Blood, sweat and words

I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life. For most of that time, the title ‘writer’ was like a precious, sparkling trinket placed high upon the shelf, always out of reach of my grubby and clumsy hands and protected from my inquisitiveness. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the shelf and somehow felt that even if I could reach it, I wasn’t really supposed to touch. It was reserved for special people. Being a writer was a grown-up person’s business, a serious business for the cultured and sophisticated. I’ve since learned that being a writer is not necessarily that at all. It is sparkly and shiny and precious, but it’s also unbreakable and accessible by anyone with passion, sophisticated or not. But there is something else I have discovered about being a writer that, I have to be honest, surprised me more than a little. It’s plain hard work.

“The End”

As tired as I am, I couldn’t let the day go past without blogging about the stupendous, magnificent, enormous thing that happened today. I finished my novel. Yep, I wrote my way through 80,000 words until I got to THE END. (Just so you know, I didn’t actually write “The End” as that would have been a little bit lame, even for me…but I might have been just a little bit tempted to.) It is such an amazing feeling to know that I’ve seen this one through. It’s been a great journey.

Knowing what I don’t know

I’m at a bit of a crazy place right now in this writing journey. In the scheme of things, my successes have happened very quickly. The first picture book manuscript I ever submitted was accepted (only to be canned at a later date due to external forces) and since April ‘08 I’ve had quite a lot of things to celebrate. I have two contracts with Stanborough Press in the UK for picture books and am waiting for the contract from my Australian publisher (who are sourcing an illustrator). It has been a great start to my writing career, but right now I feel like I’m totally out of my depth.