Late last night, I put the finishing touches on an email that was blind-carbon-copied to seven brave souls. Those souls? Friends and family who volunteered to be beta readers.

Well, really, I kind of recruited them. But they could have said no at any time! I swear!

It's nerve-wracking, to say the least. I find myself wanting to reach out to all of them, make excuses for things, tell them it's ok to tell me it's awful... give them all easy outs.

Despite my internal melodramatics, I am trying to stay grounded in the reality that I have read this damn thing no less than seven times through. My editor, bless his soul, has likely read it through at least 4-5 times. And here I am, listening to the fake audiobook version of it, as AI Gwyneth Paltrow reads my words with what can only be described as an uncanny-uncanny valley girl dialect.

But you know what? It feels good. Hearing someone else say the words takes me out of writer/editor mode and helps me focus on the story as a listener. And it feels...cohesive?

To be clear, I've put more work into this than I ever did in primary school. I've been all in for the last year, which for someone with ADHD says something, I guess. And if nothing else comes of this, I finally did it. I finally wrote a book. Came up with a story, typed it up to completion, and did the requisite cycles of rewriting and questioning why I like to torture myself so much. However, it is that very cycle of madness that keeps me going. Seeing a better draft with every round of revisions fuels more refinements and more progress. And that is really where the writing happens. The first draft? It's essentially a brain dump, a rough sketch. A lump of clay with two thumbholes approximating eye sockets. That's the first milestone of many.

So now, I will wait; and while I wait, I will listen to and read it again and probably find several to dozens of things I want to further refine. Fear not, though. I have plenty of other things to tackle. Like learning the ropes of self publishing, ARCs, social media profiles, purchasing ISBNs, and building numerous world building websites—that kind of stuff.

And I...might...have...another...book I'm starting on.

More on that later.