Completing a Book: What Comes After You Reach the End
By: Lisa Hanson
Tags: Life Lessons, Writing Life, Reflections, Memoir, Writing

Reflections on the aftermath of completing a book. The rewards of writing, feeling lost at the end, and the key to unlocking the flow of new ideas.

Photo by Ian Fishburn

Reading the words cedar tree at the top of a blank page is a comfort to me. I know I wrote them down staring blankly out the window at the very tree that grows below the window where I write. It’s boughs like lace tittering in the sunlight, or dripping and drooping like tattered layers of soaked through rain jackets.

I never understood writers block, for me the block was always time and I longed to have more of it and to write more. I wrote a book from start to finish, a memoir of my life and travels and the creation of a purpose driven business. I wrote it while traveling around the world on a 9 month trip to 20 countries, and then once I had returned home, I wrote and edited under the watchful presence of this tree. It took two years to write the book and though I question whether there is ever a point a writer can fully say a work is finished, I decided after a final pass that it was finished for now.

The rewards and losses of completion.

I had expected a sense of accomplishment, the surge of reaching the summit after a long climb and looking out and saying I made it here, I did this. Instead, I felt dreadfully aimless and empty. The next steps of seeking out an agent as an aspiring, first time author were so daunting. The path of expected rejections so long. The doubts of whether my book would find a fit, of whether my trials and triumphs are enough to warrant the interest of readers, all plagued me. The joy of sitting down to solve the puzzle of telling my story and crafting and recrafting each phrase with care was all behind me, and I was devastated.

Writing my book had become a familiar habit and practice, a sort of friend along the way of my travels. When I sat down to write I had the choice of working on the elements of the story of the past that I was crafting or telling the story of that day or week in Tbilisi, Georgia or Ella, Sri Lanka. It wasn’t always easy, I struggled in the first six months to face down the fears of telling my truth in my writing, sharing the stumbling journey of mistakes and lessons that allowed me to reach the point of lift off as a proud and accomplished woman.

After gearing up my courage one day, I sat down to write in my little box of an apartment in Bangkok, covered with floral wallpaper on all sides, including the ceiling. I had decided on a humiliating and funny scene from my 20s that I wouldn’t be inclined to share with anyone. I knew that if I wanted readers to really enjoy the moments of growth and progress in my story, I would have to share the lows and give readers a glimpse into a jealous disaster of a pool party, and the vexing boyfriend arriving at my doorstep in his trunks afterward pleading Please, Please singing James Brown on his knees. And what’s worse, my giving in to let him in the door.

Writing the scene freed me to dig deeper and acknowledge much less funny wounds I sheltered beneath the core narrative of survival and achievement that I tell myself about my life. The breakthrough allowed, and almost forced me, to take a critical view when looking back and set aside the glorifying rewrite of history to expose the lost and overwhelmed young woman and young mother that I had been.

Entering the next phase.

Finishing this process and completing my book was deeply rewarding even if I felt a sense of loss rather than satisfaction when I was done. And the work doesn’t end with the writing, next comes the business stage of writing: research, query writing, imagining each agent I email as my future champion, seeking out beta readers, and challenging how deep my reservoir of hope can be.

As I face a blank page now, without the structure of my book, old friend, to work on every day, I find myself staring out at the tree. Usually when I turn my attention to the tap of my mind it fills a warm bath of ideas until they flood over the sides, and I scramble to capture them or soak them up, catch them in buckets. But now I hear just a drip, followed by another drip. The ideas aren’t flowing, but it’s not that I have used up all my words, I think instead that keeping the reservoir of hope full enough to continue has the effect of slowing the arrival of new ideas.

The key to moving forward is to trust yourself.

If the next query gains me a champion for my work, or a beta reader calls to say they believe in me, if I get a request for a full manuscript or even another rejection under my belt, all of these move me forward through the aftermath. These outside cues can keep hope alive and help turn on the tap of new writing ideas, but ultimately the choice to move forward has to come from within. Whatever happens with my completed book, I can always look out at the cedar tree and start writing, word by word, trusting that the ideas will shift from drip to stream and begin to flow again.