In her recent post, Leslie Hodgins conveys the spectrum of feelings associated with finishing a novel for the first time, and the scary step of putting something so close to the heart out into the world:
“Getting others to read it, judge it, and seeing it on a shelf with my name on it, that’s scary.”
A story I’ve been working on for the last 5 years now came to a close last week. I finished it. I wrote it all down, got all the characters straight, got the story I wanted written done. And it was emotional.
For 5 years this story has been changing, evolving, becoming more and more something I needed to finish and get out there. I’ve always had the dream of becoming a published author, the write the next great book. And even if it didn’t become the next Harry Potter I’d be okay because I got it out there anyways. But for 5 years this lived with me, always in the back of my mind, characters developing, changing, taking over in some cases (that’s another blog post). And now it was done, a manuscript ready to submit to a publisher. All four hundred or so pages. No longer processing through…
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I am just about to be in this same spot and as much as it’s exciting, it’s also just incredibly nerve racking. The attack of the what if’s, but honestly at the end of the day I think the number one thing I keep thinking is, “Holy crap, I actually wrote a book! I WROTE A BOOK!!!” That in alone is an accomplishment not everyone can say. It’s what makes the fear of releasing it into the wild…something worth doing 🙂
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I feel your excitement. Congratulations on writing your book. Finishing one is definitely a test of endurance and perseverance, and in itself an accomplishment. All the best!
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