💡 Jan 2025 · The idea arrived in the shower, as they do: a lighthouse keeper who receives letters addressed to someone who died forty years ago. Wrote it on a fogged mirror so I wouldn't lose it.
Writing my first novel
📓 Jan 2025 · Bought a notebook 'just for the novel.' Immediately intimidated by its blankness. Wrote the mirror sentence on page one so it wouldn't be blank anymore.
🗂️ Feb 2025 · Outlining phase. Discovered there are seventeen schools of outlining and their believers are at war. Picked the simplest: beginning, middle, end, on one index card.
⌨️ Mar 1, 2025 · Chapter one, sentence one. Rewrote it eleven times before allowing myself sentence two. Note to self: this pace yields a finished book in 34 years.
🌙 Mar 2025 · Found my writing window: 5:50–7:00am, before work, before doubt wakes up. The world is quiet and the inner critic sleeps in.
📈 Apr 2025 · First real milestone: 10,000 words. Celebrated by reading them back. Mistake. They were terrible. Kept going anyway — apparently that's the whole secret.
🧱 May 2025 · The middle. Nobody warns you about the middle. My lighthouse keeper spent three weeks staring at the sea because I didn't know what happens next.
🚶 May 2025 · Solved the plot problem on a walk, not at the desk. Started scheduling walks as writing time. My step count and my word count are now correlated.
✂️ Jun 2025 · Killed my favorite scene — eight pages of beautiful fog descriptions that did nothing. 'Kill your darlings' hurts exactly as advertised.
🏝️ Jul 2025 · Vacation with the draft. Wrote on a balcony at sunrise while everyone slept. 42,000 words. The keeper finally opened the fortieth letter.
😰 Aug 2025 · The 50k wall: became convinced the entire premise was stupid and someone had surely written it better. Googled it in a panic. Nobody had. Back to work.
☕ Sep 2025 · Joined a Tuesday-night writing group at the library. Reading pages aloud to strangers: terrifying. Their laughter at the right moments: fuel for a month.
📝 Oct 2025 · Plot twist discovered WHILE typing it — the letters' author wasn't who I'd planned at all. Apparently the book knows things I don't. Rewrote the outline card.
❄️ Nov 2025 · NaNoWriMo energy carried the final act. 1,200 words a day, dishes undone, plants unwatered. The keeper rowed out in the storm.
🎉 Dec 14, 2025 · THE END. 84,312 words. Typed the two words, sat back, and cried a little. Then immediately thought of three things to fix.
🥂 Dec 2025 · Followed the sacred rule: put the draft in a drawer for six weeks. Hardest willpower exercise of the whole project.
😬 Feb 2026 · Read the full draft in one weekend, pen in hand. Verdict: the first third is a different, worse book. The ending mostly works. 61 pages of notes.
🔨 Feb–Apr 2026 · Revision. Rewrote the opening three chapters from scratch, merged two characters into one, moved the storm forward by a hundred pages. Draft two is a different animal.
👀 Apr 2026 · Beta readers: my sister (too kind), a coworker (brutal, correct), a stranger from the writing group (asked the exact question the book failed to answer). Gold, all of it.
✍️ May 2026 · Draft three: fixed the question the stranger asked. Cut 9,000 words and somehow the book got bigger.
📮 Jun 2026 · Wrote the query letter — 300 words that took two weeks, harder than any chapter. Summarizing 84,000 words in one paragraph should be a recognized sport.
🚀 Jun 2026 · Sent the first five queries. Refreshing my inbox is now cardio.
📭 Jul 2026 · First response: a form rejection, eleven days in. Printed it. Framed it. Every writer's wall starts somewhere.
📬 Jul 2026 · Then, on a Tuesday: a full manuscript request. Read the email four times standing in my kitchen. Sent the book. Lit a candle.
🕯️ Now · Waiting, writing the next one. Book two's idea arrived in the shower last week — a night bus that only appears on maps drawn by hand. Here we go again.
💛 Looking back · 18 months, three drafts, one drawer, 61 pages of notes. The novel may or may not sell. The person who finishes novels? Already real.