The beginning of a long journey
Dear Reader,
I have anticipated this for quite some time, though, I suppose for you, this is a simple thing. Please, bear with me; I intend to speak on something very important and dear to me.
As the title suggests, I am starting my journey as an author (publicly, anyway), and I am kicking it off with this: my first ever newsletter for my first ever audience.
There are 32 of you, and being able to share this beginning with you has me so sentimental that I might go and cry when I finish writing this (as I generally find it poor sport to get my keyboard wet).
I will get more sentimental in a moment, but first, I'll wrap up the business end of this newsletter: next month, sometime before November 30th, 2025, I will have finished the first draft of my first novel, Craven. And as a side-note, I have a newsletter and a website now. Surprise! I hope you like it. I tried really hard to make it pretty.
I tried really hard to make it home.
A lot of websites have been that for me, been 'home', but I was always only visiting. Now, I've finally made my own. It really feels so wonderful, so freeing, to seize the means of production have a space like this that is purely mine.
I wonder if this is what it feels like, to buy a house? I guess I could read up on it— there won't be anything in nonfiction, of course, but I'm sure someone has written a fantasy book about it.
x Sighs wistfully x
I had aspirations for this whole 'author' thing when I was young, and believed fervently I'd be published at 15, though I never actually finished anything. I tried, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Back then, I could barely even bring myself to try.
I'm really grateful for her, though— my past self– for dragging me here to the starting line. For whatever reason, it seems to be the only spot thus far on which the sun does shine.
Privately, this journey started in earnest on January 1st, 2025, when I made it my resolution to write 1,000 words each and every day, totaling, of course, to 365,000 by year's end. At the same time, I dedicated the rest of my life to my writing, that I may someday get live as my true self— even if for only one day.
Personally, this journey started when I was very, very young. I wrote, and I wanted to keep doing that, and I would lie awake at night, fantasizing about some day becoming a 'real writer'. I fantasized about book signings, about teaching small and quaint classes on course structure, but mainly,
I fantasized about this, Dear Reader, about having an audience, that what I write might actually some day be read.
For me, this is more than a newsletter: it's a monument to the efforts of my past self, a way of honoring my inner child, it's wish fulfillment given life, it's simply...
what I have always been waiting for.
That, I suppose, is why I find myself so overwhelmed by my emotions.
I say this a lot, but, for once I suppose I really mean it,
"After all these years,"
finally,
I can begin my journey.
Thank you for reading.
-R