When you're young (like, really young), it can't pass quickly enough. You're looking forward to summer, or to the day you get your driver's licence, or your first kiss, or a million other things. And as you wait, time just drags on and on.
But when you get older, you realize how quickly it passes. Right now, I'm at that phase. This isn't a post lamenting the passage of time, though. It's actually more like a call to action for me, after a realization of how quickly days can go by.
Every passing day gives me an urgency to write quicker. Maybe "quicker" isn't the right word, though. An urgency to write more prolifically. To have more time to write. I always want to take time when I write, to make sure every sentence in my book is smooth and flowing and beautiful. But I have to balance that against the need to actually finalize what I'm writing. To further the plot in my book, to get that much closer to the end.
Right now, I don't have the luxury to spend days crafting the perfect paragraph. If I want to get published, to become a writer, I need to finish my book. That's obvious. And I'm working towards that goal every spare minute I get, but sometimes it still doesn't seem like enough. Every day I spend inching towards the end but not reaching it is another day where I'm not sending out copies of the manuscript to agents and publishers. It's another day where I'm not connecting with my readers, getting their comments and suggestions, and learning what they liked about my work.
So I spend every free minute I can thinking about my book and writing it. I'm up around 80,000 words already, but haven't even come close to finishing the book. There's a sense of loss, because I know I'm going to have to delete a lot of those words in the end, to shorten the book. And I spent time on all those words -- every single one of them meant something to me.
I also want to reach out and talk to other aspiring writers. But I don't know where they go. Is there a forum online somewhere, hidden away from reach, where all the girls who want to become authors go? Or a membership site deep in the trenches of the internet? I don't know. But moreover, every time I start thinking about searching for something like that, I realize that the time can also be spent writing. Which is what I need to be doing, at least until I finish this manuscript.
So, back to time. Time is on my side right now, I think. I'm young, and have already written a lot in my life. So I have some experience. But none of it was ever published; none of it was ever written to be published. So this whole endeavor is something new. And if it takes years for me to get published, well, so be it. But at the same time, I feel pressed by urgency.
Yet writing isn't something I can rush. I wish I had the time to spend days crafting the perfect paragraph. That may come someday, in the future, once I've been published... but it's not that day now. I just have to do my best with what's given to me, and hope it all works out in the end. But I need to get some finality soon, some kind of response from readers telling me that they love (or hate!) my book, or a yes/no from an agent who's willing to sell my book. The not knowing is killing me.
I feel like I'm swimming in an empty sea right now, with no sense of direction. I can only hope I'm headed towards the shore.
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