Nineteen years ago, I took on the National Novel Writing Month challenge and wrote my first novel in a month. At the time, the novel was titled The Pear Tree House. Now, it is Polishing the Bones. And, yes, I am still editing it.

Because one thing I struggle with is holding on because I am determined to find the right words and maybe if I learn just one more lesson about writing or editing that I will finally unlock whatever ability I think is hidden inside of me because….

Because I have no friggin’ confidence.

I love giving gifts but struggle because, surprise-surprise, I am determined to find the right gift, the perfect gift because I love making people happy and giving them dust-collectors is tantamount to not making them happy which is bad. Very bad.

This year, I gave my editor a camping trip. She is writing a novel in which a character loves primitive camping. And I asked her if she had ever gone primitive camping to which she said no to which I said let’s go. And I took her to one of my absolute most favorite camping sites on Earth because, the two times I camped there, I found healing and peace. So we trudged a mile up the Appalachian Trail to Pass Mountain Shelter and pitched out tents and ate dinner and my dogs curled up in her tent and we talked.

A great editor is one who is fearless. And I have a great editor who told me that I had to stop being so insecure about my writing and my ability. I don’t know what minion decided to occupy my brain, but it has been hell because I love to write but I kept hating what I wrote so the antidote was not to write and just mellow in my misery. Don’t you just love alliteration?

The next day, we went to retrieve our food from the bear box and I made a joke about us going to the “bear box diner.” I quipped that this would be a good book title to which editor replied that yes, yes it would and I should write that novel. This was mid-October. Like six weeks ago.

For two weeks, I shoved Polishing the Bones onto a shelf and I did something I never did before. I plotted. I am a pantser. I like to write when I have a beginning scene, a middle scene or two, and then maybe an idea of how the book/story is supposed to end. I don’t plot or outline or anything. I am…organic.

Well, given I decided to give old NaNoWriMo a try and I had a title, then I decided to make sure I could succeed because my inconfidence does not need any more fodder. I became acquainted with my two main characters and planted their family trees. I created a town name and then, using AI, created a map that I have turned into a whatever type of file that I’m now transforming using PhotoShop. I am populating that town by lifting people I love and setting them into the town. Or asking them to make a character for me. Colleagues. Family members. They walk my little town and have jobs that either they wanted or that I thought they should have. Even my dog Figgis is in the town, as the cantankerous Mr. Figgly the floral shop owner.

NaNoWriMo lesson number 1 is to release. I learned to release Polishing the Bones and the terrible drive to latch onto the perfect words because I was holding myself back. I then released myself from the drive to find the perfect words and just wrote. In The Bear Box Diner (my newest novel), when my main character, Hattie is trying to open the diner, I originally had the health and safety inspector discover that there was problems with the plumbing that would require all of the pipes to be replaced. Great idea until I chatted with my husband and he noted that since the building had two floors with sinks/toilets on both floors that the entire place would have to be gutted.

For about thirty seconds, I could feel the blood drain from my face because that would mean a lot of deleting and rewriting and I was trying to write a novel in a month.

But at the 31st second, I released. I decided, “screw it” and just kept writing because, when I edited the novel in June (which I am going to do), I can edit out the screwed up plumbing and maybe build in a different plot point or just let the conflict be as conflicting as it already is which is plenty.

I have a lot of repetition. A lot of queasy stomachs and looking and blinking and smiling. And I know it’s all very tropish. But they’re reactions and they’re in my rough draft because…it’s my rough draft and I wanted to write out the plot, not worry about the minutia. The characters are unhappy or depressed or frustrated and I can find different ways to show this but I still practiced show not tell and the rough draft is for me so. Release.

Release the fact that halfway through I changed the tortoise shell cat to a calico.

Release the fact that I have not built in enough material about Ada, one of Hattie’s best friends.

Release how I forgot to build in an important scene with Mr. Figgly because I know that I forgot that scene but can work it in later in June when I am ready to edit because, right now, I finished a novel. In 24 days.

And tonight, I finally went back. And edited the hell out of two chapters of Polishing the Bones. And tomorrow, I’m going to rewrite and edit the hell out of two more. Because they are written and they’re good and, damn it all, my muses need to stomp out that minion and get back on my shoulders. Or hover over my head. Or sit in the empty space between my ears because I have wasted enough time on not writing and just stewing.