Embracing Growth: Lessons from Revisiting My First Novel
Twenty years have passed since I applied for the copyright for my first draft of my first novel, Understanding the Affair, now titled Intimate Nightmares. What a journey.
Six weeks. That’s all it had taken to write the rough draft. And it was rough, indeed. Fifteen years. That’s how long in had undergone my edits. If feasible, I would probably go back and edit it again. That’s just what writers do.
The more you write, the more you learn. The better you get. If I went back right now and reread that first novel, my firstborn, so to speak, I would probably cringe. Not because it isn’t great. It is. But in that story would be a trail of my beginner’s mind, what I felt at the time. I would probably find passages I wish I could tighten.
My regrets solidified in black and white; my worry amounted to wasted time.
The last page read, the book closed, I can stand on its authenticity. It can seem to me that I could have done better with a word or two, but I can stand on my skill and heart, knowing that Intimate Nightmares is as genuine a novel as can be.
I can forgive myself for the things I didn’t know back then. A comma splice doesn’t have to slit my soul, too.
Another lesson for real life. Past mistakes don’t define us. Errors make us grow and learn. I think, when we release the finished story, its details solidified, we know how we’ve grown, we know how we atoned, and we know who we are now.
Maybe it’s time to just close the book. Let the plot gaps of our lives stay in the past, so we don’t keep falling into them.
Just leap over the chasm and then begin your new story. Try not to take fifteen years to edit, however.