Doubting Gayle

Most of us have heard the story of Doubting Thomas in the Bible. I have found myself in those shoes over the past months. I had no idea what I expected the day I sat down to write, what turned into a novel. To be honest, my thoughts hadn’t gone much further than putting words on paper. I then shared those words with friends who encouraged me to write more, and then even more. At times it was an easy process, with words flowing like a river, at times smoothly and other times the rapids would almost unseat me. The Hawke family had a story to tell, and I became the vessel to do that. Then as most of you already know, I hit the wall and the words dried up for about five years. One morning I woke up and my friends the Hawkes were back, and I began once more to write again. It was a feeling of joy as I could hardly keep up. Once more my friends were there to cheer me on and encourage me.

One day, on Facebook, I asked kind of as a lark, does anyone know a publisher and a friend Lorna, responded. She said try Terry at TURAS publishing, so I did and as we know I received a positive response, and chapters were sent, as more was being written. To my amazement, she liked it and was willing to publish it. My emotions were a rollercoaster, and my expectations were naïve. First, I had to take a deep breath and take a machete to the manuscript, chopping it from 90+ chapters to the final 64. Silly me I figured we had it in the bag, but the work had just begun.

Over the next few months, I don’t know how many times I read and re-read the story of the Hawkes. One day I’d be excited the next I’d wonder what the hell was I thinking. I had no idea the hard work that went into editing a book, and no it wasn’t so much my hard work but Terry who put in the blood, while I had some sweat and maybe a tear or two. After much agonizing work, we were ready for the Beta readers to read and give their impressions. Once more I believed we were at the end and shortly, we’d be published. Again, I had no idea all the work my publisher was doing in the background, her dedication to make it the best possible product.

I hate to admit there were days I wanted to quit when I asked myself, what was I thinking, what if no one liked it, what if she’d been wrong and people would not want to pay to read my offering despite all the encouragement I’ve gotten over the years. Then my biggest fear would rear its ugly head, not the fear of failure but the fear of it being a success. If it failed, I could always rationalize I’d given it my best shot, be glad I tried and had the experience. But if it succeeds then people will think I can do it again, draft another book and go through the whole process again.

Yet, despite all my angst and doubt, here we are standing on the edge of publication, pre-orders are being completed, a book signing is scheduled, I’ve been able to hold the finished product in my hands, and in a couple of weeks, it’ll be presented to the world. Why do I want to hold it up like Rafiki presented Simba to the Pride lands? And still, I struggle with doubt that it’s real, that it will sell, but most of all that I can do it again.