It has been exactly one year since I received my first copies in the mail of a book that had been several years in the making; my book, finally in my hands. No, my life has not changed dramatically since then. There have been no black tie events, interviews or even any kind of large-scale notoriety. And yet, I am a vastly different person than I was on January 25th, 2023.
Publishing a book, irrespective of what happens thereafter, will change you radically. After spending months, or in my case, years, working on something in virtually total secrecy and without any form of validation to push you on when your motivation sags, there is no going back. You are a much more tenacious and self-driven person after such an endeavor without having done anything obviously remarkable. Sitting down and writing something is not heroic, and yet it is. Walking around and thinking up an idea is not a daring stunt, and yet it is. You come to understand that there is much more in you than what you thought, and that true validation comes from within.
The process of publishing a book will also give you a new appreciation for small, incremental progress. Very rarely will your progress look like a full book, half a book, or even a full chapter or section. More often than not, your victory for the day will look like a page, a paragraph, or even a handful of words on a napkin. It may even be nothing at all except that comment someone made, or that graffiti under a bridge that later becomes a poem or a story. A road is built one truckload of concrete at a time. A machine is put together nut by nut and bolt by bolt. After publishing a book, you come to understand that achieving anything noteworthy takes time. You become more patient with life, and with yourself.
There is also the matter of realizing how large the world truly is, even if it seems small with today's deeply interconnected and technologically advanced societies. The chore of marketing your work really impresses upon you just how much art is truly out there, and how many other voices are crying out in some concrete wilderness or other, just wanting to be heard, by the right people, or by anyone at all. The nice thing about the 21st century is the ease with which you can encounter people, a world, and a word, away, who are doing the same things as you, trying just like you to build a legacy for themselves, hoping to achieve that pseudo-immortality that a legacy implies. After all, everybody wants to live forever.
The Israel of January 25th, 2024 is on the surface at least, the same Israel of January 25th, 2023. He still works the same job. He still frequents the same cafes and still is remarkably guarded around people, save for a chosen few. He's still a small-time sports blogger struggling for readership. The basic reality of the man has changed little.
But under the hood, things are very different now. For starters, writing is no longer a mere hobby done on a whim without care for whether or not I excel at it. It is more like a second career now, but without the steady paychecks. I demand a certain standard of myself these days because I am no longer merely trying my hand at something. I am a published author now, with all the responsibilities that this entails. From now on, all my future works will be judged accordingly, not least by the author himself. There is also a much greater emphasis in creating more mature works with a greater finesse and structure. And yet, I want to be careful to not lose the adventurous streak that made writing a joy in the first place.
Another profound change is a heightened awareness of the art in things. Once a poet, you cannot help but see the poetic quality in both the joy and sadness of life. Once a storyteller, you cannot help but see the mood shifts, the foreshadowing, the character development of the stories unfolding in your own day-to-day life. Even the way you take in other artworks changes. A movie is not just fun or boring anymore. It is a work of art or it is not. It has a coherent plot, or it does not. It is an aesthetically pleasing experience or it is not. An author, once an author, can never escape the mindset of an artist. There is also that new hyper-awareness of how one's cultural and emotional experiences help shape the art one creates. Suddenly, your culture is more than where your parents were born and your emotions have a new life as a tangible creation with which people can interact.
It is also worth noting that people see you differently once they know your dirty little secret, ie: that you're a published author. Many will admire you for it, and see you as an inspiration to chase their dream. You can feel the newfound respect from friends and certain colleagues. You also become the object of fear in some cases as well. For example, recruiters from companies never try to poach me anymore, perhaps out of fear that literary success could come and poach me away from them. Unsolicited messages from them used to be a common occurrence before last year. Others will fear the newfound confidence and ‘can-do’ spirit that finishing a major project brings. Such a person is harder to break, harder to manipulate, harder to contain. And there is inevitably some envy.
In the end, the journey of publishing my first book was a new beginning. It was a final break from the directionlessness and sense of monotony that defined much of my 20's and the start of a new identity that will (hopefully) eventually come to define my 30's. No, this is not a Horatio Alger tale. I have not become rich, famous or really celebrated at all. My new works are being fabricated in much the same anonymity as my first works were. But, purpose is no longer just a buzzword heard on the corporate circuit. It is now something liveable every time I pick up a pen or type a new idea into an empty Google Doc. It may still be a struggle to find time, or find an audience. And yet, there is a poetic quality to that struggle. If the first twenty nine years of my life were wandering aimlessly through the desert, then let whatever remains be that long awaited homecoming, that return from exile to the life I needed to be living all along.
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