The Signing

You are sitting in a bookstore behind a glossy walnut table. Books are stacked on your left and right, your book, your name printed on the front and back cover. People are lining up down the aisle, waiting for a chance to speak to you and get your signature. It’s apparent you feel out of place. You never expected anything this big to happen to you. Success, and it smells like freshly printed pages, one of your favorite smells.

You posted your first story on social media, and you were surprised at the reactions. Friends and family asked for more and encouraged you to write a book. It took you a while to accept you might have the talent to write. Your past held you back. A failure at your high school career, you dropped out at sixteen. How could you let anyone convince you you are a writer? Now here you sit as if you belong at a book signing.

You should have continued to keep all the words and ideas locked in your mind. However, you opened the gates, and the stories flooded page after page. You spent hours creating your own world, built on thoughts alone. You didn’t know anything about writing, but you faked your way through, just like one of your fictional characters. Unlike you, that little voice in the back of your mind remained logical. Every story you published and every word you submitted, that little voice tried to stop you. You ignored it. You stepped into a world that was never meant for a dropout.

Again, that logical little voice is pushed aside. You pick up the pen, ink glides across the silky new cover. Before the ink dries, you hand it to the smiling face in front of you. You aren’t just writing fiction, you are living it.