Oh, hey! Ça va ? Welcome to another post about my memoir. Today, I talk about the writing process, specifically how I started writing The Book. This post is the answer to one question only; I can cover other writing-related questions in following posts, since this one is already pretty long. Are you new here? Hey, welcome! On The Blog, I share my journey as a self-published author; so far, I’ve given an overview of my memoir in Part I. Enjoy!
Contents
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How did you start writing The Book?
The Feels
Oh… I don’t even know where to start. And I definitely did not know where to start, where to go, or who to go to when I embarked on my writing journey in 2020. I was so scared and anxious. I’d never written a book before and I felt like I needed some type of writing credential to even entertain the idea of writing a book. It was so hard to convince myself that it didn’t have to be the case. I wasn’t much of a reader either, not having read a single non-academic book in years.
I wrote the manuscript entirely in English, and in case you didn’t know, French is my native language. Now, I do have a pretty good command of English, but writing a book in a foreign language is on another level. The weird thing is, despite feeling more comfortable in English–especially with certain topics I’ve only learned or experienced in that language–I still somehow feared that my writing wouldn’t be good enough to publish an entire book. I also wondered if my experiences truly warranted writing a book. I spent a lot of time researching people who had written memoirs, and they all seemed to have accomplished so much more. They’d done impressive things that, to me, justified writing a book. There’s even a journal entry on this topic that used to be part of my postface, but that I deleted during my last round of edits. This time, I didn’t delete the journal entry because of my fear of being vulnerable, as I talked about in my previous post; I removed it at the recommendation of my editor, who suggested I end The Book with my last chapter. That is almost what I did; I still wanted what’s currently in the postface to be written and published in my book. However, I may share that last journal entry here, on The Blog, after The Book is published.
As much as I dreaded what people were going to think about my book, I dreaded revisiting certain places–dark places–even more. Now that they were going to be part of my memoir, I knew I would have to experience painful feelings again as I tried to explain them through my writing. And what if my dream didn’t come true? What would be the point of writing a book about dreams if mine didn’t come true? Most people who wrote memoirs did so after whatever they shared had happened. Of course, by 2020, when I started writing The Book, 2017 to early 2020 had already happened; however, the second half of 2020 until the first half of 2024 hadn’t yet.
Something else that made it difficult to start writing my memoir was finding out that the average memoir was about 80,000 words long; half of that word count already sounded daunting, and I kept wondering how I was going to write this many words.
All this to say that I was fear-stricken for months! The level of procrastination associated with writing this book surpassed anything I’d ever experienced before. Let me break down my writing timeline.
The Timeline
December 2019 is when my desire to write a book emerged. It started as a thought, evolved into a feeling, before turning into a burning desire in January 2020. I’d just started a new job and was preparing for an exam at the time, so I used that as an excuse not to write. But deep inside, I was just scared.
Once I settled into my job and didn’t have to study for my exam anymore, my new excuse was the fact that I needed to replace my laptop. Yes, my laptop at the time was old and had some issues, but Word worked just fine. I kept repeating to myself that I’d start writing once I got a new laptop. Then I got a new laptop in April 2020. I was working from home and had more free time, but I could not get myself to start typing. I searched “How to write a book” on YouTube and Google eighteen million, four hundred and seventy-six thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two times. No kidding, I counted (😉). Research is all I did to convince myself I was making progress with writing my book.
When I finally created the DCTMWT Word document on my new laptop to actually start typing, I did so two weeks before moving back home from the U.S. to Cameroon, just so I could use the fact that I needed to pack as an excuse not to write. I wrote one page–the preface–on that day. Then I went back home, and what better excuse for not writing than wanting to be with my family and friends? I mean… what kind of human being would I have been if I’d opened my laptop, even just for an hour, when I could be catching up with everyone at all times?
The next time I opened the file was exactly two months later, on July 20th; I can’t remember how much I wrote, but it certainly wasn’t a ton. I started my Master of Marketing program online in September 2020, and back to school season was my opportunity to get into the writing mood. I continued to do some research, watched helpful YouTube videos, but didn’t write much. I had started a new program, so I didn’t have time to write a book haha. Sundays were supposed to be my writing days. Some days I wrote one or two pages, others, just a couple of paragraphs, if any.
Okay, I think I’ll just skip over to when I finally started writing consistently. So, when did I? In April 2021. Yeah… almost a year after writing the first page. What happened? Well… one of my goals for 2021 was to publish The Book in October, and for that, I wanted it to be ready by August. I wrote a few pages here and there on the weekends starting in January, but being four months away from my deadline, without a clear plan for how I was going to finish writing an entire book, was my wake-up call. So, on April 18th at 11 p.m., I made a list of topics I wanted to cover in The Book and roughly planned when I’d write about each of them. And every night, I spent around three hours in front of my laptop to complete my daily writing assignment. On days I didn't have class or school-related assignments, I spent more time writing.
