How to move forward step by uncertain step

Warning: May contain metaphors about mountains and manuscripts

Winter hike in Sedona, Arizona.

This is what it feels like:

You're no longer where you started, the familiar path behind you is obscured, and the destination ahead is completely hidden.

You can't quite see the terrain under your feet. Forward progress feels slow and uncertain.

You're in a state of flux, relying on instinct and perhaps a faint inner compass, knowing that this obscured passage is a necessary part of the journey to reach a clearer vista on the other side.

Does this feel familiar?

Here’s how I got here.

Publishing Trek

After releasing my book in mid-April—a seven-year trek—when asked at lively book launch events and in conversations with wonderful book clubs what getting a historical fiction published is like I’ve fallen into an analogy about hiking.

When you start to research and write your book it’s like you’ve started an invigorating march up a shaded mountain trail. You can see your destination of a finished book far up ahead, a summit shining with cheerful sunshine.

You stay on the sun-dappled slope as best you can, avoiding bushwhacking down research rabbit holes or taking too many spur trails with story craft books. It’s a steady climb and after you’ve written and revised and had beta-read and polished your manuscript to its glorious finished form, you arrive!

Except. . .

This is a plateau.

You’re not at the peak yet. Off to the side is a connecting trail you’d heard about but hadn’t truly factored in called, Getting Published.

OK, so you start up that path. It feels denser. Navigating an uncertain agent/publisher terrain feels less like creativity, more like slog.

Now alongside your manuscript, in your backpack slides agent research, multiple versions of query letters, subscriptions to “how to get an agent” services, notes about agents from author friends. After several months when the queries go nowhere, you jam in lists of small traditional and hybrid publishers accepting un-agented stories, and add their intro letters now into your stuffed Dropbox pack.

(You toy with adding bulky self-publishing tools but honestly that just feels too heavy this time on the trail.)

Then like a sudden burst of sunlight, it happens! Accepted by a publisher! You crest the hill!

You’ve made it!

Except. . .

It’s another plateau.

For hidden from view from down the trail a switchback jogs in another direction: Book Production.

OK, you set off again. Lots of shade here. As you trudge, you pop into bits of sunny clarity on cover design, then copy editing and getting permissions and finding generous authors who will write blurbs and proofreading and more.

Though it’s sagging, you add publicity to your overstuffed pack. A trail mix of writing guest blogs and doing podcast interviews and soliciting book reviews and applying for book contests and posting on your socials.

Stride after stride there’s either a production or publicity step.

The summit looks pretty far away and honestly, you’re getting a bit leg weary, only this time—this time—you are confident. There’s a definite end point up ahead. For your destination has a date: A Publication Day date.

You’re breathing hard; your feet hurt but still you can take one final glorious stride and there! You’re on flat ground! You’ve arrived!

Your book is published!

You cry a little. And you gaze at this wonderful panoramic view before you with its vista stretching far to the horizon with maybe a little rainbow cresting in the corner and you’re happy. You put down that backpack weight, close your eyes and rest. You feel the radiance of congratulating friends and book lovers.

You’re grateful.

Totally worth it. Every step.

Except. . .

That wasn’t the peak.

Darn it (you guessed it)! Another switchback. Only now it zags up a trail of Book Sales and Promotion.

So, I take a deep breath and shoulder my pack again. Staring up ahead I can just make out a patch of wild berries and hear birdsong within the trees while far, far in the distance I think—yes!— I see a summit.

Should I trust it?

Back at the Beginning

I’m no longer where I started, the familiar path behind me is obscured. Now I know the destination ahead is completely hidden.

I can't quite see the terrain under my feet—and that’s OK. Forward progress feels slow and uncertain—but I’m not in a rush.

I’m in a state of flux, relying on instinct and perhaps a faint inner compass—and I’ve grown to be patient and to trust this. I know that this obscured passage is a necessary part of the journey to reach a clearer vista on the other side—and it will be worth it.

What a grand adventure it all is.