This is 40, Installment 6

My countdown to turning 40 has been inspirational. Ten years ago, when I first started staying home with my twins, I started writing a novel. TEN. YEARS. While it is not polished and I'm sure will still undergo many edits, it is FINISHED. I finished the ending last weekend. Maybe I cried. When you know characters and their dirty secrets and conflicts and what makes them laugh and love, and what they want in life, for ten years, you get emotionally attached.

Since September this year, I have been working feverishly on finishing the story, with my 40th birthday looming like a sweaty mountain ahead of me. I had to finish writing a book by the time I turn 40. Had to. And I did. I have never been so focused on one thing... maybe forever. It's the closest I've come to feeling like an Olympic athlete. It was almost all I thought about. Sorry, if I was absent from our conversation last time I saw you. Totally living in my book. Major shout out to my husband here... he has been amazing at supporting my writing, well always, but especially the past few months. He basically does everything.

However, my next goal is to send out query letters to literary agents by my birthday (March 17). So last night I sent copies of the manuscript (I feel so naked about this) to a bunch of wonderful humans who have agreed to be my beta readers* and give me feedback ASAP, so I can make edits before I send those letters out to agents. Now I have to write what most writers hate-- my synopsis. So, I'll work on writing that, while sweating profusely about what my beta readers will say, and await my birthday.

To think that I started this entry out thinking I would write about the gradual acceptance and incorporation of Mom jeans... this is better.

And this is 40.

*If you'd like to be a beta reader also...contact me. :)

My unattended kids have stolen my phones and filled it with pics like this.