Recovering from Rejection (AKA, The Novel That Almost Wasn’t)

First, some quick news!

I’m partnering with my local, independent bookstore to offer a Special Pre-Order Deal on my upcoming novel, This Animal Body. Buy from Eagle Eye Books (they ship just about anywhere for free!) and get a signed copy with a handmade wooden bookmark and custom inscription included. See below for a picture of the bookmark that I helped design and that my husband will be making.

Pre-Order This Animal Body Now

Also, Booklife by Publishers Weekly recently gave a great review of This Animal Body. You can read it here.

Now on to how we sensitive souls can recover from rejection…

As you might have intuited by now from the nearly imperceptible hints in my previous posts 😉, I’m super excited that my debut novel is coming out in a few, short months.

Now I want to share the behind-the-scenes story of how the novel came to be—including the bumps and bruises, frustrations and disappointments—in case it can help you on your own creative path.

By the time I was eight, I was in love with writing. My first journals feature stories like the one in which a boy named Pepper kills a deer for fun while hunting with his father. That evening he dreams that the deer he killed takes him on an adventure; he becomes a different animal every week until he learns to see animals as friends rather than prey.

Another is about a bunner—a bunny with stripes like a tiger—whose coat is so prized by humans, he’s one of only five left.

A third story centers on Oscar, an opossum who “was very happy until he found out that his forest was going to be turned into condominiums.”

You get the idea. The only thing I loved more than animals was telling purposeful and pointed stories about them.

Then, when I was twelve, I had the idea for a novel. With the impeccable logic of a child, I assumed writing something far longer and more complex than anything I’d ever tried previously would be a piece of cake.

As it turns out, I was right.

After several months of coming home from school every day and typing away for hours, it was done. All 141 pages. No hesitations. No doubts. No worries. I knew in my bones it was awesome.

So awesome, I had to share it with the world. I entered it into my middle school’s contest for books written by students. They told me it had to have illustrations. “Weird,” I thought, “but okay.” I drew illustrations on the backs of the typed, double-spaced pages and handed it over.

I couldn’t wait for others to share my joy over this amazing world I’d created. I knew they’d love the characters I’d poured my heart into as much as I did. They’d be equally excited by how the last chapter was almost identical to the first, but with an expanded meaning (the title, after all, was Spirals in Time).

Only, they didn’t. When I got my book back, it had the second-to-lowest possible score.

I was blindsided, shocked, totally crushed. The air leaked out of me like a punctured balloon.

I wrote a few short stories in high school, then gave up writing completely after college. I convinced myself I wasn’t good at it, that other things were more important. I began to wonder how anyone could pull off a novel—a real one, not just hastily strung-together childhood fantasies. It seemed impossible.

Fast-forward ten years (twenty from my school book contest fiasco), and I was just starting my coaching practice. I kept hearing about blogs as a way to get clients, so I started one and shared about topics that came up in coaching. Eventually, I had the idea for a series of short stories about the first hero to ever go on a journey to find his calling.

Without meaning to, I was doing it. I was writing again.

Then one day nearly five years later, I was on my way back from a walk through the woods when I saw a robin on the sidewalk in front of me. Her eyes were so deep and full and knowing that I immediately thought of how many belief systems hold humans as the pinnacle of intelligence and the highest form of life. In that moment, staring into the robin’s wise eyes, none of them made any sense to me.

As I stood frozen on the sidewalk, reflecting on how much animals had taught me over the years, the idea for a novel that reversed the typical human-at-the-top-of-the-hierarchy occurred to me. It was simple and crude at first, but over time it grew. Ideas arrived day after day and week after week as if from some other realm, unfolding slowly in the quiet and curious spaces within me.

And so I began to write a novel for the second time in my life. It was fun. It was joyful. It felt like coming home.

Still, I had doubts about whether I could actually complete such a large and complicated project. But soon I began to realize that I was writing about things that would have helped me during some difficult times in my teens and twenties. I wondered if they could be similarly helpful to others. At the same time, every time I recalled the robin’s amazing eyes, I knew others needed to experience them too.

In this way, over time, writing became less about me and more about them—the people who have struggled with depression and anxiety; the ones familiar with the gifts and challenges of being sensitive; folks trying to find a fulfilling and meaningful path in a world that’s falling apart; human beings who long for more connection with animals and nature; and the animals who want that connection just as much as we do. When I realized I was writing for them, completing a novel not only felt possible, but inevitable.

Because the truth is, my twelve-year-old logic really was impeccable. I am capable of writing a novel—always have been. It’s just that as an adult with wounds, conditioning, and limiting learned beliefs, what I need now is different from when I was a kid free from all that. Now, to gain access to the strength and courage necessary to take on such a daunting task, I have to have a slightly different strategy. I have to do it for the sake of something—or somebodies—far larger than myself.

If you happen to know one of those somebodies, you might consider gifting them a copy of my book. I really do think it can help people who are sensitive, depressed, or anxious, and who have a deep love of animals. And if you pre-order before April 2, 2024 from my local, independent bookstore, they’ll get a signed copy, a handmade wooden bookmark (see below), and whatever inscription you want me to write for them, all at no extra charge to you.