Yesterday was an interesting day. I had the opportunity to meet with an editor regarding the next steps on this 30×30 book. Have I ever published a book? No. Do I have any clue what I’m doing? No. But there I was sitting across from her at the coffee shop trying to answer questions on what I was doing and where we needed to go with this. Thankfully, she knows what she’s doing even if I don’t. (Mini lesson: when you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t be afraid to bring in reinforcements that do.)
I’ve had the majority of the book written for awhile, but then like all writers I hit the slump. Actually, it was a little more than just writer’s block. I was at full on war with it. So there the file sat on the computer, all sad and lonely and unopened for over a year. My friends knew better than to ask me about it. Without realizing it, I had just come to the point where I had done my part and it was time to turn it over to someone else. That’s probably the part I was having a hard time with…letting someone else read the entire enchilada all at once knowing that it’s not anywhere close to peak condition. As a fairly private person, it’s been interesting taking on a project that requires me to be not so private. When I was working on it I shared bits and pieces here and there with close friends, but it never felt done and I didn’t think it was ready to be read in its entirety. It’s a rough draft, not meant to be perfect–but I just couldn’t bring myself to let anyone see it with all its flaws. Ewwwww. But since I didn’t know what to do with it to make it ready, I just set it down and ignored it. And ignored it. And ignored it.
Until now. I am now proud to say that I have not only opened up the file, but I am sending it on to be reviewed, chewed up, and spit back out…and that is a very good thing. Progress doesn’t have to be big in order to be positive. I’ll take the little wins! So after a year of procrastination there is finally movement on pushing this book down the pipeline, red pen and all. Yay me. So although I don’t have all the answers or what this whole book publishing thing looks like, I look forward to more meetings with more people who know what they’re doing. And when I finally see it in print, I’m throwing a party.
TABLE QUOTES FROM PEOPLE MUCH SMARTER THAN I:
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau
Life Before The Lottery . . . The 30x30 List 