The Power of Almost
I almost finished five books this year.
Still, this year I had four books published, renovated my house, built a deck that will outlive me by decades, babysat-almost adopted-then rehomed one of the cutest dogs I’ve ever met, and came a couple days short of my second mental breakdown.
With everything leading to that final sentence, I’m assuming no one is entirely surprised, especially with everything outside of my control being what it is. But for those that don’t know, I’m also Bipolar 1, which should cause some of this to make more sense.
So. I almost cracked again. Came really, really close leading up to FactoryCon, my last con appearance for the year… so let me talk about that a little since oversharing always seems to help me.
First: apologies to anyone I’ve spoken to or worked with over the past, oh, six months or so. You likely met a guy rattling with anxiety and doing his best to pretend his hands weren’t shaking or that his head wasn’t buzzing from panic. While that’s a pretty accurate description of me (that was a joke; please laugh), it’s not who I try to be in person. You saw a neurotic version of me that I’ve kept careful tabs on for the past ten years and I’m sorry for any awkwardness.
Now, if we had drinks together, you met the real me. Alcohol breaks down that barrier pretty quickly (in the moment). Another reason I had a drinking problem about ten years ago.
Enough tangents.
On the way to my final con of the year, I panicked so hard, I couldn’t stop shaking. I drove almost the entire twelve hours down because I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t have something to keep my hands busy.
It was a miserable drive for my wife and I am utterly sorry for that as well.
Now, once we got to the con and started chatting (and had a couple drinks), I managed to fake it for awhile. Unfortunately, there is a fine line between “alcohol cutting the anxiety so I can function” and “oh fuck this hangover” and I sprinted past that line by ~7:30pm.
Which brings me to Saturday. Tabling day.
I woke up shaking. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, and any attempts to try and get the anxiety that I’d kept reasonably locked up the night before sent me crashing.
I’m not ashamed to admit I cried in the shower as I forced myself through the motions. This was a big reason why, when folks asked me about my books, more than once I looked at them with panicked eyes while my brain stopped working. Yeah, I was a little hungover, but that wasn’t what stopped me. What stopped me was this twisting knife of doubt and disgust with myself.
So, I fumbled through my pitches, sold a couple books, then went and hid for several hours before reappearing with a drink in hand and a smile on my face.
The next day we left early in the morning before my brain could try to break me again.
When we got home, my wife put me on a mandatory “vacation,” at least that’s what I called it. I mean, I still have at least 50k words to write on the final volume of this series and had run into a mental block. Why not take a break?
It was actually a bit of an intervention. Got back into therapy, spent a lot of time just catching up on shows and games I’ve been wanting to play, and tried to “refill the well.”
One week went by. Then two… and three… and as of yesterday, it’ll have been a month since I got home.
It’s only now I seem to be able to reopen my manuscript, to really dig into the story and start fixing the wrinkles that got in the way of writing this in the first place.
I almost didn’t. I almost hung up my keyboard and went out to grab a shitty job instead of finishing this series. I almost decided writing wasn’t worth it, that nothing I said or thought mattered. That the least I could do was become invisible and fade away quietly.
That’s the power of almost, isn’t it? I could’ve done those things, could’ve walked away and forgotten this weird dream of mine.
But I stayed. I started swinging by my desk daily as of last week. I waited until the anxiety started rattling my eyes, then I’d close whatever and leave. Every day, I’d open the manuscript of “Into the Æther” look at a word, then close it before I freaked out and deleted it. All 50,000 words of it.
Hell, I went so far as to duplicate the manuscript and delete everything.
Then yesterday I started reviewing what I have written. And it’s really not bad. Sure, this book is going to be the longest in the series (oh noooo), but if I can pull all these threads together, I think it’ll be an epic fucking close to this series.
So, what’s the point of this article? Admittedly, it’s mostly cathartic. I’m a natural oversharer and the past ten years have taught me that talking publicly about my mental health trials and tribulations eases some of that tension.
I almost didn’t (title callback ftw).
I almost tried to power through it.
And I almost cracked.
But I didn’t. I’m still here, I’m writing again, and I’m looking forward to closing this series and moving onto Maeveese, my Epic Fantasy (with science-based magic systems, races, and creation myths).
Let me leave you with this… a sneak peak at the next series, specifically the Maeveesan creation myth. The image below is a rendering of Sorcon, the Creator of Maeveese, in the moments after they grew angry and tore an entire continent off the planet only to launch it into orbit. There it became the second moon, Maeris. And from there, an entire planet was born…
Seems pretty familiar, honestly…
