In May I was able to participate in the Taste of Warroad, and I had a great time meeting people and talking about writing. There were a lot of interesting questions that I was asked but the one that I can’t seem to shake has been, “How do you know when your book is done?” The person meant about Already Almost Home, as I had just published it and had given it a prime spot on the bookcase behind my table.
He wanted to know because he also had some books he was working on, but how do you go from working on a book to a physical copy of your published work in your hands? He was looking for some kind of formula, a to-do list, someone else to say step back. But that’s the thing about art. The artist decides. And art is messy. No matter what you say or do or make, once your art is released into the wild it makes its own way in the world. Regardless of your intentions. So I told him that I knew Already Almost Home was done because I thought it could stand up to criticism. And if it couldn’t, I at least could.
Some artists can drive themselves mad, striving for perfection in their art. It is unattainable. Perfection isn’t what I’m after. I mean, it would be nice and all but I just want to get my message across in a way that people can begin to understand. I’m just here to start a conversation, add my own voice to the dialogue that’s been going on since the beginning.
If you’ve been around here, you know that I’ve been working on THE ONE for almost seven years now. I’ve missed all of the deadlines I set for myself. I’ve thrown out whole versions of it and rewritten it at least eight times. And up until today I didn’t know what it would look like to be done. To know that it is ready. It doesn’t look anything like what I anticipated, but I think it accomplishes exactly what I at eighteen wanted it to, but didn’t know how to go about writing.
Even if you’ve read prior bits or heard about THE ONE before, I want to re-introduce you because I don’t think you’ll recognize it anymore.
By the end of the week, the above images will hopefully be on the Amazon product detail page for THE ONE: a novella. The description is already up, and the kindle version is available for pre-order, delivered to devices on February 1st, 2022!
I’ve got proof copies coming Thursday of this week, and it is so exciting that I’ll be able to hold a physical copy of THE ONE in my hands! I’ll be releasing the hardcover and paperback editions in January, so be on the lookout for more information about them soon.
THE ONE is considerably shorter than what I intended to write. I really really really wanted to write a novel. And if I total up the amount of words that have gone into THE ONE and then been taken out, it would have qualified. Seth and I think I’ve spent a total of 120,000 words on this project. But the final version is 18,000 words, a novella. And that’s all it took, I guess. I’ll discuss novellas another day, but I will say that it’s nice to be able to read it in one sitting. I’m told it’s a fast read that will leave you mulling it over long after you’ve finished and that’s what I was going for. A book that would make you think. For this book, that’s the concept of soulmates. Do they exist? How do our beliefs about soulmates shape our relationships? Our own lives?
Technically speaking, it fits into the category of romance, but it’s not what I envision when I think of a romance book. I can’t wait until it’s in its final, polished version for you to read too!
I hope you enjoy your Monday! I’ll just be over here refreshing my tracking information on those proof copies…
Alexandria