It’s been a very emotional day or so and I still have yet to process everything that has gone down. I’m not even sure where to start but here goes it…
I published my first book Honoring Echo a couple years ago. It was an intense catharsis. I wrote it about my life – about having Chronic Fatigue, about surviving the severe isolation it threw me into from my teen years onward, about finding the perfect boyfriend, about getting out of that situation and taking an epic 74 day road trip across 48 states, about coming back to settle the heritage poultry farms of my dreams, and then about how I survived losing that all with no warning what-so-ever because my narcissistic prick of a boyfriend decided he wanted to run off and have a family with another woman. It’s about self discovery, it’s about pure unadulterated survival, it’s about learning how to live despite having constant massive obstacles thrown at me. I was so proud to have it published. I was so devastated when I only managed to sell less than 20 copies, mostly to people I knew.
And I spent a year recovering from the process – exhausted and depressed which brings me to this year – feeling full of myself again I looked at why I was not successful and took the advice of known authors. Publish twenty books, they said, and you’ll have a steady livable income of 50K a year. That seemed crazy, it took me four months to write Honoring Echo, six to edit it, and a year to recover from the psychological trauma of writing it in the first place. How was I going to write twenty books?!
You see I always had these grand ideas in my head about fiction and I had been into writing years ago but I believed a mythology about myself that stated I did not have the determination, motivation, or know-how to complete anything. Instead I had files scattered about here and there – partially finished dreams. Determined to fix this I made the goal to write 2,000 words a day every day that I could – in my blogs, in my manuscripts, in my dream log, in a stack of short stories, it didn’t matter. Just. churn. It. Out.
And that brings me to yesterday. I had been working on an old idea, old characters who have lived in my head for years. I was plowing through a fresh new manuscript 2,000 words at a time when I stumbled upon something shocking. It was an older manuscript to the same story that I apparently wrote years ago. It was written better and it was substantial so I stitched what I liked of each version together and ended up with a 20,000 word partial manuscript well on it’s way to eventually being completed. That was great! But then it gets better.
Then I found a full manuscript for something else. 66,000 words. Just sitting there waiting for me to find it. I had completely blacked out that I ever wrote or finished it. And then I realized I did so shortly before getting fucked up with my narcissistic ex. I’ll be honest. It’s been three years since he tossed me out on my ass and I have been terrified to get back into another relationship because when I was in that one I lost so much of myself – particularly my creative self. I stopped writing completely, greatly diminished doing art, I just didn’t have the time or energy to do so when I spent 100% of my time on things he wanted me to do – like start a full fledged profitable farm of 250 head of chicken overnight. And although I know that was extreme and that this is not how functional relationships work I am also afraid that if I find someone else I will be distracted from my goal of becoming a known profitable author financially standing on my own two feet. It’s really important to me so I don’t find myself in the same situation again.
I was shocked when I found this manuscript because it derailed everything I thought about myself. Clearly I did have the motivation and where-with-all to write a complete book years before I actually did. I did it and forgot about it! And the timing was alarming. I completed them right before getting involved with him. In other words I did it on my own, no one standing behind me whipping me to complete it. The memory is starting to come back – I just didn’t know what to do with it when it was done.
So I’m sitting here super angry, stewing in fact, because I feel like three years after the fact I’m still picking the wreckage up of what was my life before this asshole fucked it up. It looks like I was well on my way to being a published author before he came into my life and it was because of him that I didn’t! And I am swelling with pride because holy crap, I didn’t know I had that in me! And I’m filled with enthusiasm and hope – because reading over them these are GREAT stories and I want to publish them. In short I’m a fucking mess.
But I’ve learned something. Even before I was anything I was someone and stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. I was a force to reckon with and if I was that strong then just imagine how strong I am now that I have survived all this. There’s no stopping me. I WILL become a financially independent author and not just another “welfare queen” because of my chronic fatigue and other vast health issues.
Do you hear that world? I am coming so you better get ready.
