It has been more than 14 years of writing, saving, planning and procrastinating. In between all that, my blog got hacked and I lost the psyche to keep writing. Hello writer’s block.
For more than 5 years, I struggled to pick up a pen and scribble anything on my notepad. I tried everything to get back to writing unsuccessfully.
After the tragic demise of my loves, I eventually found myself in a constant battle to seek ways to deal with loss. I was deeply drowned in denial and acceptance was not an option. Coincidentally, I again resulted to expression through writing and typing out random thoughts. Poems. I realized I still held on to my long desired dream to publish my works.
I let fear engulf me. Listened to all sort of discouraging remarks with a number of those I floated my idea with. I listened to the few that encouraged me to proceed and get published. Fear still held me back.
One afternoon I woke up and decided to begin compiling the poems I had salvaged after the hack. I counted up to 170 poems. It took me 4 months to decide the direction my book would take, shred the poems down to 78 and come up with a title that fit.
Another several months of procrastination and fear followed. Every morning, I’d look at my ‘to do’ list and look the other way.
Until one early morning at around 0237am. I could not sleep and woke up to tidy the kitchen. Yes, I am one of those people. When I was done, I walked to our living room and stared at the quiet walls facing me. Went through my goals for 2019 and added ‘Publish my book’ to the list. I sketched a rough timeline of how I would go about achieving that. I knew what I wanted from the word go so went on to set time to work on my manuscript each day. That became a habit I could not do without until I hit the ‘publish’ button.
Long story short, the end result of this was this: A Heart in Ruins.
So you see, not everything in life comes from an easy place. I am not yet where I’d want to. The journey has only just began. We have to be willing to shake ourselves out of our comfort zones in order to succeed. You have to be willing to make a sacrifice and never ever give up. You will encounter challenges along your way that are meant to distract you from the primary objective. Keep going. Do not look back.
During our weekend vacation to Lisbon, Portugal, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a travel buddy, friend and vlogger Cess about my book. You can watch that on https://youtu.be/nILI5xQ9UOQ to learn a little more about it.
Thank you for making time to read and watch the video. Kindly grab yourself a copy of ‘A Heart in Ruins’ here https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Ruins-Poetry-Love-Healing/dp/1087345669 , enjoy the read and leave a review.
Stop. Go. Experience Life 