There was a time I was embarrassed about not really knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. But little me knew exactly what she wanted to do. Write.
Of course, there were other things that came up. Before knowing how much I liked to write, I wanted to be an archeologist like Indiana Jones.
I went to school for business because ultimately, I understood before it had happened that publishing industries were going to change for the first time in hundreds of years and ultimately, the worst did happen. Books, news, poetry, magazines - all went through an incredible shrinking phase. I don’t believe they will ever fully disappear the way it might have been feared originally. Less publishers, less contracts, less upfront money, less market, harder to advertise, harder to stand out, harder to make a living.
That said, there’s a whole new market at the same time. E-publishing means that you can write, edit, publish with little risk. It’s certainly the case that we may very well be facing another massive change on account of AI threatening to write faster, with less errors. I suspect this is a tell on my recent views on TikTok and Youtube, but there are thousands of videos telling you how to use AI to make books to publish on Amazon so you can make a quick buck at home. Except maybe a dozen different concepts that I can think of, most humans aren’t going to pay to read a non-fiction book about AI though. So at least non-fiction should remain safe.
In Grade five, I almost failed English class because my writing was so small that my teacher couldn’t read it. You have no worries, if that did happen, I would have spent some of my birthday money to buy that teacher a magnifying glass. But it forever impacted my feelings towards English classes. I didn’t think I was a bad English student. I read books for fun, and I read all the books before the class got to them - from elementary grades all the way up to high school. But I struggled in high school with English. With low mostly A’s in most classes, but B’s in all my English classes, I lost my confidence to do Journalism - which was my first choice for a program in University.
It didn’t stop me from Blogging though. I had a blog from my third year of University onward. Unfortunately, that first one was lost to the impermanent nature of popular websites that we would eventually understand. After that, I kept backups of all my writing on every blog after.
My second blog I wrote in 1-2 times a week, every week from 2005 until 2018. That is a massive amount of writing! More on this in a few minutes.
Ultimately, when I was diagnosed in 2013, I went through some things. I just started editing this Chapter of the book that I’m working on. On account of that, I don’t want to seriously get into the topic, however, know that ‘writing a novel’ quickly climbed my bucket list items. I had started a dozen books over the years, but I’d never finished one. Until 2013. I did that newly diagnosed, on new medication, while working 47.5 hours a week.
Post transplant, I had some memory issues for a while. It’s not that I had no memory of something, I just needed memories to be triggered for me to get to the specific memory. My first major realisation of this was when I had a close friend visit me in Toronto when I got out of the hospital. When he was leaving for the evening, he recognised that something shifted in my memory. He told me when he got home he was going to send me something that I should read.
He sent me that blog - the one that was from 2005-2018. You have no idea how unique of an experience it was for me to remember me, triggered by my own words. I started from the beginning and read. With that specific memory condition, I met myself amongst those words. The me of those past eras to be sure. But more surely than that, I could see that I no longer could say that I wanted to be a writer - I had been one.
Writing isn’t my problem. I feel confident that I can not only write a book, but I can write one that is moving, insightful, and revealing to my personality and the personality of the writer that found a home in me. For the first time in a long time, there is confidence surrounding my writing.
There’s quite a bit that shakes my confidence though.
In order to publish a book, it’s not about the writing, and editing anymore. It’s about learning how to set up the file for e-publishing. It’s designing and producing a cover. Most people are using Canva for this - which I have been spending an hour a day trying to learn. Chances are, it’s something I will put on Amazon, because ultimately, that’s the cheapest and easiest way to do so in the world these days. This means figuring out Amazon’s publishing system. Over the past few years, I did have a graphics based business, so I even think that I should eventually be able to come up with an idea for a cover that is easy for my slight skill to muster out.
Ultimately, now, if you want to publish a book, you need a following, aka ‘a funnel’, a brand. Either hire or become a social media expert. As a really freakin’ weird adult who spends more time alone than with other humans, these are all things I know very little about. This is what I’m not confident about. My ability to do this last part. Selling a book is not in my skillset.
That hesitation is a shield in front of my face ultimately (An eyepatch if you will - which I made last weekend out of leather. We’re still waiting on pathology for those keeping up on that story). It’s a barrier between me and what I want to birth into the world by way of this story about something which changed me so dramatically.
As much the illness, as all that followed during the recovery. Starting with being reacquainted with myself through the only person who I could rely on to know me in each of those moments.
The writer I always wanted to be, and had always been.