My book, my baby.

“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”

Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo

Last May I published a post about writing a book. I have had some people asking how it’s coming. So here is an update.

I am happy to announce the book is completed. Okay confession time. The book has been completed for months now. Like about 6 months to be honest. Finishing the book was an amazing feeling. A crazy accomplishment that I was immensely proud of. A holy shit moment where I sat back and said, ‘I just wrote a book… holy shit’.

And then I felt lost. I had nothing left to write. My baby was all grown up and my job was done. So now what?

Like a parent who’s baby really has grown up, we do feel a bit lost. Like we are no longer needed. But we are. We are never done. Maybe comparing writing a book to parenting a child is a little off… nothing is as difficult as raising a child. However for the sake of this blog I am going to use that analogy. So… we are never done. We are still needed. Sometimes for direction… a bit of advice… and sometimes to push them forward a little bit further. Like a book needs pushing forward.

But in this case, I had no idea how to do that. How to encourage this baby of mine to move forward. And so I procrastinated.

I re-wrote the book. I edited the book. I gave the book to some friends to read. Then I edited the book some more. I searched the world wide web on information on how to publish a book. I spoke to self-publishing companies. I looked up Literary Agents. I signed up for the Writer’s Union. I procrastinated all under the guise that it wasn’t ready. I didn’t know what the next step was and found everything too overwhelming. So I procrastinated day after day. Giving myself deadlines and ignoring them as they passed by.

The truth was, I wasn’t ready. I was afraid. Afraid I would be laughed at. Or even worse, completely ignored. That I wasn’t good enough to be a published author. Who was I kidding? I’d never written a book and I had no business thinking anyone would want to read it. There are millions of authors out there. Unpublished. And all of them better and more qualified than I. Or so I tell myself.

But then I reminded myself of a line I once heard listening to a Brené Brown podcast, ‘What’s worth doing even if I fail?’ The answer is this. This is worth doing.

This morning I submitted my manuscript to be professionally evaluated. It’s not off to the publisher yet but it’s the first step. Maybe they will laugh at me. Maybe they won’t. It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that I try. That’s all that ever matters. Try. And you just never know how far that baby’s going to go…

That baby might just grow up to be something great. Maybe not. Either way you will love that baby with your whole heart.

And all because you tried.