An anticlimactic milestone

On reaching a major accomplishment and feeling non-celebratory.

The sun hadn’t even risen yet at 6:30 a.m. when I announced to no one, “Well, I guess I finished it.” I stared at my screen and then closed my laptop. Maybe I made another cup of coffee. I don’t remember.

That’s how anticlimactic it was to finish writing my book.

I had my manuscript printed to do one last read-through before I start my agent search.

My memoir manuscript is done. It took me about four years. Of course, I’m not done done. Just because I have a complete draft doesn’t mean the book is done. Many more revisions are ahead. In my mind the book won’t be done until it’s published. We’re still a long way off from that happening.

But to publish a book, one first has to write said book, and that important first step is done. I did that! It’s a major accomplishment.

I put the reps in, the time, the research, the writing, the rewriting. I experimented with tense, voice, and structure. I wrote a lot and threw a lot out. I excavated my past and revisited things I would have rather not but knew I needed to. I thought I knew what I was writing until I realized I didn’t and then kept writing even though I didn’t know where I was going until I figured it out.

You think you know the story so well. It’s a mansion inside your head, each room just waiting to be described, but pretty much every memoirist I’ve ever talked to finds the walls of such rooms changing shape around her. There are earthquakes, tectonic-plate-type shifts. Or it’s like memory is a snow globe that invariably gets shaken so as to shroud the events inside. — Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

In whatever haphazard way I did it, I wrote the book. And yet I feel… nothing? The opposite of what I expected. I thought I’d jump up and down when I got myself here.

I’m familiar with this feeling of post-accomplishment numbness. I will work long and hard to achieve an ambitious goal. When I accomplish the goal, I fail to celebrate it because I don’t really know how. Instead, I immediately find something else to accomplish. Several years back, I ran a marathon and felt listless after it. (This is not uncommon. They call this post-marathon blues.)

How did I cope? I ran another marathon. Just a few weeks later. I do not recommend back-to-back marathons as a coping mechanism. Though I suppose it’s a better choice than some others.

I do not intend to immediately start writing another book because I don’t consider this one done yet. Maybe that’s also why I feel so “meh” about this milestone. I have so much more work ahead of me. I’m focused on the next phase that needs to happen.

That next phase is to prepare my manuscript for agent representation. I need to find an agent — the agent — who believes in my work as much as I do. Who will help me navigate this publishing business and help me sell my book.

I’ve no idea how long the agent search will take. Weeks? Months? It’ll take however long it takes, which pretty much sums up everything about writing a book. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about another marathon.

More from Betsy

📢 New writing! I have a short piece in last month’s Readers Write section of The Sun. It’s about growing up without a TV in Chicago when the Bulls were at their peak.

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