Am I a Writer?
For almost twenty years, I’ve talked about how badly I wanted to write a novel. Somewhere in my office closet is a box with dozens of papery skeletons that lived to hit a few thousands words. I have piles of half-finished notebooks with handwritten outlines and character arcs and settings. No matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to be able to finish a novel. I would get to thirty or forty thousand words and run out of steam. I’d binder clip the unfinished fragments I’d written and set it on a shelf. Just within reach. Just in case I wanted to pick it up again. Eventually though, enough time would pass that I’d pull out the box of expired drafts from the closet and unceremoniously lay the latest incomplete pages to rest with the others. Then I’d close the lid, re-bury it in the closet and move on to the next idea that was definitely, absolutely going to work.
Spoiler alert: they never did.
Three years ago I started to wonder whether writing was even something that I wanted to do. After all, if I really wanted to be a writer, surely I would have finished a project? I had spent over a decade writing and all I had to show for it was a really heavy box of paper and dust.
Then 2020 came and the entire world was turned upside down. I thought that surely, if anything pulled me back into writing, being stuck in my house and isolated from the world with nothing but time would be that gravitational force. But instead I stopped writing altogether. I taught myself embroidery. I painted watercolors. I started to run Dungeons and Dragons games through Zoom. I planted seeds in a garden that instead grew a series of completely different vegetables that battled my own seeds for dominance and won. My husband and I watched a lot of Ghibli movies. Two weeks into the chaos I turned thirty. I celebrated my birthday on a zoom call with friends and felt happy and loved and terrified all at once. It was fine. Time went on. Writing became a part of who I was Before. I told myself I didn’t want to be a writer anymore.
In October 2021, I was struck with an idea for a novel. In a matter of hours, I wrote an outline and sent it to a friend, who agreed that the concept was interesting and the plot made a generic amount of sense. I printed it out and set it aside. National Novel Writing Month would start November 1st, and I was determined to “win” (i.e. write 50,000 words during the month of November). In that moment wanted more than anything to prove to myself that I could be a writer. That I could make it work.
The story of NaNoWriMo 2021 is a long one- but suffice it to say, I hit my 50k goal by the end of that month. I then took an additional two weeks to finish the novel. It was the first time I had ever been able to write “The End” on the last page of a document. It didn’t feel real. But somehow the mental block that had kept me from finishing novels for decades seemed to just… melt away. Now I knew that I could do it. The only thing stopping me was myself.
Out of curiosity I started looking into what the next step for a novel was after the editing process. Did I want to try to get a literary agent? Should I hire an editor? Was it worth trying to put together a pitch and send it off to join the slush pile at publishing houses? I was completely lost. Somewhere along the way I stumbled onto the concept of independent publishing. I’d heard of self publishing, but like most people assumed it was just the easy out for bad writers who couldn’t get published through traditional avenues. I watched a few youtube videos about indie publishing, read a few articles, and admittedly really fell in love with the process that these authors described. Indie publishing was an incredible amount of work- indie authors are their own writers, editors, designers, marketing team, street team and publishers- but the communities that seemed to grow around these authors and their readers was incredible. There was no larger entity acting as a go-between. It felt authentic and creative. I loved the freedom that was promised- so long as I was willing to work for it.
So here I am, five months into my indie author journey and loving it. It’s been an incredible amount of work, and the learning curve is the steepest that I’ve ever experienced. Most days I go to work, cook dinner and then spend six to seven hours on the computer writing or working on social media or my newsletter or trying to figure out what the hell SEO is so that my website shows up in a Google search.
Last week my debut novella The Light Keeper went live on Amazon. It’s something that can be purchased, reviewed, critiqued and shared. About 90% of my brain has responded to this new reality where I am a published author by simply not thinking about it. I continue to make social media posts. Sometimes now I check and see if I’ve made a book sale that day (yes, singular. Indie authorship is not for the faint of heart, my darlings) but mostly… I work, I cook, and I write. I try to get enough sleep so that I can do it again the next day.
But now there’s very little doubt in my mind. I am a writer.
