The photo above is Book Baby 8..well as far as I have got with it for now. My original aspiration was to have it written and ready for release on 29 February 2024 but then “real life” got in the way and that’s not now going to happen.
As well as the two notebooks that make up about 40% of the first draft (best guesstimate), I have typed up most of that content. I’ll be open and honest- I haven’t written a word of it since 14 July 2023 and I haven’t typed a word since 20th October 2023.
I mentioned that “real life” got in the way….that may be a slight understatement. I don’t share too many details of my personal life in the posts on this blog but this post is one of the exceptions to that rule.
Cast your minds back to late August 2020 when the world was still pretty much in lockdown due to Covid. On 26th of August 2020, the Big Green Gummi Bear broke some news to me that imploded our family’s world. He had been diagnosed with a primary brain tumour and three weeks later, post-surgery, this was confirmed to be a stage 4 Glioblastoma. I’ll spare you the finer details. You can Google those at your leisure. Glioblastomas are evil tumours. It was a death sentence from the start. Only 25 % of people diagnosed with Glioblastoma see the first anniversary of their diagnosis.
And so began an emotional rollercoaster ride that lasted until 27th October 2023 when the Big Green Gummi Bear passed away peacefully in the care of our local hospice. Back in September 2020, he had been given 12-15 months to live but that wasn’t enough for him and he squeezed an extra 100 weeks into life.
Surrounded by family and friends, we celebrated his life on 10th November where there was laughter amid the tears. I hope it was a celebration that he would have approved of.
For most of that three-year emotional rollercoaster ride, I kept writing, using it as my escape from reality. I finished and published Book Baby 6. I wrote and published Book Baby 7. I started work on Book Baby 8…. but by mid-July I began to stress that I was making a mess of my first draft. Part of me thought about binning it but the more rational part said, “Pause” so that’s what I did. Conscious that I needed to feel as though I was still making progress, I decided to start to type up what I had written, setting myself small achievable word target goals.
Now, the goal is to pick up my pen again and finish that first draft. I’d like to think I can perhaps have it written by 29th February next year but now is not the time to self-impose deadlines on myself. Now is the time to heal and move forward as I take the first tentative steps away from that emotional rollercoaster and that is going to take time….
Please be patient with me and I’ll try to be patient with myself (something I am very bad it).
love n hugs to each and every one of you.
Coral xx
Coral McCallum 