Some things don't just happen overnight

Going from toddler to octogenarian for example. Or writing a book. It takes some serious time to write a book and some books take longer than others. My memoir, When Your Heart Says Go, began as a few scribbled pages at a friend’s dining room table in 2016. It was released in book form in 2023—that's somewhere around seven years.

Of course those original scribbled pages weren’t the first iteration of the story that ultimately took shape. Before that there were journal entries and fragments, flash fictions and flash nonfictions, short stories, personal narratives, even several poems—all with bits and pieces of the story that became the book readers will soon hold in their hands. It takes what it takes to find form and structure and, in my case, to discover what I’d come to say. And once the draft is done (drafts, I should say), there are the revisions and edits, and more revisions and edits, finding second readers, then editors and beta readers, and on and on ad infinitum.

You wonder why we do it. But like aging, we don't have much choice. Not if you're committed and you believe in your story and your story believes in you and won't leave you alone. I expect you know that from your experience, too, writing your own book or working on some other creative project that won't leave you alone.

The book is out in the world now, and the flurry of promoting it and talking about it and making direct connections with readers (which I love) has settled down a bit. Now it’s onto the next project…the next “won’t leave you alone” project. There are more stories to write, more wonderful somethings to create. Let's just keep doing this, shall we?