Friday, November 25, 2011

Cliches and Holidays

I'm not going to go too far into Thanksgiving because I am trying to keep this blog about writing and not about my day-to-day personal stuff, but I am still so excited about what a wonderful Thanksgiving I had, I just wanted to say that I hope you all had a day that was equally as beautiful, if not more.

It's funny because it's always easy to use holidays as milestones in our lives to think about where we were or what we were doing at that exact time the year prior or many years ago. At Thanksgiving last year, I remember telling everyone that I was almost finished writing a book. The funny thing is that as I was talking about it, I doubted in my own head whether I would ever actually finish writing it. In fact, I doubted my ability to write a novel all the way until I had finished my THIRD edit. It took that long for it to actually sink in that I had really done it. I kept thinking that after I turned each page, the rest of the pages would either be blank or not make sense or that something would be terribly wrong and that the book wouldn't actually be finished. 

Finally, after reading it three times and frankly, getting kind of sick of it, I finally accepted that I had written my first book :)

Anyway, so using last year as my gauge...to go from wondering whether or not I would ever even finish it and not knowing what I would do after that to where I am now is nothing short of a miracle for me. I've completed it, polished it and most importantly, I believe in it. I'm proud to send it to agents and publishers. I'm thrilled to tell people about it.  In fact, once you get me talking about it, it's hard for me to shut up about it (hard to believe from someone who was nicknamed "motormouth" that I would talk a lot about anything, I know). Last year, at Thanksgiving, I remember telling someone that my book was "nothing special" and that it was just "a regular fiction book that is ...I don't know...nothing really exciting...." In all fairness, that was before I wrote the awesome ending :) but it's just the fact that I wasn't willing to call myself a writer until now....which is a huge transformation (that will be part of my next book, or at least my memoir) and all of that is really exciting for me. 

When it comes down to it, the saying "what a difference a day makes" is certainly true...but the difference that three hundred and sixty five of them can make is pretty astounding!

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