My debut novel came out today. There will be a military fly-over later and a parade and also my husband will get me flowers. Life will make sense and I will become rich.

(Click here to learn more and maybe even purchase dat shit)

No, but really. Obviously none of that is happening. Something better happened, though. Something bitchy and pious sounding, something obnoxious that my inner child would’ve barfed at, but who cares what they think? They’re a weird mentally ill teenager writing Yu Yu Hakashou fanfiction. We don’t care what they think.

What has gone down is that I have become a better writer.

I’d like to thank a lot of people. Some of them I even remembered to put in the acknowledgments. But yeah, my Gramma, my husband, my friends and my kid. My first boyfriend who abused me. The teacher who used to mock me in front of the class. Y’all contributed to something great.

Squire of Sol II is not the first novel I’ve ever finished. It’s my debut, though, because it was the first one where something clicked. Where I could feel myself becoming better for writing it.

There isn’t really a way to explain this to people who don’t write or art or whatever. The fact that getting better contains a richness, a wealth that is incomparable to any other victory.

I didn’t finish college. I tried a few times. The first few tries I was busy doing drugs. Then I was busy recovering from doing drugs. Then I had to figure out what to do now that I didn’t have drugs.

Now, years into it, I’d love to go back to school. I’d love to devote time to just becoming a better writer. Maybe I will, someday. Not today, though. I’m almost nine months pregnant. Like all pregnant people, I am on hold when it comes to personhood. I am an incubator until I am a feeder and a holder. Eventually it’ll be worth it, and maybe someday I’ll get to be something else, but not yet.

Either way, it’s a wonder to uncover the lie of that–the realization similar to the one I had a year and a half after my last drunk.

My first drunk contained a peace I had never found, and I spent the next two decades seeking it out in booze and drugs. A year and a half after my last drunk, I realized I could access that peace whenever I was willing to be quiet enough.

I think I must’ve thought I wasn’t smart or lucky or healthy enough to become a “good enough” writer. That’s bullshit, though. In a big way that’s even me avoiding responsibility.

I can do whatever I fucking want.

Cool.