One and a half years ago, I took a week off of work unpaid to drive to Cincinnati, lock myself in a former convent for five days, and write the first draft of my manuscript.

I pulled out of Columbus on a a wet, gray Sunday afternoon, hit the freeway, and promptly began asking myself what the heck I thought I was doing.  I was lost for miles in this train of thought, until these lyrics intersected–

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

A year and a half later, I find myself preparing to leave tomorrow morning to pitch this same, completed manuscript to agents and publishers.  I drive home this afternoon through the sweltering heat and threat of thunderstorms, feeling that same threat internally. I’ve been running full steam ahead for a bit too long–the pressure has built to proportions that give me cause for concern.  Emotions are running high, and I am tired–the combination of which tends to make women like me a bit weepy.

I round the corner to my neighborhood after going to print my proposal, and I feel completely spent.  I wonder, yet again, what made me think I could do this.

And then the music begins.

I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned

My thoughts slam to a screeching halt, and I breathe a prayer of thank you for another reminder–for the same reminder–that there is more going on here than is apparent to the naked eye.

I crank it up to a head-turning volume, and I sing:

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Today is where my book begins.

The rest is still unwritten.

(Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten)

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