WESTPHALL

Welp.

I did it.

I wrote a novel.

A whole one. With a beginning and a middle and an ending.

It even has a plot! Can you imagine?

I kind of cried a little when i wrote the final sentence. Which is sort of weird for me, but like…seemed fitting in the moment. Cuz…What a journey!

I never set out to be an author. Never dreamed of writing fictional stories about fictional people. Never once made up stories in my head or even attempted to write anything of the sort down on paper. As I’ve written about previously, I came upon my story about Cora and Lucas completely accidentally.

And now here I am, the proud owner of a 103k word novel and I have no idea what the hell happens next.

Imposter syndrome isn’t something I typically struggle with. I think I realized pretty young that most people have no idea what they’re doing and we are all meandering semi-aimlessly about planet earth, doing the best we can with what we’ve got. There are geniuses, sure. Great prodigies who never cease to wow with their natural agility at their craft. And then there are those who hilariously fail up, who are widely recognized as hacks but somehow manage to succeed in their field despite a clear lack of talent. Those who manage to hack the system and use it to their advantage.

But most of us? Most of us hover somewhere in the middle. We do our jobs okay. We follow (ish) the rules of the game, crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s, and more or less accomplish what we set out to do with varying levels of success.

As for me, so long as I can manage a slight lean toward the genius side of the scale rather than dipping the other way, I’m willing and able to recognize that for what it is and sit comfortably with it.

It’s all about maintaining a rational objectivity based in reality.

But books don’t really play that game. Stories are deeply subjective. I found that out when the ending of my novel got wildly different reactions from the relatively few people that have read it so far. So I take the feedback and make the type of changes that I know will make the story better. And at the end of the day, I know that I wrote what I wanted to write. The story of my heart. And no matter how else it might be received, I’ve made myself very, very happy.

What a weird feeling!

When I started this journey, I thought I’d be writing about politics and religion and putting my brilliant two (or three or four) cents in to the cacophony of voices who never stop spewing well-reasoned opinions. As it turns out, that practice isn’t as good for my mental health as I thought it would be.

Who knew those very mild, non-triggering subjects could be such Debbie downers?

And while I did manage to compile around 50k words of political/religious pontificating, what all that led me to was something entirely unexpected. Something un-dreamed of. A completely new world, one I never even considered being a part of: Becoming a novelist.

Today, I can say for real that I am an author.

Whoa Nellie.