Scenes, Struggles and Other things: My road to becoming an author

This year has been a hard year.

One of the most confronting years of my life.

I started my journey to be an author. I lost a parent. I lost a grandparent. And watched my sister get married. Somewhere in all the grief and celebration, I found that I had so much inspiration. But also doubt and a whole lot of pressure for things to be perfect. (That last one might be the grief talking.)

And now we are just weeks away from the end of the year and I'm still here.

Still writing.

This year, I:

• Wrote 4 full (or mostly full) versions of my debut novel.

• Revised and edited the last version no less than 6 times.

• Outlined the next 3 books in the series

• Started writing book 2

• Created a social media presence (TikTok and Insta)

• Built this author website

• Designed the cover art for book 1 (too broke to pay someone else, haha!)

• Did HOURS of research on how to do all the above

Some days were very productive. Other days felt impossible and all I could do is kill some zombies (The Last of Us became my comfort game.) But grief is like that - it stretches time, it blurs what's important and makes even easy things feel impossible.

Through everything this year has given me, one thing stood out above all else.

Love the story you share with others.

Even if not everyone loves all the parts.

Even if your drafts are messy.

Even when the doubt is loud.

You must love it. Love every imperfect, stubborn, meaningful piece of it. Because that is what will carry you to the end. Through the mess, and confusion, and doubt.

It will carry you through the hard parts, when you want to give up - because there will be days you want to stop.

Because this year was hard, and messy and somedays all I wanted to do was scrap everything and never try again.

As the count down to the end of the year begins, I'm choosing to remember the joy, and love and all the positive things that life brings.

And I'm going to keep writing.

You should too.