Featured

Sleepless Nights and Big Dreams

I’m plagued by sciatica and a broken air conditioner tonight, and instead of sleeping at almost 2:00am, I’m complaining to an empty room about my pain and the heat, and scrolling around on social media.

Among the memes and selfies, I found a post that brought me to tears. A woman in one of my writing groups recently lost her mother, and today she found stories her mom wrote, packed away, along with her never-pursued dreams of being a published author. The daughter is beginning the task of editing and assembling her mother’s stories so she can either shop them to agents and publishers or independently publish them, in her mother’s honor.

The author of the post didn’t specify the reason her mother didn’t attempt to get published, but I think anyone who’s ever wanted to put their writing out there can probably think of a dozen or so reasons she refrained. The prospect of almost certain rejection is reason enough to give most of us at least temporary pause.

After reading and commenting on her post, the notification popped up to let me know I could look at my memories for this day. Those Facebook memories can just as easily dole out a punch to the jugular as they can offer a kiss on the cheek, so I always open them with at least a little caution.

Here is my memory from one year ago today:

One year ago today, I was putting the final editorial touches on the story I was going to shop around to agents and publishers. About four months after that, I got signed with Bold Strokes Books.

A year later, I’ve completed both books I mentioned in that post, and they are in production with my publisher at this very moment, with London Undone coming out in December. I’m currently writing my third book, which I’ll turn in to my editors by the end of this year and will most likely come out sometime in 2020.

It’s the middle of the night, and I can’t stop thinking about that mom who recently died, with her dreams still tucked away in a drawer. It’s beautiful and honorable for her daughter to take on those stories, and I hope she finds healing in her grief as she does so. Maybe that’s the good that will come of it.

I know so many aspiring authors who put their dreams on hold, and I get it. I was one of them for a long time. I definitely understand the importance of taking the time to develop your writing skills, polish your stories, and even thicken your skin for all the criticism you’ll receive as a writer.

But, like any big leap in life, the timing will never be perfect. You’re never going to have the time, you have to make the time. Your story is never going to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean it’s not finished. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, so work on your writing today.

Look at the year I’ve had. All of this happened when I decided to get out of my own way and live the daydream. I know my story is slightly atypical, in that I’m getting signed and published faster than normal in the glacially paced publishing industry. Timelines aside, the overall process is the same for most of us.

We write a lot, we delete a lot, we edit a lot. We get some people to look at our writing. We shop it around. We choose between traditional and independent publishing. There are a hundred little varying details, but that’s the basic format. Broken down like that, it sounds pretty doable, right? It is. Not easy, not quick, but doable.

Where could you be, a year from now, if you spent the next 365 days throwing yourself into what you want for yourself?

Please don’t lock your aspirations away. They are too big and meaningful and glorious to let them die with you.

Featured

The Seven Month Itch

It happened again yesterday. I was at work, and a coworker stopped by to talk about weekend plans. After a few minutes of pleasant small talk, he said, “Hey, is your book out yet?”

Signing with my publisher has led to some of the most exciting and rewarding moments of my life so far. I’ve also had a few recurring awkward moments, and by that, I mean people ask me completely reasonable questions I don’t know how to answer, and I get hella awkward about it.

The question I’ve been least prepared for is some variation of, “Can I buy your book now? / Is your book out yet? / I looked for your book on your publisher’s website, do you know why I couldn’t find it?”

First of all, let me say I’m thrilled that people want to buy my book and show me support. I realize this is a great “problem” to have, and this post is in no way a complaint on my part.

I signed with Bold Strokes Books in November of 2018 and announced the news in mid-December. Fast forward to now, and you’ve had five months of my gushing about how grateful I am to be realizing this dream that languished in a dark corner of my heart for decades. I understand why folks are like, “Hey, awesome, happy for you, btw where’s the book?”

London Undone is seven months (today) from being released. It will be out in the world on December 10, 2019. This is about a year turnaround from when I signed to when I’m published, which is relatively short by industry standards. Many authors wait eighteen months to two years or longer, so I was pretty stoked when I heard the timeline.

Most people aren’t intimately acquainted with the publishing industry’s pace, though, so they anticipate the kind of instant gratification to which we are all so accustomed in many areas of our lives. This makes for multiple conversations in which I blather and sputter myself into an odd frenzy.

Here’s a typical example of one of these gems for you:

Someone: “Hey, is your book out yet? I’d like to buy it.” Me: “Yeah, no, not yet. It comes out in December! I’ll be doing edits this summer. The cover is done, wanna see a picture? It’s an exciting time, hard to believe it’s all happening. Most of the time it doesn’t feel real. Anyway, thanks for asking, I promise it’s really coming out at the end of this year, I’m not making it up or anything. I’ll let you know when it gets released in case you still wanna buy it! You don’t have to, though. No pressure.”

So, my self-promotion and marketing can obviously use some work. The truth is, I do have a hard time believing this is really happening to and for me, and I have a bit of imposter syndrome about it. Even people who thought I could never become a published author were probably less surprised than I was when I actually got signed.

It really is happening. Most readers won’t be able to get a copy in their hands for another seven months, and I’ll be spending a big chunk of my summer working on edits and revisions, so we aren’t there yet, but each day I can honestly say I’m one day closer than I’ve ever been.

Thank you to any and all of you who are sticking with me through these long months. It’s my sincerest hope that London Undone will be worth the wait.

Book Baby

Nine months from today, my debut novel, London Undone, will be released. Octavia Reese and I were discussing that fact while recording our Stalled podcast, and we simultaneously shouted, “It’s a book baby!” A long conversation ensued, involving such pregnancy metaphors as “Your baby is now the size of a pea,” and planning a book baby shower.

We aren’t the first authors to draw on the similarities between conceiving a child and conceiving a story. A lot of work, care, planning, pain, and joy go into both situations. At some point you’re going to be so ridiculously happy that it feels like you’re living a dream, and at some point you’re going to be struck with the panic of certainty that you can’t do this.

I’ve lived through both of those emotions, plus approximately 133 other ones. I processed through them all when I had the flash of an idea about London Undone and began to write, and again when I began working on sending her to agents and publishers. Here I am again, at the start of another countdown (cue 80’s Final Countdown montage).

Right now, my baby is the size of my thoughts and ideas, and all the time put into her by the people who have and will help me make her the best she can be. I can’t wait to see how the little nugget grows.