“Patient anticipation
All my life I’ve been hurry up and wait…”
– “Independence,” The Band Perry

In case you missed it, I finished writing my book.

It was actually kind of weird. It wasn’t sitting at a typewriter, putting down the last few words, smiling satisfactorily, and sipping my coffee. I was filling in the blanks with some placeholders in the final three chapters, and I went to hunt for another placeholder. I realized there were none left and said, “Oh. So I’m done then? Okay.”

Immediately, the first thing I wanted to do was publish it, right then and there, and it took every ounce of my other, saner half (aka Whit) to not publish it then and there. Because it’s written, not finished, and there’s a big difference. There are still edits to be made – making sure there are no grammatical errors (hello prologue), adding in details about pirate bounty info. Also making sure that I’ve taken the time to properly describe worlds, scenes, environments – something I don’t take the time to do in the throws of writing amazing dialogue. The worlds are clear to me, I hate having to stop and describe them. But you don’t live in my head, so I have to. C’est la vie.

I also have nearly sent the book about five times to the select few individuals who I am entrusting to read and give me feedback. But I have not, because Whit is right – I don’t want to send out a half-assed product because I’m too excited. Because what usually happens in that case is something has tickled me pink, I share it with people, and they respond with a critique of all the things wrong with it (Grammar, etc). And then I get all pissy because they aren’t sharing in my enjoyment. This happens at work all the time.

So I am holding back the flood of emotions while I edit the book and make sure that it is exactly what I want to say, devoid of stupid errors and mistakes. I’m hoping I can knock it out this weekend, because my excitement is just getting the best of me.

One of the biggest reasons why I’m getting so excited is because I’ve begun to imagine a life where writing is all that I do. Books make money, right, and I got a bunch of them, so why shouldn’t I get to spend my life doing the things that I love? It’s part of this whole, discovering who I am and what I want, thing. I put the writing on a shelf because I never thought it would make any kind of money, but now I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong.

Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, no rash decisions yet – after all, I haven’t even sold one book.

But I am doing research on how much to price the book for, how much profit per book, how many books I would need to sell in order to pay my mortgage and keep my kind of standard of living. It’s kind of crazy to think how much I’ve grown as a person in the past few months to even consider something so…terrifying. Give up a steady, paying job for a life where all of my income comes from my brain and little fingers.

(Whit just piped up and told me that if I quit my job, I have to make sure I have disability insurance, in case my brain and/or fingers failed. Thus is the conversation that goes on in my head. )

But first, to finish the book. Onward!