At 43 years of age and quickly approaching a birthday, I am shocked to be learning only now what a lonely art writing is.
I've always loved it, have always done it in one way or another, but it's only now, when I'm trying to make a serious go of it that I see how daunting it really is. I was warned, don't get me wrong - rejections, even the kind or helpful ones, are painful. And the effort to become traditionally published is at least as hard, probably harder - than anyone ever could have been prepared me for.
But it's the loneliness that surprises me. The roller-coaster of it. I do the hard work - I go up, up, progressing through the story, getting to know the characters and to love them, feeling elated as the plot unfolds in front of me, my excitement gaining in anticipation of the thrills to come.
Then I'm taken over by the approach to the climax, unable to plateau until I empty my body of it, the words spilling onto the screen as if made of the very life and blood that courses through me.
It is ME on the pages, bare and naked in my offerings.
Me there at the top of the roller-coaster, poised at the precipice, as high as I'll ever be.
Me delighting in the fall - that empty, floating feeling as the cars are pulled over the edge, just before they plummet toward the earth. The slight rise off the seat as your body works to keep up with the motion of the machine beneath you. The speed as the story crescendos, then slows, coasting to the ending, the puzzle of it finally completed.
The cheers and noise of the participants as they exit the coaster at the finale is the reaction I get from my readers, be it praise or criticism; I love it all.
And then it stops - the sun sets and the amusement park is shut down for the night.
The letdown after I finish something - it's always there. It comes in many forms, but the worst of it...the very worst...is that none of it MATTERS if nobody reads it.
I imagine that one day, when my books are in stores and in the hands of the dear people who will love them, the 'after' of writing will be satisfying. The feeling of getting something out there, of sharing something - some part of myself - that is good. Is maybe even the best of me. But for now, it just - all goes away. I finish, I celebrate, and then it's done. Nobody even knows it's there.
Yet.
To those who've been so kind to read anything I've written: THANK YOU. You carry me forward and encourage me to get back up after the fall. Or to just stay in the roller-coaster car and go around again until the right reader finds me.
xo
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