Why I call it “the damn book”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m DAMN proud of this book, but the real turning point for me completing it began the day I first thought of it as “the damn book.”

You see, as I worked on it, I met a number of people who were also writing books, or had book ideas at least.  Some were more serious than others, of course, and there was the usual list of reasons why they weren’t finished/hadn’t started yet:  Not enough time, not sure where to start, lack of confidence, etc.  All places that I had been, but I couldn’t help but notice almost all of them seemed to be hooked on the idea of WRITING a book . . . not FINISHING writing a book, or ever really letting anyone (outside of perhaps a select few) ever READ it.  Almost everyone seemed stuck in the writing process.

Which is precisely what happened to my grandmother (one of the people who inspired me to write) until the day she died, and, to put it delicately, she didn’t die the happier for never having completed her dream.   Now, for some people it would have been perfectly okay to never have let anyone read their writing, but it certainly wasn’t okay for grandmother . . . and it wasn’t likely to be okay for me either.

And that’s when it struck me.

I. NEEDED. To. Finish. The. Damn. Thing.

And THAT’S why I call it the damn book.