11/26/2025
✨📚 I love this trend. “When you’re in your twenties (or a time in life), you will …” And then finish with the result, what occurred when you followed your instinct and heart and finished, achieved the goal.
✨📚 In my case, it was finish, polish, edit, and revise my first full novel. I’d tried others. Like most writers, I’d quit, or let other things take priority.
✨📚 When we moved into this house with its beautiful backyard, I knew I had to do it finally. My back had other ideas, though.
✨📚 I’ve told this story before on podcasts and blog posts: I finished “Model Suspect” on my hands and knees over a footstool in my office. I couldn’t sit in a chair for long periods so had to improvise. Three books later, I’m glad I did.
✨📚 Finishing a full length manuscript is like opening a door to a new world of possibilities. It proves a novelist’s mettle—can you write through the messy middle, the distractions, and the self-doubt to tell your story?
✨📚 When my back was out, and I was in such pain I could walk from my office to the kitchen, it’s important to push through. Write one page, if that’s all for that day. But keep writing. One page at a time.
✨📚 Xo, TK
