Letting go

Today I turned 40 and I relinquished control of my first book. The two are related, I promise.

A few years ago, I was struggling to find the motivation to keep going with the writing thing. For the first time in a long time, I’d begun to believe I’d never be published. The rejections kept coming in a slow but steady stream and I stopped believing in what I was doing. It all seemed like a lot of work for no reward.

I’m not sure what it was that made me do it, but around that time I set myself a goal to be published before I turned 40. I have no idea what I would’ve done if I didn’t achieve that goal (probably kept writing anyway, because I have to), but luckily I never had to find out, because I got a publishing deal a year ago and my first book comes out next year.

So, back to turning 40. I’ve actually been quite excited about the prospect of turning 40 – for me, it’s not about getting old, but about claiming who I am and not caring so much about what other people think of me (though you’d better believe I will be devouring every one of my Goodreads reviews and weeping into my beer glass over the negative ones).

Anyway. I am going somewhere with this. This week I’ve been doing the final FINAL read-through of my book before it goes to print. I hadn’t expected to make many (or even any) edits, but I was surprised to find myself still changing words, deleting words, adding words. There’s a saying that a book is never finished until the author is so sick of it they want to throw the computer across the room, or it gets made into an actual book. I could have kept tinkering away at this forever, but luckily it is going to be made into an actual book, so I have no choice but to stop.

And it was only today, on my 40th birthday, as I got to the end of my read-through, that I realised: THIS IS IT. I will never again change anything in this book. It’s not mine anymore. Well, it is, but it also belongs to everyone who reads it. I can’t control the story, and that is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

So the creating part of the book is done with and now I wait until the day it goes out into the world. In the meantime, I’m working on the final draft of book 2, and then the whole process starts again. But tonight I’m going to enjoy the feeling of letting go in the knowledge that the book is finished.

THE BOOK IS FINISHED.