Realizing I've Outgrown This

I have been trying to write this blog post for about a week now. There’s somehow too much to say and not enough words to say it all at the same time. A while back I made a blog post about finishing my “first” book and my plans for publishing it. There are a couple of things I would like to address, but we’ll start here: I put “first” in quotes because Serendipitous Timing is not actually the first book I wrote.

I couldn’t tell you which book was the first, but there were many before Serendipitous Timing. There was the book about a girl whose little sisters got kidnapped after years of her having terrifying nightmares of that exact scenario. There was another book about a love triangle ending in a fatal car crash resulting in no one ending up together. Then there was the painfully heterosexual one involving a hopeless romantic dude with divorced parents falling in love with the tough girl whose mom died when she was five by falling out of a tree. These were all started around middle school and of them all, only the third listed was ever completed, which happened as I was entering high school.

So Serendipitous Timing wasn’t the first book I wrote–or even the first book I finished. It was the first book I was going to publish. And that has pretty much stayed the plan with ST this whole time.

But I have recently come to a new decision regarding Serendipitous Timing: I’ve decided to put it back on the shelf. Is it done with forever or just being saved for a rainy day? At this point, I don’t know. What I do know is that every time I comb through ST to re-read or edit, my mental health takes a hit. The stuff I wrote was really raw and really personal, and throughout the editing process, it has been triggering to be so poignantly reminded of the pain and trauma that I went through.

I have spent most of this lifetime writing about pain and trauma, sometimes fictional but oftentimes my own. But I’m at a point now where that just isn’t what I want to write about anymore. I feel as though I have outgrown these stories.

I am taking my writing career in a different direction now, a new direction. I am no longer the drunk and brokenhearted person I portrayed myself to be in Serendipitous Timing. I would like to write about all of the things I am experiencing now–not five-plus years ago! Because what’s happening now is really exciting!

For starters, I am getting married to the most beautiful, wonderful woman I have ever met in a few months. She is my rock, my best friend, and my biggest cheerleader through all of life’s ups and downs. The endless support and love she shows me has been instrumental in my long process of healing and growth. I am so excited to marry her and continue our life together. If I could just go back in time and tell me from five years ago: “It’s okay to let go. You’ll find her soon enough.” Pain always seemed to be my muse, and then my wife came along and showed me there was so much more worth writing about.

Some other things worth noting: I work at a dispensary and have gotten quite fast at trimming! I also did my second performance as a drag king last week, and that was quite the blast! (Spoiler alert: it included me lip-syncing to a Perry the Platypus mash up which is always a win!! But oh dear, the glitter is STILL on my porch!!) I am also planning to start a new era of novels: supernatural lesbians, starting with lesbian vampires of course!

There are a lot of changes happening at Theodore’s Word Salad right now, and I hope you’ll continue along for the ride. I am still figuring out where I want to be which leaves us beautifully and unapologetically back under construction once more. So I hope you will take this leap of faith with me into new waters and stay tuned in for my creations to come!

Gently,

Theo