Looking back at old blogs, it seems like I've had this idea about writing a high school "Catcher in the Rye" type of novel since at least 2015. I can finally say that today, on March 31st in 2023, I've finally completed it and submitted it to a publishing contest.
One thing that's always annoyed me when reading past blogs is that this idea of wanting to write or finish this novel kept cropping up and I kept saying I "should" do it but yet I never ended up following through. Sure, I had been writing snippets of this book on and off since 2015 with occasional spurts of inspiration here and there (ie. like when COVID started and I had a lot more free time). But, until these past two weeks, I had never mustered up to effort to just finish it and polish it up into a coherent state that was actually presentable?
So, what gave me the motivation for the final push? Honestly, I'm not really sure. I think it was a combination of things - such a V telling me about this publishing contest that I should apply to and having some time-off I needed to take from work anyway. Maybe I just realized that, if I was ever going to finish the book at some point this year, then I should take advantage of these fortuitous circumstances to do it. And so I did.
There's definitely a feeling of relief today. I'm sure there's always more edits I could do and maybe this novel won't end up going anywhere. Nonetheless, I'm still proud that I completed a goal and got the novel into a state where I think it's ready for a professional editor to take a look at.
I read a post someone made on Twitter a few weeks back with a line that went something like "We don't owe anything to our past selves". I think it was supposed to be some cringe motivational statement about how we should just be free and live in the moment. However, I strongly disagree with that. First, I think it's wrong because setting long term goals and executing on them is honestly one of the traits that sets humans apart from other animals. As I've said before, I think a reasonable goal in life to try to channel all your creative energy into producing something of value.
Secondly, I think we do owe our past selves quite a lot. Our past selves and decisions got us to where we are today. So, assuming you are relatively happy with where you are, you shouldn't just give up on the dreams that you had in the past. You had them for a reason. If you do give up your dreams then you need to really have a serious conversation with yourself about why you think they aren't relevant anymore - and if the answer is just "because I'm lazy/don't care" or "because I don't have enough time" then I don't think that's good enough.
That's another reason why I'm glad I've been keeping this blog over a decade. As much as I think reading my old posts is cringe/embarrassing, I'm glad that it helps keep me accountable. I'm glad that I can see what my goals were at a specific moment in time which allows me to be honest with myself about why they changed or if I'm just lying to myself deep down. As mentioned before, I've seen the theme of finishing this novel crop up in so many blog posts in the past that maybe I couldn't ignore it any longer. That time in my life (high school) probably isn't even that relevant to me now, but I still feel like I owe my past selves something and was responsible for finishing it.
The last thing I wanted to say is just about the writing process itself. Even though this was only 60k words, I think only 25% of my first draft survived. I remember another famous writer having a similar statistic and, at that time, I remember thinking that seemed way too low. I thought that I'd at least get more than 25% right the first time but now I understand just how complicated it is to craft a coherent plot and keep things consistent. I have an even greater respect for people like GRRM who can somehow keep track of a multitude of threads in a sprawling narrative without any major errors. Even for a book as short as mine, I found myself constantly contradiction or repeating myself and it seemed almost more of a science than an art in order to keep everyone consistent and keep the plot on track.
Anyway, I think that's all I want to say. Even if things don't go anywhere with this book, I want my future self to know that, in this moment, I'm simply proud for accomplishing a long term goal.
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