By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and Northwest Arkansas mama of 3
I made you something. It took years, and I almost gave up. But I finally finished, wrapped it in a yellow cover, and put a big pink heart on it, just in time for February. It’s a novel titled “Checked Out” — a story about growing up and the struggle to find something (and someone) you love. The action takes place in and around a grocery store.
Technically, this is the second book I’ve published, but the process felt different this time. The first book, published in 2012, is a collection of essays from this newspaper column, dating back to 1998. Choosing what to include in that book was easier because you, my column readers, had already test-driven the material and offered feedback.
But this time, I wanted to learn to write a novel-length work of fiction. Instead of 700 words to meet the deadline, I’d need more than 70,000. Every time I thought about it, it felt undoable. After months of putting it off, I knew that thinking was exactly what was keeping me from doing.
So one year in November, I took the “National Novel Writing Month” challenge — an annual group project where participants all over the world set out to write their first draft of at least 50,000 words, all during November. If you’re doing the math, that means you have to write a little more than 1,660 words per day, every day of that month, to meet the goal.
Why the rush? It’s because if writers have time to dilly dally, we’ll overthink a project to death and never do it. But if you’ve promised to churn out more than 1,660 words a day just like all the other writers, you don’t have time to second-guess yourself. You just put your head down and write, delaying self-judgement until the messy first draft is done. It’s like outrunning the fear of failure before it can catch up and trip you.
By the end of that month, most people have loosened up and built momentum. That’s when many writers make revisions and finish their second draft. Or, if you’re a neurotic mess like me, you stick the thing in a drawer for the next several years as you battle a serious case of imposter syndrome.
Every time I thought about editing and finishing the book, a critical voice in my head said things like “Who do you think you are? You’re a column writer, not a fiction writer. You’ll mess it up. You’ll embarrass yourself. You should stay in your lane.”
It took several years and some kind yet persistent nudging from friends and fellow writers to convince me the story was worth telling — if for no other reason than to prove to myself I could. I realized that taking a swing and missing would be easier to live with than the regret of never stepping up to bat.
So after a dozen starts and stops, I published the book. Earlier this week, I saw it on Amazon for the first time, both the electronic version and the paperback. If you like to read fiction, I hope you’ll check it out. (Look for the yellow cover with the pink heart.)
Will you like it? No idea. Am I nervous? Definitely. As with any creative project, responses can range from “hate it” to “love it” with plenty of “meh” in between. But I’ve decided that the readers’ reaction is none of my business. My part is already done. And we’re all entitled to feel however we feel about anything we read.
For me, the mission was learning to write a novel so I can take those lessons into the next story. Scraping up enough guts to put it out into the world has been the hardest part. But today, I heard a psychologist on a podcast say that he often judges his progress by asking what his younger self might think about how far he’s come.
So I tried that method. And I realized that the little girl who stayed up late at night reading and loving the Little House on the Prairie book series would be blown away if she found out that her future self had written a book. She’d marvel at the thought of holding it in her hands. That kid always believed (and still does) that a good story is like magic, and we all need a little magic in our lives.
Happy reading, my friends. Hope you’ll enjoy it.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.
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