It’s hard not to be meta in this time period when we have so much information flowing at us, but I have noticed that there’s a weird sort of detachment that comes with maturing as an artist. Case in point: Even as I put all this sweat into my novel manuscript, I know that it isn’t the end-all be-all of my career, message, mission, voice… and I don’t need it to be. I understand that I am going through my own arc of artistic development and this novel—for all the work that is being invested in it—is simply a measure of that progress. Is it deep? Is it thematically rich? Is it saying something? Does it represent a culture? Does it offer insight into the human condition? I don’t know. It may not event be the best story I could tell, it is simply the novel that got done.

Let’s not get it twisted: being meta about it can be depressing. Who doesn’t love the romance of the vision of the writer pounding out a manuscript with passion and drive and that novel being published to great acclaim.

Alas, that wasn’t/isn’t my story. I have been studying the beast that is the novel since 1995-that will be 20 years next year. Even being someone who is naturally talented at writing and who met success with publishing short stories relatively instantly, I did not translate that talent into easily writing novels. My story was/is: try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, try, fail. I repeated that cycle many more times than I care to count. Add in there stretches of inaction, depression and dissatisfaction due to the fact that I could not do what it is that I clearly have it in me to do, and you could say it took me a stretch of 20 years to learn this novel writing business. That’s depressing.

Beyond finding my own struggle depressing, I also find getting the real truth from writers depressing. Truths such as:

• Keep your day job
• Writing a novel never gets easier
• After writing multiple novels, no one wanted to buy my latest novel
• Unless they think you’ll be a megastar, you’ll have to do your own promotions
• It took me ____ years before writing finally started to pay the bills.

Maturity, to a great degree is moving past magical thinking. I miss my magical thinking-in my 20s you couldn’t tell me I wouldn’t be an important voice in literature soon-but I know that it’s my mature, meta thinking that got me here. Being meta about being a writer helps you withstand the difficulties without defining yourself by them; it quite simply helps you carry on.

On the occasion of completing the third draft of my novel and moving seamlessly and painlessly into my fourth draft, here are a few mature reflections:

1. I now have the mental fitness to write *and rewrite* a novel manuscript, moving it in the direction of a body of work that has a complete arc.

2. I now have the logistics and the process to fit novel writing into my very busy life.

3. I have a new form-novel-writing-that I can experiment with and stretch out into: a space for artistic growth.

4. All the effort and consternation is not in vain.

5. I am potentially adding another book to my list of titles, which is central to my vision of the artist I want to be.

Those are the boring/exciting facts people. You’ll notice that publishing and superstardom is not on my list. Those two things are out of my hands. The mature artist in me knows that I have more basic things to work on before those two things are even a possibility. You know you’re in maturity land when you’re still at it-even beyond the magic and the dream.

Carry on!

Be well. Be love[d].

K. Ibura