Writing a book is no easy measure and during this process I had many doubts. I'm here today to talk about all things book related, in hopes that demystifying this process might make it a little bit easier for someone else just getting started in their journey. Please be warned this isn't meant to be a "To - Do" Guide and everything that happened for me may not be relevant or necessary for your journey.
First things first, let's get one thing straight, do you want to write a book? If the answer is yes, then congratulations, you're an author. If you have some inkling idea, tugging at your neurons, keeping you up in the dead of night, pestering you at the grocery store, BOOM! You're an author.
You might be thinking, "yeah okay, that's not true." And fair enough, let me clarify, you're an author, but you're not published, not yet at least. There is nothing to gain from suppressing your dreams before you've even begun. Yes, there are certain careers where you can't just claim that you have a title, (looking at those freshmen premeds with Dr. of Cardiothoracic Surgery written in their bios). But dear friend, I am here to tell you an author is not one of those careers. No one is going to have a medical emergency on a plane and ask if there's an author on board. So it's safe to say, it's okay to say you're an author. Say it to yourself, stand in front of the mirror when you're doing your fake interviews after having a shower and repeat it out loud, write it in your journal, tell a stranger in public, whisper it to yourself when you get into your car before you're about to leave for your day job, spell it out in your kid's alphabet soup, write it in the snow, or a pile of leaves or in the paint on the wall. You, my dear friend, are an author.
So now that we've decided that you're an author, let's really begin.
I began my writing career, like so many of you, on Wattpad. Let's be honest, they were not great. Truthfully, they mostly consisted of three chapters all with a MC who had red hair and green eyes. Then I left my teenage years, had a lull and restarted writing during the pandemic. The world looks different when you're using your writing skills, everything has the opportunity to be a story, a character trait, a funny anecdote. It's wonderful and exhausting. Your brain hurts. Everything looks good or isn't good enough. You're an author, you know how it goes. You love it anyway.
I wrote, rewrote, queried, rewrote, took a hiatus, got psyched out by people sharing their journey online, wrote some more and today, I'm happy to say it's finally over. After four long, taxing years, Tell Me You Hate Me, is finally here. Between the time I started this and now, I had a radical career change, switched my job then switched it again, started sharing my work online, and developed a weird love of beets. In the photo above, I have a binder with my work printed out and I'm in the process of re-editing my book. What you might not have noticed was the two binders in the background--also containing previous drafts. There's more drafts hanging around my room. Don't worry, it's part of the process.
Even when your work is done and published, you might have doubts. Looking back on the entire process of Tell Me You Hate Me, there are many things I would do differently--I'd probably include an academic rival, Rishi might have ended up with Dean instead, I'd showcase more dates/problems/family life. The changes are endless.
