To the novel I’ve not yet written,

I love you.

You are the bane of my existence and the thing I cherish above all others. You have plagued me, day and night, for decades. I’m kind of sick of it, but I just can’t let you go.

You spin such wonderful stories for me, my eyes following their twisting plots and heartfelt moments, like tracking dust motes in a sunbeam. They grow and contract, take on color and then fade, reach out across continents and oceans and then re-center on a small village and its people.
You flit from genre to genre, theme to theme, and I, your hopeless and helpless author, can only scramble after you clumsily, desperate to get a better glimpse, a more solid touch. A god chasing a nymph (though maybe in a less creepy way).

You have matured with me, risen through the ranks of middle grade to YA to New Adult to Adult. You have dragged me through research binges and uncomfortable questions and exciting discoveries, all in service to what you will become.

You have sat with me as I despaired over your existence. Wondered whether or not I would even bring you into this world. Would people like you? Would I like you? Sometimes I’m not convinced. Sometimes I am sure that my brain will never get it together, will never settle enough for me to create you.

And you want so badly to simply be! To be shared and laughed over and cried over and loved, because as much as I love you my love will never be enough. It can never be enough. My love will breathe life into you, but it will not sustain you.

So, like many things that are loved, I will eventually have to let you go. To hold on to you, tucked safely away in my mind from the claws of criticism and rejection, the banality of querying and paperwork, is a disservice to you. You don’t care about those things. And I love you too much to shackle them to you.

But not quite yet. I trust you, implicitly, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified. Loving you enough to release you is, by far, the hardest thing I have ever had to endure. Let me be selfish for a little longer, please?

All my Love,

Your author.

P.S. Please tell your sequel that they have to wait their turn. I cannot let them leave the nest if they are not even out of the egg yet.