Bear Feels Scared

Bear Feels Scared is a book Little Guy and I checked out from the library. It's about a bear that gets lost and his animal friends go out to search for him, only to find that he's only ten feet from home. It has great pictures and it rhymes. One day I noticed the dedication.

Once upon a time, a writer felt scared. But standing by the writer's side was a friend who gave the writer courage. The friend's name was Sarah Lanier (who later became Sarah Goodrich). Dear friend, thank you. Write the novel. With love- Karma Wilson

A few weeks ago The Baker's Memory became available for purchase, I set up the Kindle copy, my webstie went live and I set up a Facebook author page all in two and a half hours. I'd been working towards these thing for months. The dominoes just started falling into place. Bam. Bam. Bam. I could finish things. It was thrilling. I felt so accomplished. But then my heart wouldn't slow down. I felt like I'd just blanketed the internet with Emily. I was everywhere, which was terrifying. I felt exposed. Then this bear started to feel big fears.

Then the congratulations started flooding in, the friends who said they'd already ordered a copy, the friends who said they wanted it signed. The friends gave this writer courage. I was able to feel confident in putting myself out there. My friends gave me bear hugs and they calmed my bear fears until this bear felt maybe not safe but brave. Brave enough to keep writing the next novel.

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!