I wrote a novel. A proper novel with 90,000 words and plot and characters and everything. I worked on it for 15 years. I had an agent who had me change and rewrite if four times. I wrote every ounce of quirkiness and originality out of my book with all that editing. There was nothing punchy left, just a bland oh yea here’s another book. It destroyed my soul. I felt like I was not a writer that I could not call myself a writer.

So I made the painful decision to let the book go. Just push it underneath my bed and start new. I fired my agent and I began writing. My second book is nothing like the first. It came pouring out of me like it had been waiting for years in my subconscious mind. Like the words were lying there underneath the surface. I wrote and wrote and suddenly I was done. Less than a year it took me. I made some edits, but in reality I didn’t do much to it.

I called it A Dreamer’s Life, published it on Amazon as a Kindle book. I did the whole thing myself. I know there are mistakes and I know it doesn’t look like a proper old school book. It has less than 30,000 words has no plot no real storyline. But it is quirky it feels right it comes from my soul. And it is MY book.

And that’s all there is. Nothing else really matters in the end. All that matters is that you as an writer be satisfied with your work. Knowing in your soul that what you’ve put out there is the best you can do at that moment in time. And the next one, the next book, might be the same or it might be completely different. But it will be better than the first because it too will come from your soul and your soul keeps growing keeps changing keeps learning.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★