I Have Been Keeping a Secret

Written By: Lauren Howard

I have been keeping a secret.

Which is, like, something I don’t do normally.

But for some reason this one makes me feel anxious and self-conscious and presumptuous and and and and and.

The first draft of a book that I WROTE is sitting on my computer.

I’m fighting the urge to tell you all of the things that are wrong with it that make that not a big deal, which is what I’ve done any time I’ve told anyone that it exists.

That’s been a process.

I didn’t set out to write it. It just kind of came out of my hand while I was writing content for another new project and then I just couldn’t stop.

I told myself for literal decades that I could never write a book because I don’t do plot. I’m not here for complex character devices and storyboarding and all of the things that go into fiction. My brain doesn’t work like that. I don’t plan out what I write with any intention that allows for that much forethought. It just comes out.

I tell short snippets. That’s not a book.

What do I even know to put together like that?

And then one story turned into two turned into ten turned into thirty and what I was trying to write went out the window and now this is here instead like it was always the thing that was supposed to be.

I have no plans to do anything with it. I have no next steps.

I’m honestly working through piles of what feels like, shame? I guess? at even having the audacity to think I have a story to tell.

I’m working through the terror of anyone looking at it and having an opinion on it.

It might just sit where it is forever and never get a second glance.

But it is exists and, in so many ways, that’s a win because the only person who ever told me I couldn’t do it was me.

So it’s there. Waiting. Or maybe buried. Or something. Who knows.

But it’s there. And that’s big.

Loveyameanit.

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Lauren "L2" Howard

Founder & CEO at elletwo