I Am Finally Comfortable Sharing that I'm Writing a Novel
Like many countless millions of people out there, I'd wanted to write a novel for a very long time. The first inclinations occurred long, long before I started this blog, but if this blog had existed, I still likely wouldn't have shared it. It's just not exciting to share that you are vaguely tossing around the idea of maybe writing a novel at some indefinite point in the future. So I refrained from telling anyone, except my family.
Then I started outlining, which was really fun and took a long time. But it still felt like I hadn't really done anything, so it seemed superfluous to really talk about it.
Then I started writing, and got a decent chunk of progress done. But what assurance was there that I would keep going? I'd written stories of decent length before, when I was younger, and finished none of them. Best to keep my mouth shut this time, too.
But now I'm over 90,000 words in, and it no longer feels like I'd be jumping the gun by shouting into the digital ether about it. I feel very confident that I'm not going give it up. It feels like I've successfully ingrained it as a hobby, or as a part of my routine. Even when circumstances force me to set it aside for days or weeks on end, I always find myself thinking about it and gravitating back, like an itch I can't ignore for long.
So, I will declare finally that I am writing a novel!
One concern on the horizon is that hiring a competent developmental editor apparently can cost something like $3,000, which could take an extraordinarily long time to save up. But I'm trying not to let that, or the fact that a no-name debut author being published tends to be a strenuous struggle, slow me down and make me second-guess myself. It is too much fun and too fulfilling to give up prematurely just because I fear what might happen after I'm done with it. If nothing else, even if it just sits on my computer for the rest of my life, at least I could say that I'd done it.
But not yet. Currently, I'm still doing it.