"I did it. I wrote a book!"
I wasn't expecting an orchestra and fanfare, but I definitely got a generous dose of dopamine.
I felt like Napoleon, beaming like a shiny new coin. I threw open the door of my study — my husband looked up:
"Finished, or what?"
"Yep! Want to read it? It's just — wow! Such an ending!"
Of course he read it.
"That's fire!"
Several months of immersing myself in my own memories, digging details out of the depths of memory, tears of tenderness and disappointment. I lived my life all over again. It was a release from moments I'd wanted to forget or never bring back to the surface. But without them, the book wouldn't have come together.
I felt like I'd done a huge chunk of work. I wanted to exhale. But the break was short-lived. It turned out no wizard was going to swoop in on a blue helicopter and, with a wave of a magic wand, turn a Word document into a paper book, complete with the pictures and cover I'd imagined.
What followed was work that came close to matching the effort of writing the book itself. It turned out that writing the book was actually the easy part. Turning a manuscript into a book — that is, doing the editing, proofreading, layout — was far harder. In my case there was also the work with a designer, because I'd decided I wanted illustrations. And then there was promotion on top of that. But that's a whole other story.