Well, both of us have struggled to stay on the bandwagon. Life is busy. And honestly the very reason we’re going for this book right now is because we know it won’t ever not be. If we wait until the perfect moment or until we magically have time, we’ll never write anything. So here we are, squeezing it in in the margins of our lives.

And, with summer and vacations and jobs and kids it’s definitely taken the back burner a lot. We both felt like we could commit to it more so we officially made a tracker of when we’re trying to finish our chapters by and then are making plans to go on an editing trip.

It feels a little more real. Which also makes it feel immensely more scary to think that soon I’ll be telling neighbors and family and people who know me that I had the audacity to write a book haha.

But it is what it is. It’s who I am and how I am and they might as well know. Like I write about in the book, something I’m really coming to learn is that I can be all of who I am. On one hand able to joke and laugh with friends about nothing and also thinking deeply about attachment and trauma. I can be both. I think it just feels scary to share some of that deeper side with people.

Anyway, I just finished a chapter and I’m learning something about myself. I cannot keep a word count limit 😳 Our goal was to have every chapter be around 1,500 words and so far they’re all pushing it over that by 1,000-3,000 words, whoops.

I guess being concise in this area is not my forte. I’m a little apprehensive about what comes next. Do I need to cut out massive parts of each chapter so they’re not crazy long? But then will it lose some of the meaning? Or will that remove the stories and the fluff that actually really adds detail and depth? What will an editor think? Who are we going to use as an editor? How do you find one?

All the things to think about and then I’m remembering to take my own advice that I just got done writing and chill. I don’t need to control everything. I’ll cross those bridges when I come to them but as my bestie said, which was so helpful, “writing and editing are two separate jobs”. I wrote the chapter and now is not the time to try and get the word count down by 1k.

I rewrote the chapter I just finished about 2x just to get it to a cohesive place – which seems to be pretty standard so far. I’m struggling with feeling like any of it is good enough or worth sharing or that my style of writing is sensical. But again reminding myself, I can’t control everything. I just have to let go and let it be good enough for me. So what if someone gives it horrible reviews (okay I’d be pretty sad tbh), but that’s not in my control and I’m proud of myself and of us just for going for it. That alone is a pretty big win.

XO,

Ren