I have wanted to write a book for about as long as I can remember. My childhood and adolescent notebooks are filled with story ideas and false starts, but nothing was ever even close to "finished". In more recent years, this urge has only increased as I find inspiration and encouragement everywhere I turn. Several friends and acquaintances have really pushed me to write a book over the last few years, with one declaring, "I believe you have several books in you."
The ebb of paid work and escape from the endless demands of babies as my children mature allows more time to write. I've also retrained my brain to use the many mindless hours of housework and lying down with restless/anxious children at night to exercise my brain in new ways, either listening to inspirational and thought-provoking podcasts or exploring story lines in my mind. This means that when I finally have a chance to sit down at my computer (which may only happen a few times a month), words and ideas flow freely into a graceful confluence of story telling.
Returning to this blog to tell hard truths has freed my mind of much of the mental clutter that was also hindering me. Writing away past pain has healed some wounds that were weighing me down and blocking creativity. Even the act of physically decluttering my office by culling old papers has lightened my load and released a surge of creative energy. It feels nothing short of miraculous.
After submitting the first in a series of children's books to my target publisher last month, I felt an inordinate spike in apprehension about my ability to weather the challenges of the publishing world. My initial reaction was to feel that my worth as a writer would hang completely on their fickle decision. Amazingly, I've managed to push through that initial self doubt and imposter syndrome and accept that their decision does not have to decide my fate. I can write, I will write, and I will eventually get published. Finding this faith in myself and my ability freed me to move onto a project I never before had the audacity to even contemplate: a novel.
When the ideas that worked their way into the novel format germinated, it was simply my mind's way of dealing with an impossible problem. I met someone who I recognised as the boy my 15-year-old self needed to befriend. I felt I had to tread very carefully around this conundrum, because it was clear to me it was most certainly not that my 40-year-old self was infatuated with this 17-year-old boy, but rather that the very lonely and unresolved 16-year-old me recognised what I missed. My mind had to do something with this information, which it began to weave into the coming of age story of a young Aspergirl meeting her first love.
After about a month of fermenting in my skull, the impulse to start writing was so overwhelming I finally just pushed every non-critical thing aside and sat down at the keyboard. My fingers took on a life of their own and I smashed out over 6,000 carefully crafted, researched and edited words in a day. My writing process is incredibly slow even when the ideas are flowing because I am a consummate perfectionist. I want every nuance and subtle detail to coincide perfectly in the language I select. I sometimes agonise over a particular word for ages and may try out several before moving on, only to return on an editing/revising pass to change how I say something altogether.
I cannot wait any longer to return to my heroine, so away we go!
