It's been ten years since I started writing my Nytstars series and I am finally writing the ending of the fourth and final book.
Sure I've written another 8 book series in between, a book about raising a child with ADHD, a poetry book and a children's book. But finishing the very first series I started feels even more significant. I feel like I am letting go of a piece of me. It's similar to a child moving out. I've nurtured and cared for it, helped it to grow into the series it is today and now I'm letting out of the nest and hoping it fly's!
It's a hard thing to do, let go. All the hours and hours we as writers put into each book, our heart and soul all squished in, with our deepest emotions, our fears exposed, our hopes put out there for the squashing. Every book we write is filled with our soul, and we just share it with everyone. Sure we hide behind fictitious names and places, throwing in prices of those we love and hate, all in a feeble attempt to throw my oh off the scent of what pieces of us is what.
Someone recently asked me how it feels to be a writer. I wondered if they had ever read a book in their life! How does it feel? Terrifying, thrilling, frightening, amazing, horrific, all at the same time. But I suppose a reader wouldn't know that, j know when I read a book I don't think about the author, I think about the characters and if I don't know the author and their friends and family parsonally then I don't know the characters any more than as the characters in the books.
I know that each character represents someone in the authors life. That events could actually be a representation of an actual event in their life, but I don't know exactly who the character represents.
I don't know that the guys that gets his head hopped off by an angry elf is actually their uncle who fights with a cousin over grandmas cake knife.
I finally answers the person who had asked me how it feels to be a writer and told them it feels like being beautifully, lonely, while in a crowd.
You know no one understands that part of you, they don't know how it feels to have people read your words, how painful it is when people don't.
How vulnerable you are, people have the ability to break you quite easily and not even know or care that they did it.
But I wouldn't change it for the world!
And now my first series is coming to an end I have learned so much!
I've learned that the only ones who truly know you are the ones who have read your books!!!
That anyone can listen to you talk, but to read what you write, that's how you know they care.
I've learned that I can write, and I am supposed to write!
I've learned that spelling is important, even though I'm not good at it.
And above all I've learned that when fans quote your work back you, you better remember you wrote that!!
Sl every time you pick up a book remember you are reading into a writers soul. It's not easy to write a book, so remember to appreciate those who write your escapes, your fantasies, and your lessons.
