and from the moment my eyes snapped open, I knew. I knew I had to write their story. A story about connection and loss. Love and suffering. But above all else, hope. Because even when life keeps hitting, we learn how to fight back. It’s what I learned from a young age after losing my dad to cancer. After the temptation to spiral into a feminine rage born from the injustices of life and the hard lessons it forced me to accept. I think it was in that acceptance, though, that my “inner fight” was born. A voice, maybe even my dad’s, whispering to keep going. Hell, just go for it, no matter the odds. A part of me wonders if I’d never faced the worst parts of life, if I’d ever be inspired to write a story about the best.
How a Book Was Born
I had a dream. Okay, so it wasn’t as monumental as MLK Jr.’s, but it inspired me nonetheless. And set off a whole chain of events I never saw coming. But first, I wrote. And I wrote, and I wrote. On the couch, in my iPhone notes, or even just in my head, frantically grasping at half-baked thoughts, desperate to get them down before they were lost to the writing gods.
On a good day those words made it into a Google doc. A chapter-by-chapter outline where real-time dialogue that played out in my head like a movie converged with plot points. In the beginning, it just all clicked. No writer’s block. No imposter syndrome. I was rooted in the all-consuming, gratifying urge to fulfill my destiny. To become a writer. The doubts didn’t formulate until later. Until I learned too much. Tried to consume too much, too fast. About the industry—book marketing, traditional publishing, hybrid publishing, literary agencies, etcetera, etcetera. I wasn’t just going down a rabbit hole. I had a table setting waiting for me at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and writing was the least of my worries.
Fast forward to four months later, I attended my first writers conference. I’d found the ad on social media, naturally, and was convinced this was the piece I’d been missing. The legitimacy clause, if you will. As if my identity as a writer hinged on it. So I went, and I learned. A lot. Did I walk away feeling more like a writer? No. Did any illegitimate claims to become a debut author someday suddenly drift away? Also, no. If anything, it powered me. The fighter in me opened one eye and said, “Go for it.” So I did, and I didn’t.
The part of me that went for it was the natural instinct to not give up. To finish the dang thing. Even if that one agent you pitched to at the conference looked at you, holding back an eye roll, when you confidently told her your book was finished at 50,000 words. Oh, silly, silly girl.
Okay, so I wasn’t finished. If I could go back to that exact moment a year ago, I’d tell that silly girl that even typing “The End” (and 50K words more), you’d still not feel finished. Because is a book ever truly finished? I mean, sure, if all atmospheric pressure, moon, stars, and planets align, and you somehow land a 2-book, six-figure deal… technically, yes. The book very dang well should be finished if some top-five publisher took a leap of faith on you. I guess my question is, how do you know?
No one can answer that for you. Because after all the editing, revisions, critiques, alpha readers, beta readers, and friends-of-friends-who-once-wrote-a-book-in-high-school readers—only you know when it’s ready to be put out into the world. And I think I’m ready.
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