Enough

I’m not even sure I should be writing this. I don’t necessarily feel qualified to share my experiences, my journey of trying to become a published author. And not just qualified, but appropriate. It feels almost…wrong to share.

I’m stalling. It’s the vulnerability I dread.

Last week, I lost it. No, really. I did.

I called my husband while he was at work, sobbing about how I can’t write, my manuscript is crap, I don’t know what I’m doing, and wondering if I’ve been chasing a fool’s dream all these years.

Being the loving man he is, he quickly quelled such doubts and fears, but the feeling lingered, especially since I had just:

• Finished reading the meticulously crafted plot of Swati Teerdhala’s The Archer at Dawn;
• Started and have since continued devouring Sarah J. Maas’s epic The Throne of Glass series;
• Read comments from my BETA reader regarding my manuscript.

(Oh, and I’ve been panicking since the agent I’ve corresponded with emailed me last month asking how my revisions were progressing.)

As I read these two ladies’ exquisite works, a premonition gnawed at the back of my mind.

I’ll never be as good as this. My writing will never compare to this.”

Comparison is a dangerous game, a path I know I should not tread, but I have. I did. Then today, for some inexplicable reason, the gnawing stopped.

I’m never going to be as good as Sarah J. Maas or Swati Teerdhala. I’m not.

And that’s okay.

I don’t want to be as good as them. I want to be me. I want to write my story.

I’m not doing this to become a world-famous author, a New York Times bestseller, nor someone comparable to the likes of those I’ve mentioned.

No; I’m doing this because I have to. I have no choice. To not tell my story would be allowing this fire inside me to consume me until there’s nothing left. It’s burning me up from the inside out.

And even if one day there is nothing left of me to give, if all I am is wasted, consumed by this story blazing within me, even if I never become “published” — it’ll be okay.

I’ll be okay.

Because I will have given myself to what I truly, deeply believe is my purpose. I will have found my spark and fought to share it with the world.

For me, that is enough.