I spent months and months deciding on a name for each novel. Considering thousands of options before choosing the right one. When it came to designing the cover it was agony personified. For example, for Take The Highway, I looked and tens of thousands of stock images before I chose the right figure to place in the middle of the book cover design. And you don’t want to know what happens during the process of the actual writing of the novel. I am sure you’ve heard of method acting. I do method writing where I live inside the world of the novel for the whole duration of writing withdrawing from my immediate surroundings. I remember when I read Life of Pi, I thought to myself: “Thank God I didn’t write this novel, because I would have placed myself in a drifting boat in the middle of the ocean and nearly starved myself to death in order to write it.” In the past, when I wrote a novel it was with monk like devotion to the writing process. I lived and breathed for the novel. Dreamed about the events of the novel at night. And then when I wrote “The End”, instead of having a sense of accomplishment I would plunge into a depression. I don’t fully understand why this happened each time I finished a novel. For two to three months I would feel blue. Was it because I was no longer living in the magical world constructed in my imagination? Was it because I was missing my imaginary friends whom I invented for my novel? Or was it because I dreamed of a brilliant work of fiction to rival the greats, and the reality of the finished product didn’t meet the high bar set from the get go? 

I don’t know exactly why this happened each time. Probably a combination of several factors. Or maybe some hidden factor I don’t have insight to. 

Two years ago, I received an invitation from a professor to attend an online lecture he was giving. The topic of the lecture included a discussion of my novel Spoonful Chronicles. I accepted. This person talked about my novel like it was a work of genius. He talked about me like I was Dostoyevsky, a literary grand master. I kept it together. Answered all questions directed to me, nonchalantly. When the lecture was over and I turned off my computer. I felt physically uncomfortable. Feverish like. My whole body started to shake, I had to go lie down to calm down for a whole hour before I could function again. It was one of those clarifying moments. I realized that I didn’t believe it. Whatever that professor saw in my writing, I didn’t believe it myself. I wanted it. I really really wanted it. But I didn’t believe that I am capable of achieving my own desire.  

Now that I am writing this blog post and reflecting on things I am having a second realization from that incident: I need to work on believing that I can have that which is my heart’s desire. 

I started out this blog post thinking: “I care too much, I need to care less.” 

I suppose the title of this blog post should be: “How to enjoy doing the things that I care about?”

Midway the mission has changed. It’s not that I can too much. It’s that I don’t believe and then I compensate with frantic level of effort. 

For all who are asking “when is the next novel coming?”  

I am writing a novel that deals with the theme of having it all. Especially for women. Is it possible to have: career, family, romance, hobbies, success, adventure, intellect, happiness …. the whole shebang. I really really want the answer to be yes. My intention is to tell a story with a happy ending. But, I also know that I can’t write it, unless I believe it. It has to become real in my heart before it I created in black and white on a sheet of paper.   

I am done with torture as means of productivity. Self flagellation as motivation. My goal is to write it with pleasure. I want every part of this to be fun. Thinking about it, writing it and releasing it into the world. 

If you have advice on how to get there, I would love to hear it.