Letting go is hard to do
I finished my novel two months ago. Or I thought I did. This would be my first, and I have been working on it since 2017.
Soul Hunter — a story about consciousness, told through the inevitable transhumanism that exponential tech development will likely provide. I poured forty years of studying consciousness, religion, and spirituality into it. By the time I sent it to my editor, I felt done.
Not “done for now.” Done. As in: this is good. This is what I meant to say. A few minor tweaks and we’re there.
I was wrong.
The editor’s report came back, and it was thorough, professional, and devastating. Not cruel — worse than cruel. Honest. Plot holes I hadn’t seen. Structural problems I’d convinced myself were features. Gaps in the story that I’d filled in my own head but never actually put on the page.
The first thing I felt was shock. Then came the depression. Then the sadness of realizing that I am 68 years old and may never get this book published.
And then, slowly, I arrived at the place every writer apparently arrives. Resignation. And determination.
This is how books get written. How most things in life get accomplished. Not in one glorious sprint, but in a series of humiliations that gradually make the thing better. Hemingway said the first draft of anything is garbage. I wish I didn’t know that.
And there’s the smaller grief too — the money already spent. Book covers designed for a version that may need to change. Marketing materials that might go stale. None of it is catastrophic. All of it stings.
I can’t do the revisions right now. Not because I don’t want to. Soul Hunter is the most meaningful creative work I’ve ever attempted. It’s the insight I have wanted to share for more than thirty years.
But creative work is not going to pay the bills.
I have a family that depends on me. I have business projects that require focus. I like the obligation. Take it seriously.
I’ve been treating Soul Hunter like it could coexist equally with everything else, and the truth is that it can’t. Not right now.
So I’m putting it on the shelf. Six months. Maybe a year.
That sentence is harder to write than anything in the book.
Many times you have to choose between what you love and what you chose to be responsible for.
So I’m doing the hard thing. I’m waiting. Again. Trying not to think about the fact that I will be 69 this June.
Sometimes waiting is the most honest thing you can do.
Can I let go? Let my deepest desire to write this book sit on the back burner while I take care of my family?
I can.