Beyond my desire to travel and explore parts of the world, and myself along the way, there was another reason why I decided to quit my job and move across the world. 

It was so that I could take the time to try and publish my book. 

Eek. Even saying that out loud is scary! 

Scary because I have not yet published this book. Scary because there’s a big chance I don’t get it published, and yet here I am, baring my soul for whoever wants to see it. Scary because now everyone knows about my biggest dream and if I fail in making it happen, that failure becomes much louder, much bigger. 

But scary or not, this is the truth.

I had an epiphany a few months ago, and it was this:

Time is a currency. How we spend it matters.  Money will come and go, but time? We never get that back. I’ve never really thought about the value of time until now, when I suddenly find myself with so much of it; and how what we do with it determines the direction our lives go. Time is finite, and we act like it’s infinite, and it’s our fatal flaw.

I may not get published during my travels, or this year, or ever, but I sure as heck want to spend as much time as possible, while I have it, trying to make it happen. Becoming an author is what I want more than anything in this world.

So. I’m not published yet. But these last six months, I’ve worked harder and longer than ever before on learning how to make that happen. I’ve treated “trying to get published” like a job, which has been sort of grounding – to have something to fill my days with other than tourist attractions. 

As I grind away on this journey, it feels silly to invest so much time into something that may never come to fruition. “I’m delusional!” I think as I edit my book for the six-hundredth time. But big dreams require delusion; otherwise you probably wouldn’t be working so hard to reach them; they wouldn’t mean anything. The more delusional the dream, the better, I always say! (I don’t say this. I wish I dreamed of being an engineer or like, a Vet, something a little more achievable, but here we are).

What all goes into trying to get a book published, you ask? 

Well, it’s a lot. It’s so much more than just writing the book. And it can take up to years for it to happen if you’re going the traditional route (which I am). I may consider self-publishing down the road, but for now, I’m attempting the trad route. 

First off, you have to write the book. Then you rewrite it. Then you rewrite it again. And again. Then you set it aside because you hate it and are burnt out on it and how could you ever possibly get it published? Then you pick it back up again and realize, hey this isn’t half bad. So you edit again. You let some people read it. More edits. More people reading it. 

Eventually, you kind of get to a point where you’re mostly somewhat happy with the novel that you want to start sending it out to literary agents— the people who act as liaisons between you and the publishing company, like Random House. 

You write up your query letter (basically a blurb on what the book is about, paired with a subtle “please request the rest of my manuscript, I promise you’ll love it”) and then rewrite it, like, twenty times. And THEN you start to send out said query letter. But for every agent you send the letter to, you have to tweak it a little so it matches what they’re looking for. 

Oh, and you also have to write a one-page synopsis on what your book is about (this will make you want to bang your head against the wall), and a one-line or one-paragraph pitch. If writers could summarize their book into one page or one sentence, we wouldn’t have to write the dang book. 

And then there’s the constant wading through ambiguous acronyms of the publishing world, figuring out what audience your book is geared to, and what genre your book belongs to.

The fun never stops! 

So you query these agents and you spend a lot of time getting rejected and being sad. You spend a lot of time doubting whether you’ll ever reach your dreams of becoming an author. You spend a lot of time reading other books and thinking “I’m the worst writer ever,” and then reminding yourself that books like Twilight got published. (No actual shade there: I stayed up ‘til 2 a.m. reading those books!) You might even start on new projects just to remind yourself why you love writing in the first place. And then you send your query letter out some more. 

I’m in the above phase. And it’s tiring. I’m sick of looking at my book. And the risk here is that this book I’ve worked so tirelessly on for three years may not even get published. I’ve learned a lot through writing it, a lot about the publishing process, but realistically, this book might only serve as a learning curve; it might never make it to the shelves. I have to accept that. I also have to accept when the time comes to place that book on my own shelf. I’m not there yet. But it’s a thought always lurking in the back of my mind. 

I’ve been writing since I learned how to. I remember being a kid and filling notebooks with stories and poems. I don’t know if there was ever a point where I thought consciously, “I want to be an author.” The desire has always just been there, like I was born with the notion already set in place.

I’ll sit in coffee shops and listen to people talk so I can emulate their dialogue style in the pages of my books. I’ll watch people strut down the sidewalk and imagine how I’d describe them if they were a character in my novel. Writing, or thinking about writing, takes up a lot of my time and my energy, my day. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The odds of being published traditionally aren’t in my favor: literary agents receive thousands of query letters a month, and only sign a few clients a year. GULP. That’s pretty discouraging. But I will try anyway. I’d rather fail trying to do something I put my whole heart into than not try and wish I had. Delusion, remember?

To be bold: I don’t think I’ll fail. I think my time is coming. I’m a decent enough writer and learning to be a better story teller that I believe I can make it as an author. I just need to be persistent, and wait for the day a little luck comes my way. 

I could have attacked getting published with the same vigor when I was home and working a full-time job, and I should have. The benefit of being able to travel while I try to get this dang manuscript on the shelves in your local bookstore is that traveling has stripped away all the expectations of “real life” and has allowed me to look inward at my truest desires. They’ve always been: traveling in some capacity and writing. Well, I’ve checked the “pursue travel” off my list; now I’m antsy to check off “become a published writer.”

Until then, I’ll keep plugging away at it!

Thanks for reading 🙂