It wasn’t easy–to say the least–but by June 2021, I had managed to write most of what you will read about the years 2017 to 2020. Since I wasn’t able to publish The Book that year as initially planned, I wrote about the first few months of 2021 at the end of that year. I didn’t write in 2022, nor did I work on anything related to this book that year. So, I started writing again in early 2023 until July 8, 2024; whenever possible, I kept a minimum of three months between an event and the moment I wrote about it.
As I’m sure is the case for many authors, my writing process wasn’t linear. So, even if by June 2021, I’d written a good portion of The Book, I still went back in later years to add or remove sections as I deemed necessary. That said, I wouldn’t have done any of this if I hadn’t somehow received some sort of confirmation that I should, in fact, write a book.
The Confirmation
Throughout the summer of 2020, when I was back in Yaoundé from Chicago, I started feeling a bit more at ease with the idea of writing a book. But just the idea. Before leaving the U.S. and after writing the first page, I remember praying and asking God to show me if writing this book was even a good idea. I told Him I didn’t want fame, that my goal wasn’t to become a best-selling author (I mean… would be nice, but it wasn’t the goal or motivation), and that I would be happy if one person in the entire world, just one, benefited from my book. I initially thought that one person was going to be my little sister Emma (not her real name), who is four years younger than me; I was fine with her being that one person, but I needed confirmation.
I didn’t know how I was going to get that confirmation without telling anyone about The Book, so I prayed. And throughout that summer, I had a few enlightening conversations with both family and friends.
My little sister and I often talked about her dreams and the things she wanted to achieve. She didn’t know that a path to accomplishing some of them existed, and I still remember the light and near disbelief on her face when I showed her possible avenues to get where she wanted to. For some of her other goals, she didn’t have a direct or accessible role model, so I shared bits of my story to encourage her not to wait until she’d seen someone do the things she wanted to do before doing them. And in many ways, Emma and my oldest niece Nora (not her real name either) contributed to my memoir. I noted some questions they asked about my journey in the U.S., a reminder to also answer them in The Book. For example, they are the reason I explain the process of finding an apartment in such detail.
I also discussed mental health with a friend who had struggled a little bit with hers. I related to her story and shared bits of mine. It felt good to have an open conversation on the topic of mental health with someone who didn’t think it only concerned a specific group of people, and I wanted more people to understand that.
“You have brought my dreams back to life.” This is what someone else told me during a conversation. I had and still have absolutely no idea how I did that, but when I heard him say those words, I was like, “Okay God, I got You. Say no more.”
Final Thoughts
Writing my memoir was therapeutic and rewarding. As much as I discovered new things about myself thanks to this book, it also made me reconnect with who I already was. This is too deep a topic to cover at the conclusion of a post, so I’ll come back to it in the future and throughout our time together in The Blog. 😉
From a writing standpoint, seeing my progress, both in terms of style and word count, was one of my favorite parts. I enjoyed writing, using words to tell a story and describe things in a way that I had never done before. I took a screenshot when I reached 40,000 words and almost every time I reached 10,000 more. The Book had a little over 85,000 words when I finished the very first draft in June 2021. After writing some more, I was at 90,000 words in September. Of course, writing a book is not all about word count, but I can’t say just how happy I was to have reached that milestone, considering 40,000 words once seemed unachievable. I guess everything really is a process…
Most of all, I am proud of myself for pushing through self-doubt, the impostor syndrome, the difficult topics, and the fear. Even when I thought it wasn't going to be worth it, I continued to write, sometimes with tears in my eyes. Even when things didn't work out and my dream didn't come true in 2021 and I couldn't publish The Book, I continued to write and edit and work on this website. For the first time in my life, I did something without being 100% ready; without all the tools and knowledge and financial resources; without knowing all the answers, and with absolutely no visibility on the finish line. I learned as I went; it was scary, but I am proud to have outdone myself in this way.
Writing a book–especially as a self-published author–also made me like reading and has forced me to pay attention to some things I previously overlooked. Like the copyright page at the beginning of a book. No kidding, now I read every single word of every single page of every single book I buy.
Super long post today, so I think I’ll stop here. Thanks for making it to the end. As always, use #DCTMWT (Dreams Come True and Mine Will Too) or #RDRMDA (Les Rêves Deviennent Réalité et les Miens le Deviendront Aussi) on social media and tag me on your posts. See you soon? Okay, can’t wait!
Câlins,
Danielle
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