Sunday – Entry 44:
It’s been 48 hours since I finished the third draft of my book, and the most complete to date. At first I felt a bit surreal, as if at any moment Randy Jackson from American Idol was going to walk through the door on a unicorn, toss my unfinished manuscript in my face, then say, “It was pitchy, dawg!”. Fortunately, this did not happen, though I wouldn’t mind spending some time with him. There is a part of me that wonders if he is far more interesting than the book I just wrote even without the unicorn.
From start to finish, this has been a six month journey. I was disappointed to discover that I had only written 25,500 words. Then I was surprised I had written so many. This was only supposed to be a compilation of blog posts I had written about overcoming suicide with new commentary added.
But the book grew in wonderful ways.
In those six months I recovered from a spinal injury (still in therapy), overcame sickness, Depression, ADHD, and a motor tic disorder while scraping together freelance work, taking care of my children, and barely paying my bills. The tic disorder was probably the worst of the lot. Episodes increased markedly since the car accident last March. All the while I pressed on, even when somebody close to me told me that I was wasting my time and that nobody would read it. I wish that had been my insecure inner voice, but perhaps I am glad that it was not. When self-doubt begins to murmur in my ears, I recognize it for what it is and ignore it. When somebody else tells me that, I just get angry and write more.
Now I am poking around with Scrivener’s settings so that I can output my book in a format that doesn’t look like a text dump from a congressional hearing so that my editor will happily read it and give me feedback as opposed to plot my death.
And that’s the update. ADHD & Depression can make our life difficult, but we can overcome them. I will likely send my editor the manuscript tonight to beat my birthday goal, then begin my 47th year tomorrow with a middle grade book I’ve been dying to work on.
