#oetinger

Throwback to that day I held my book for the first time.

The fact that I wrote some words and then someone across the ocean translated, bound them, and put them in bookstores - that hasn’t fully sunk in yet. I don’t know I will ever really sink in.

I decided I was going to be an author when I was sixteen. I’d been a writer for years before that - I have vivid memories of force-feeding my family a series of portal fantasies that I wrote at age 10. But my junior year of high school was the year I decided to actually Be An Author.

I figured the decision itself was the hard part. I’d been writing books my whole life; it couldnt’ be that hard to publish them. Everyone I knew seemed to think they were good enough for Barnes & Noble, anyway.

But, spoiler alert: it was hard, and I was not good enough for Barnes & Noble. The first book I queried racked up over a hundred rejections from a hundred different agents.

So I wrote a second book. I wrote it in a fever, between classes, late at night and early in the morning. I stopped having friends because of that book. I failed a college class because of that book. I broke up with a boyfriend because of that book. In general, it was a deeply unhealthy way to live, and I don’t recommend it. (Except for the boyfriend part. I should’ve ditched that guy a long time ago.) But it worked. I wrote the book in two months, edited it in two weeks, and got an agent after a handful of carefully-curated query letters.

I thought this boded well for the fate of the book itself. I figured it would sell in a few weeks, tops.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. I revised for nine months after signing with my agent; we subbed the book to over a dozen editors for another year and a half. I got the loveliest rejections. “You’re a great writer, but.” “I really like this, but.” But overall, the takeaway was this: my book’s genre was really hot about six months before I wrote it.

A couple things happened to me after my second book flopped. One: I started a new book. (Then I restarted it. Then I restarted it again.)  Two: I graduated college with a degree in English. I’d spent the last two months of my college career writing an essay a day on top of freelance work.

Something about this combination of writing books and writing essays and writing articles and writing writing writing writing… It broke me. After a few months of pedal-to-the-metal school and work and creativity, I suddenly froze. I didn’t know how to draft a book anymore. I didn’t want to. I was afraid of every blank page. Every day of putting words on the page was an act of self-discipline - gritted teeth and sweat and usually a panic attack or two.

So I gave up.

I didn’t say it like that, of course. I told my agent I was struggling with this draft. I told her that maybe I’d try something new for a while. I told her that it might be awhile before I finished anything, because I was just so busy. She told me to take my time; so I curled in a fetal position and cried about being a failure for approximately six years.

About the time I was ready to try again, my agent quit.

And that brings us to the place where this post begins: a stab of stubborn anger; a couple sample chapters; a lot of hope and a lot of squashing that hope back down. And then, a book. This book - the one that I just held in my hands.

Here’s the point of this post:

I did that super hard thing that I fought for these last ten years; and now I have proof of the labor. I have my words, bound in blue and silver and dragon’s scales. The thing is, I’m not done. I’m not even close to done.

I expected a sense of finality, a feeling of completion. I thought publication would be like the moment when you summit a mountain, and then you can stop to enjoy the view.

But it’s not like that. I’m not ready to rest after this first book, this first summit. There is a beast inside me, still hungry for stories. The moment I held my novel in my hands, I wanted another. And another. And another. I wanted a whole shelf of these bound blue-and-silver words that I wrote.

I have always had this greedy beast. Now I know I always will. And I’m okay with that.