This week has been one of the longest, and most uncomfortable, that I can ever remember having.  Because of being down for 5 days with the flu, the bulk of my weekly accomplishments were an accumulation of about 90 hours of sleep, two days of having enough energy to shower and change my pajamas, and the transition from Chicken Noodle Soup to being able to eat a sandwich.  I have been miserable, exhausted, whiny and difficult.  

But I have also met some success.

I have been reading a book called How I Got Published: Famous Authors Tell You in Their Own Words, Edited and assembled by Ray White and Duane Lindsay.  It is a series of essays by more than 80 published writers; and not just the garden variety kind.  It includes first-person stories of getting “the first big break” from authors such as Christopher Moore, Stephen Coonts, Dave Barry, Lee Goldberg and many other authors that are well-read and easy to find when wandering through the aisles of any book store.

From this book, which is less of a “How YOU can become published” instruction manual and more of a “Don’t sweat the roadblocks – even Stephen King has had them” pep talk, I gathered the inspiration to write the closing chapters of a novel I have been writing sporadically for the past 6 years.  It isn’t a particularly long novel, closing out at a tad over 38,000 words, but it has taken me much pondering and tinkering to get to the end.  It also hasn’t helped that in the midst of my attempt at becoming a novelist I have had to deal with a divorce, family emergencies, time-and-a-half jobs and getting remarried.  Life has definitely taken priority to writing for me – and while I know that to many this means that I am a poorly-driven author, I simply enjoy living life more than I enjoy imagining what life might be like within the pages of a book.

But as I mentioned, How I Got Published lit the spark to force me to finish my novel this week by giving me the perspective of other authors who have toiled and tinkered with their writing, some for decades, before ever getting their manuscripts read by anyone other than their Aunt Mildred from Des Moines.  I am proud to announce that I typed the last words of my work at 9:08AM on Saturday, October 31st, 2009.  It makes my heart sing to know that now I am officially a writer who has completed a book – 155 pages of book – that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The other thing that I have learned from How I Got Published is that completing the writing of the first draft is only the beginning of more months (or years) of work.  Now is the time for editing, re-writing, gap filling, tightening, polishing and criticism.  I am now painfully aware that I may receive hundreds of rejection letters from publishers and literary agents before I find someone who is willing to give my work more than a cursory glance.  I will probably have to hustle and use the same sales pitch that I used selling life insurance (”What will you do if you pass on this opportunity today, and then tomorrow realize that the end is near?”) at writing conventions and workshops to get someone to look at the first page.

Fortunately though, now that I am aware of some of the trials and tribulations ahead of me, I think I am ready for it.  I’m excited to make my novel better than it is, to see eight different drafts and versions created and molded into one amazing work, to receive rejection letters from some of the biggest names in the publishing business, and to find luck or failure in whatever forms they come.

I am also excited to finish this novel, so that I can write my second – which has been brewing in the back of my mind since early this summer.

While being sick and tired, and being frustrated with being sick and tired, this week has afforded me the time to think and learn things that may have taken me another six months to figure out.  

Stomachaches, migraines and exhaustion aside; I think it’s been a damn good week.

Cover via Amazon

Read: Three Months of Silence: A Blog of Sorts