Yesterday morning, I received an email with my edited manuscript. I was all prepared to dive into the edits and see how I could improve my writing before sending it back to the publisher for one more round of final edits.
Then, I read the email. The small press I had to decided to go with is shutting down as of January 1, 2025 and will not be publishing Catching Dreams.
Sometimes, I think I’m only worth the amount of XYZ I produce. I’m only worth my word count or the amount in my checking account. Sometimes, I think if I’m not producing art or making words appear on the page, I’m worthless.
But as I was sketching in my sketchbook recently, I rediscovered a phrase that resonated with me: “The creative requires as much care as the creation.”
All of a sudden, it feels clear. I’m supposed to take breaks. I’m allowed to have time away from writing and creating and doing. I can’t be a machine. I’m only human and that’s what makes me so beautiful.
It’s not about constant production. It’s about living life and having experiences and enjoying my life. So I need to forget about constant output and just enjoy the world around me. No longer am I going to entertain the guilt that has been a passenger to everything I do, instead, I’m going to focus on enjoying the journey.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my art and my writing. I have found sketch pads and notebooks where I have ripped out nearly every single page because I was expecting perfection out of myself. What a lofty goal – perfection ten out of ten times? It was ludicrous. I realized I stopped enjoying the process when I was so focused on the outcome.
It took me some time, and a lot of journaling, to revitalize my love for writing and art as a process. I spent today working on a painting where I told myself, no matter what, I was going to keep it and not throw it away. I accidentally spilled a blotch of purple paint on the corner and my first thought was that I needed to fix it, but instead, I just lived with it. And you know what? All Hell didn’t break loose. I survived, and the painting survived too.
I used to have a friend who said, “It’s not in spite of our flaws that we’re wonderful, it’s because of them.” And that’s the attitude I’m bringing into the new year. I’m enjoying my imperfections, whether it’s in my poetry, fiction, or art. I stopped creating for so long because I was expecting too much out of myself.
Now, I’m back to simply enjoying the process – no matter what the outcome may be.
To recap 2023, I moved to Independence, Missouri, in the last few weeks of December 2022 and started the new year with a brand new beginning. I left everything and everyone I knew to try a fresh start.
I lived with a roommate in Independence for a couple of months before we quickly learned how incompatible we were. I had a couple of jobs and worked on my writing.
For a few months, I just kept my nose to the grindstone, job searching, writing, making new friends, and creating art.
All the while, I was dealing with a bully who spread rumors about me and devastated my self esteem, which resulted in me tearing down this website and rebuilding it from scratch.
I let her erode at my self esteem until there was nothing of me left, and I was hospitalized. I was hospitalized twice last year because of my issues with my mental health.
I struggled immensely with being so far from my family and my loved ones, but I found a way – I continued to work hard and got a publishing offer on my debut novel and my poetry chapbook.
I made new friends while living in Kansas City and met a lot of great and memorable people. I experienced a lot of amazing things, whether meeting film directors and actors from genre films who encouraged me to shoot my own movies or going to see an aerial performance in an ice crystal cave.
I met people like the Mormon who wanted to marry me or the girl who took me to expensive lingerie boutiques and went swimming with me long after the pool had closed.
It was a year of ups and downs, but most importantly, it was a year of growth and new experiences.
We’ll see what 2024 holds.
My poem about my grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s is being published in an anthology, Forgotten Fragments of Time, to raise money and awareness about the disease, and I just found out a small press has accepted Catching Dreams, my debut novel!
They want to publish my book. My baby. The one that has been formulating in my mind since I was twelve and having vivid dreams about my grandpa after he died. The book that all began because I kept asking myself, “What if?”
They want to publish it. I never thought I’d be a traditionally published author, but here I am with a contract coming my way.
Isabelle Palerma 