I’ll be honest: I’m very, very eager to move to the next stage of my publishing career.
I’m fortunate and grateful to be where I am now, working with my incredible agent on stories I love, but there’s so much about the next step that I’m waiting and hoping for. Announcing a book deal, taking and sharing author photos, requesting author blurbs, chiming in on book cover ideas, planning a street team and pre-order goodies, organizing a launch party, working with bookish content creators, daydreaming of stops on a tour, having my book in readers’ hands…
I could go on and on about those dreams.
Granted, I don’t know if I’d be able to do all of these things (honestly, I have no clue how book tours work), but often in my head, being at the next step in my career feels like the most magical thing I could ever dream of. I see authors posting these amazing stories on social media, or debuts starting out and posting how excited they are, and think, gosh, I want my time to come.
While these feelings are valid, and some days I’ll just let myself feel them, I also remind myself that social media is the tiniest bit of reality. Probably 80-90% of the time, my writing journey looks extremely similar to theirs, and that boils down to one word: quiet.
Writing in general is often a quiet thing. It’s sitting at your desk, or the couch, or your bed, and silently putting words to paper. It’s coming up with ideas while sitting in a coffee shop. It’s brainstorming new stories or working through plot holes. It’s revising, and revising, and revising, and revising. It’s editing on your lunch break in between bites of a PB&J. It’s jumping on a video chat with writer friends because you’re stuck and think this story is going nowhere. It’s line editing until you’ve read the word ‘just’ and ‘glance’ so many times they’ve blurred together.
It is quiet and lovely, and as far as I know, that process doesn’t change much once you get a book deal. Not after you debut your first novel, then your next, and the next. Sure, you have other things that become part of your career at that point, but the writing itself doesn’t really change.
Writing is gentle. I spend so much time with my characters, silently tinkering with them, as the candles burn low and my cats snooze at my feet. I jot down ideas in the notebook I keep in my purse at all times, because you never know when something might strike. And I’m reminded that this is magic all on its own. I write because I love writing itself, and yes, I want to get to the next step…but this is magical too. This quiet, personal little thing that for a long time belongs to just me.
So yes, I’m still a dreamer, and I’m still eager to get to the next phase. But if you’re like me, I hope you’ll take a moment to remember why we do this, and to befriend the quiet, because it’s often our most loyal companion.
Sending cool weather and changing leaves,
Valerie
valerie c. norton 