I typed The End this week. It’s an event that only happens once every two years, about as frequently as Tommy’s dental appointments. On Monday I typed a 100,000^th word, then pounded out the end with a flourish, sat back, and waited. I waited for a sense of accomplishment and celebration, half-expecting the coffee shop proprietor to pat me on the shoulder and offer a marshmallow latte on the house.

But really, when you consider the pounds of milk and coffee consumed on this venture of a novel, you realize how darn expensive it was. 

Instead of feeling the worthiness of my investment in our local baristas, my joy was crowded out by self-doubt. I felt transported to Tommy’s house in 11^th grade when he read my first novel and told me it sounded straight out of a Hallmark movie. Despite knowing he was absolutely and 100% right (classical pianist working a farm in rural Indiana? What was I thinking?), I still took umbrage that my life’s work to date could be so indiscriminately compared to the likes of Harvest Love. 

There’ve been three novels in between and one halfway scribbled out. I suppose they got progressively better, but despite my passion at the time for the characters, the worlds they lived in, I look back on every single one and wish I could shove it away.

Dissatisfied. Frustrated. Not good enough, not good enough. 

And now I’ve finished another, and even knowing that I’ve come a long way in the craft since high school, I can’t help but squint at my manuscript with suspicion. Are you going to be a disappointment, too?

I guess that’s the writer’s lot in life. To doubt, to be uncertain, to weigh sentences and find them lacking. My husband and best friend can tell me until the cows sing that it’s “good” (oh, that nebulous expression of feedback “it’s good”), but I still won’t believe them. I don’t know what it’ll take for me to think it’s more than mumbo-jumbo. Then again, maybe I never will. 

Today I would like to quit. I got a pharmacy degree. I’ll just focus on a career with less self-expression but a better paycheck. Trade the beloved for the safe and secure. Anything you’d like to quit? We could quit together. 

Problem is, I know I never will. I’ve been hooked since 1^st grade, since I made my first reader cry. I just need to figure out how to keep going, but today that requires more courage than I can give.

There’s been other things I wanted to quit. High heels, for one. Organic chem lab. Summer camp when they expected me to sing and dance with some semblance of rhythm.

To be honest, it’s the things that I wanted to quit most that have become the sturdiest foundations in my life. The moments I look back on with frank appreciation, realizing that they made me. That I needed them in order to become me. 

I have to remember how much I love writing. Remind myself how much it means to me. Life here on earth is an endless spool of story and I’m just beginning to unravel it. Once I get into the heart of a book, it becomes a lot less of me “creating” and a lot more of me “discovering,” as if the story has already been written and I’ve been granted the exquisite privilege of seeing how it ends.

So even if these pages, these words between the lines, never blast off for the moon, they were worth it. They taught me something, about myself or others or life itself. Helped me to see from another person’s perspective or catch a glimpse of God in the world that I hadn’t noticed before.  

I suppose that’s true for more than just writing. The effort, the process, the overcoming, being valuable in and of itself. No embellishment necessary. It’s true about the piano song I’m wrestling over. The prickly neighbor I’m trying to befriend. The habit I’m trying to break. 

It’ll take courage. Focus. Self-discipline. It’ll take getting up every day and setting a stiff upper lip and trying again. But the best things in life are only earned by “trying again.” Here goes nothing. 

Then again, maybe here goes something.