5 am again

It's 5 am. Again. Every day, the sun rises and every day, I try and write.

Today, I am working on this blog and on a long project about my trip to France to see my long lost cousin a few years back. I always have a few writing pans in the fire.

My book took so long because of my process. Typically, I write stand alone pieces. It's just my thing. The last few years of my life were putting my child and YA pieces together and synthesizing them into one long work. It was so fucking hard. It was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done. At times, I didn't think I could get it done. 

So instead, during Covid, I started a monthly podcast interviewing other writers which was actually a good thing. It inspired me and was more productive creatively then just cleaning my house to distract myself from the arduous task at hand and my fear of failure. 

This summer, with health issues looming and anxiety about my own mortality, I would chant, "I'm the little writer who could." Then I would hum the ant song about perseverance to myself (one that I first heard on Laverne & Shirley as a kid) and sit down every weekend, butt in chair, and work. It took a few months, but not as long as I thought once I focused. I just did it. 

In August/September, I edited it one last time, took out more repetition, wrote an afterword and threw in my poetry at the end for good measure. My editor/publisher was happy I was done. He'd been waiting so long. He's a good person, a fantastic editor and writer, and most importantly, patient as a saint.

That book, Tales of an Inland Empire Girl, comes out in January. It was finished through a combination of real fear that I would not ever "finish", coupled with the realization that I had just published a chapbook about public defense without over working it. 

What seemed so hard at first, was just me standing in my own way. Over a decade, I'd written the pieces. And edited them over and over. Workshopped them. Agonized. So the hard work was done. I just needed to let it sing. 

Fear is like that. Fear of success is a real thing. As long as you're still "workin" on something, no one can criticize it. "It's still a draft," I would always laugh. "My albatross."

Well, it's no longer my albatross. 

It's real, it's finished (after a final proof) and it's lovely. Nothing is perfect you see. But this book, I know this, this book is as good as it gets for me. I am satisfied. And I realized that, in the end, that's all that fucking matters.