Last week, I typed the last sentence of the final draft for my first book, and it feels great. I'm happy to see the result of all the effort and discipline I put in over the last months into this.
I used to think writing a book was about waiting for lightning strikes of inspiration. Turns out it's more like showing up to a job you gave yourself, even when you'd rather be doing anything else.
The biggest surprise? I stopped trying to write perfectly and started writing unpolished on purpose. Just 540 words a day - about a page and a half. Some days, those words were garbage, but garbage on the page beats perfect sentences in your head.
I tracked my progress on a basic Excel sheet because it helped me to visualize the process. Nothing fancy, just green cells when I wrote the number of words and red when I didn't write anything. Seeing the pattern helped more than I expected.
The weirdest trick that worked: Often, I'd stop mid-sentence. Mid-thought. Leave myself hanging so I'd want to come back the next day instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what comes next. This helped ensure the writing flow was consistent.
I shared the raw, early chapters with friends who were kind enough to read them. Their feedback wasn't always what I wanted to hear, but it was what I needed to hear.
The hardest part was letting the first draft sit untouched for weeks. I wanted to fix it immediately, but distance showed me things I couldn't see when I was too close to it.
The book is about my experiences and stories from 14 years working as a humanitarian in different countries around the world.
Now comes the editing part, then hopefully getting these stories out into the world. It feels good to know that these experiences won't just stay in my head.
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