Brave

For the past four years I've participated in National Novel Writing Month. The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. One year, one of the winners' prizes was a free proof copy of your manuscript. I wanted a proof copy so I had physical evidence of what I'd spent so much time working on. I just wanted for it to sit on my bookshelf so I could admire it. I never even read it all the way through because by the time I was done with it I was too sick of my own words.

Recently I read a friend's self-published novel. It was fun and entertaining and I read it in a couple days. But it wasn't perfect. It wasn't the greatest novel ever written. But it was great. I realized for the first time that nothing I ever wrote would be perfect. I could spent the rest of my life trying to perfect one manuscript or I could work on it until it was good enough and share that.

I read the proof copy of The Baker's Memory that had been sitting on my shelf for two and a half years. It wasn't perfect but it was fun and entertaining. I'm always surprised when my writing hangs together. It's like I think I just throw words on the page waiting to see what sticks. When it works, when it actually makes sense, I'm always surprised. I shouldn't be. It's happened more than once.

My new goal is to be brave enough to share my good-enough work because good-enough is all I'm ever going to have. If I don't share that, I'll never share anything.

Hello, world! Meet The Baker's Memory!