Today after finding my love bite for Book+Main, the section I picked out made me realize something I hadn’t really thought of before. In my book, Finding Sam, the heroine, Sam, is tentatively returning to her passion, painting, and she’s doing it without her ex-husband’s knowledge. He’s an ass, basically, and as a very brief rundown, Sam was a battered wife and even though she’s no longer married to him, the emotional and physical abuse still continues.
When she meets Erik, an idealistic community doctor, she’s given opportunities to grow, this time without any limitations. But funny how even when the gate is sprung wide open, sometimes, we stay where we are.
So what’s the point, Liz? You must be asking.
Well, it hit me that I wasn’t any different from Sam. The “ex” in my case was the mental and emotional recordings from my past, that writing didn’t make any money, that it was lazy “work,” and that I couldn’t be a dreamer forever. I had to be practical. Just as Sam had to work toward walking out of her mental prison on her own (with the help of a secondary cast of characters), so did I when it came to my stories.
But first, I had to step out of my mental prison and start believing in myself.
It wasn’t a smooth road, not by a long shot, but it was a road that I chose to take, mainly because I felt like I had no choice. Life was too short to constantly play it safe, to play by the rules, to make everyone but yourself happy.
So this year, strive to make yourself happy. Take that leap of faith. Write that story. Seek help, ask questions if you need to. Ignore the negative reviews that tell you how to fix your story—but pay attention to that one who says there’s a typo on page 98. Put the blinders on and keep going. Keep your eye on the goal, whatever that goal is. And most of all, be kind to yourself if and when you don’t quite make it. Get up, dust off the mud from your shins and move on. You’re only on page 2 of 365, one of many more volumes to come.
Keep going.
Interested in reading the first part of Finding Sam? It’s free and you can download it from iBooks here. You can also download it from Leanpub here. Just click on the “Get Sample link in your choice of epub or mobi.
*Book+Main is still free for authors to post their bites up and it will be $18/month once they start charging – something I will need to decide when the time comes whether it’s worth it or not.
Liz Durano 