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There’s probably a lesson in this somewhere. Something really deep and meaningful. Or important and profound.

I’d tell you which and what, if I didn’t feel like it was more important for your personal growth to figure it out yourself. And that’s not because I don’t know. I do. Really.
One thing I do know, blogs, weeks and books end.

When you start a book, your hope is to get to where you can type: The End.
When I was younger, books had “The End” at the end. I guess they thought we wouldn’t notice the book had ended and write the publisher wanting to know what happened to the rest of the book.

Today’s savvy readers know when a book ends, but it’s still really satisfying to write the words, to decisively finish.

Endings are one of those goal posts you have to cross, even if you ultimately put the book away as a learning experience. Until you finish a book you don’t know you can do it.

Prior to finishing Pig in a Park, I had…several…partially completed…things. I can’t even call them books, because I’ll never know what they would have been if I’d finished them.

Maybe we need to train our brains to finish. Maybe I just needed to train mine to finish. But once I’d done it, once I’d typed “The End,” it changed me. I ran the race and crossed the finish line. Now I knew I could do it. That helped me start the next book with a psychological edge.

And boy, did I need that edge. Because I went into book number two thinking, now I know how to write a book and it will be easy.

Wrong.

For me, each book has been a unique experience. It’s brought me different challenges to solve, new hurdles to leap, and new lessons to learn. For some of those books, the only thing that kept me going was knowing I could finish. I’d been there, done that.
The other thing that kept me going was knowing that despite all the challenges, trials and discouraging publishing stuff, I love writing. I love meeting my characters and figuring out their stories. By keeping my business self firmly grounded in reality, and letting my imagination soar, I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful career—not to mention meet some other wonderful authors and amazing readers. J

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Behind the Scenes journey with me and learned something you didn’t know before—maybe even something actually useful. If not, at least you know it’s…

The End