On Becoming an Author

When I was done writing, I understood that things happen just as they were meant to. That I couldn’t have written my book before I did. I simply wasn’t capable of doing so either as a writer or person. — Cheryl Strayed

For a long time I fretted over the fact that I had watched the 100’s of people that I had interviewed get book deals, achieve commercial success, and many more accolades. I wondered if I’d ever get my chance, if I’d become one of them. I even almost quit.

Yesterday I got the first bound version of my manuscript sent to me by my publisher. And this morning, looking back I realized that I also couldn’t have written my book before I did. I wasn’t capable of doing so as a writer or a person.

Life gives us sentences, paragraphs, passages and chapters. Life gives you the material, and the experiences you need to become the type of person who can make the journey from the first words on a blank page to as Dani Shapiro said putting “the shape of your soul between the covers”

• To shape madness into meaning
• To shape pain into poetry

When we want what we do before we’re capable of producing it, and we actually get it, the potential sacrifice is long term success. Dani Shapirio describes such a writer in one of her books

She ricocheted from the sacred to the ordinary and back again, jammed erudite references into brief asides, created worlds within worlds within worlds…..She disappeared ostensibly hard at work on her second novel. I lost touch with her but kept my eye out for her new book. It never came.

I wrote my book in the span of about 6 months. But I spent about 7 years becoming the type of person who was capable of writing it, becoming an author.

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.

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