I’m an Author

I’m an Author. Not just a blogger, a casual writer, a journaler, a doodler or a noodler. Not an enthusiast, not aspiring, not hopeful, or an amateur. I am a real life Author. I know it because the LIBRARY said so.

This past October I completed and self-published two books. I quite literally thought ‘Who the hell am I that I’m just doing this?’ Under no one’s authority but my own I just decided I’m going to publish these two books. I did the research. I figured out how self-publishing works. I learned about copyright law. I learned how to typeset. And I did it. I put out two books. At the same time. In just six months.

But, despite what everyone around me celebrated as an incredible achievement, I honestly didn’t think of myself as an author at that point. So what? I hyper-fixated for six months and put out two books. No big deal. They aren’t real books anyway. It felt like because I had done it, it somehow wasn’t legitimate. Especially because my books are guided journals. In between my writing are blank pages for the reader to write their own thoughts. I didn’t have my own words on every page. I didn’t write a full length serious novel. I didn’t write a serious contribution to literature. I wrote these guided journals and just put them out into the world myself.

That doesn’t count.

Never mind, that I wrote over ten thousand words for just one of the books and about seven thousand for the other. Never mind, that the books were based on over a decade of professional and personal experience. Never mind, that for each book I created a unique system for people who are struggling to get out of stuckness and find a way to a life they love. Never mind the passion, heart, and soul that I put into these books. Never mind that I set out to write books that I hoped would truly help people. Never mind any of it. I did it all on my own without any outside confirmation, approval, or permission. I did it on my own audacity. And so it didn’t feel real. It wasn’t like I got a book deal, an editor, an agent, or any of that. It wasn’t like I was approached to write a book. I just did it.

It felt like I was playing pretend or dress up.

The honest truth is that I still see myself as a beginner. Not an author. But someone who still needs classes. Someone who still has so much to learn. I really truly honestly feel that I am just a beginner. Who am I to be called a writer? An author? A professional? Those words apply to other people. Not me.

I feel like a little kid trying to get into a grown up’s club. I want so desperately to be seen as a writer and author. But the belief that I have so much more work to do to become a grown up and join that club has held me back from claiming the titles writer and author.

Especially because writing was never a career path that I was allowed to pursue. But boy did I want to. It was actually more than want. It was just the way I was. Since I can remember.

My favorite activity in kindergarten was when we got what felt like a huge pieces of paper. It was terrible quality paper. It almost felt chalky, smelled weird, and was a weird grayish brownish color. But I could care less about the paper quality. It was the vastness of the paper and the freedom it gave me. The top was wide open and the bottom had lines. One black line, then a dotted blue line, and another black line. This pattern repeated several times down at the bottom of the page. Our task was to draw a picture and write a sentence about it. The dotted blue line bisected our giant unwieldy letters trying to guide us on fitting our words in. The picture and sentence could be a true story or a made up one. This was my chance to say what I wanted to say. To tell a story.

This was my favorite activity. Five years old and my most favorite activity was writing a story that I had in my head. Not a field trip. Not recess. Not snack time. Not playing house. Not story time. None of it. I remember writing my own story and illustrating it. It was my absolute favorite.

In the 4th grade, my teacher Ms. Wilson gave each student their very own Writer’s Notebook. WNB’s she called them. She said all writers had a WNB. It was just a basic black and white marbled composition notebook. But for me it was magic. It was my space to be a writer. From then to now, I have always had a WNB. My most precious possession to record all the seeds that might one day turn into writing or sprinkles of wisdom or inspiration that support the expansion of my mind. It all goes in my WNB.

A couple years on from there, a middle school assignment thrilled me. We got blank hard cover books and made our own children’s stories with text and illustrations. I still have the one I made called ‘The Bird Who Couldn’t Fly’. It’s made up of extremely basic early computer images physically printed out and physically cut and pasted onto the page. When I made it, I didn’t think it was tacky. I was so proud of the story I created. Even then I was focused on creating work that would inspire my reader. The moral of ‘The Bird Who Couldn’t Fly’ was to stop thinking too hard, focusing too hard, and trying too hard. When you relax and don’t think, then the thing you are trying to do comes easily to you. Sound advice even now.

But all this was overshadowed by the authority figures in my life. Everyone well meaning, but repeating the same message: you can’t be a writer. A writer isn’t a real job. A writer is just another type of starving artist. If you want to be a writer, how will you live? This continued into high school where I quit the writing club for more business oriented clubs. Clubs that would look better on college applications. And it carried into my college applications. I was told I had to pursue a degree that would ensure I had a lucrative future. Feeling defeated, I gave up writing.

But the problem is, as Kafka said, “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” Pursuing anything but writing felt like courting insanity to me. I was always angry, frustrated, and uncertain why. I was following the path I was supposed to, so things should be great. But they weren’t. I couldn’t not write. It was making me crazy. So words came out of me at all times in odd ways. After college, I had my main job as an Operations Manager. But a side hustle of writing business plans. And boy were those business plans the most well written, literary, powerful, moving business plans anyone had ever read.

I deeply believed what I was told, that I couldn’t be a writer. But I didn’t want to be an Operations Manager. So this led to quite a few years of, well if I don’t want to be in the business realm, what do I want to do? I spent years chasing my tail trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. Everyone around me was baffled. How can you not know what you want to do? And I myself was making myself crazy. How could I not know what I want to do? It should be so clear. Doesn’t everyone know what their calling is? Doesn’t everyone know what they want to do? It seemed like everyone knew their callings but me.

When I finally caught my tail, I realized that I had been spinning around the thing the entire time. I’m a writer. I was born a writer. I was a baby five year old writer with my giant sheets of crummy paper and illegible handwriting. I was a teenage writer with my crummy computer graphics and a children’s story about a flightless bird. And now, today, I am a self-published writer.

But claiming that title of author required something more.

This past Friday something happened to shake the foundation of how I see myself.

This past Friday I received an email congratulating me and offering me a spot for tabling and book sales as part of the Austin Public Library’s Greater Austin Book Festival. To stay I was astonished is an understatement.

Every year the Austin Public Library System invites local authors in the Greater Austin area to apply to the Greater Austin Book Festival. According to the event page, the festival is for “our community of readers, writers and illustrators from Travis, Williamson, and Hays Counties to come together for a full day celebration of books. At GAB Fest you can meet participating authors, buy books and get them signed, explore the Central Library, and enjoy a full day of panels, workshops, and programs.” I applied mostly without thinking about it. I didn’t really think I would get in.

But I did.

This is the most official moment of my life. More than any diploma or any certification. This is the Austin Public Library System saying that I, Sarah Veyland, am an author. This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.