That Moment When
That moment when you open your first box of hardcovers,
sitting in the first female-owned tattoo shop in your county,
in the company of two of the finest tattoo artists you know,
who helped you with the research for the book and are thrilled for you;
and your mom, to whom the book is dedicated,
whose tattoo made you fall in love with tattoos,
and who always believed you could do this.
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That moment when your novel gets a nod in Newsday,
the newspaper you grew up reading,
that you cut articles out of for countless school projects
(and always wished you could write for the kids’ pages)
Followed by… another local paper.
That moment when you get to celebrate
with all the people who have been asking you for years: “How’s the novel going?”
But most of all, this moment:
When the boy you’ve read 1,000 books to,
and who’s probably read 1,000 more on his own,
and has been asking to read your book for years—
when that boy is 12, and you tell him (with a bit of trepidation) “Okay”—
and he tells you, a hundred pages in,
“I can’t believe you wrote this. It’s a real book.
I want to know what happens next. It’s like a real writer wrote it.”
That moments beats them all.
Posted with his permission.
For my kids’ privacy, I don’t post much about them, but this was a special moment.