Finish What You Start

You may have noticed that I haven’t been around the blog too much in the last few weeks.  Well, maybe you noticed.  Maybe somebody noticed.  Maybe?  Hello?

The reason I haven’t blogged much lately is I was finishing up a book I’ve been working on (a contemporary romance novel).  Sometimes I have trouble finishing things.  When you finish something, it usually needs to go out into the world to be viewed by others.  That’s scary.

For this new book, I gave myself a deadline.  Okay, I gave myself several deadlines.  And I missed them.  Looking back, I probably invented reasons to miss them, although I didn’t think so at the time.

I finally pulled on my big girl panties and gave myself a drop-dead deadline.  I committed myself totally to meeting that deadline because I knew that if I didn’t, I would be fooling around with the manuscript for months to come, making deadlines and missing deadlines.

Last month, whenever I wasn’t working at my day job, or caring for my mother, I was working on my manuscript.  I was focused and I was intent.  This thing was going to get done, and it was going to be submitted.  I was going to finish what I started.

My drop-dead, if-I-don’t-meet-it-I-won’t-respect-myself-in-the-morning deadline was Labor Day.  And, I made it.  Actually I probably could have made the day before, but because I felt like I had time, I fooled around and didn’t have the synopsis finished.

Regardless, I got the book done, and I got it submitted on Labor Day.  Then I went into a full-blown, hyperventilating panic attack.  Then, on Tuesday I started another book.  And now I’m flailing around like a muppet on a stormy sea once again.

Will the book I submitted be accepted?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if I’ll have to submit it to multiple publishers, or if it will be considered publishable at all.  I know that I like it, and it amused me when I wrote it and I had a lot of fun writing it.  I also know that I started it, I refined it to the best piece of work I could produce at this time, and I finished it.  No matter what happens now as I go through the whole submission process, it is a success as far as I’m concerned.

I guess the moral of the story is:  no one will ever benefit from anything you’re trying to do if you don’t actually start.  And they won’t know the thing exists if you don’t finish it and get it out there into the world.