what writing a book looks like

{what writing a book looks like to me}

I want to tell you what writing a book looks like.

it's not all log cabins and ocean waves and sand beneath your toes. it's not all pens and notebooks stacked romantically haphazardly perfect. it's not all quiet moments and hot tea and moments curled into corners of coffee shops with that perfect smooth music playing. 

sometimes it's crammed between moving boxes and un-hung paintings laid in piles against half-painted walls. sometimes it's tables brimming with unfolded laundry and half-drunk soda cans. sometimes the soundtrack is less Spotify and more barking dogs and fighting cats and toddlers who just won't take a nap. 

writing a book isn't just for the perfect. if it was, there would be no books. because books can be born in the tidy and the neat, but that isn't the only way. their spawning ground is not specific, not confined to optimum temperature and light and ground softly fertilized with coffee grounds and old tea bags. 

there is only one piece of magic advice that will cause a book to grow :: you have to write it. 

you have to find that slow flow, the one that comes at two in the morning when the house is quiet and the dog is snoring and you can hear the buzzing sound the television makes. you have to find the words that come strange and awkward and sometimes feel like mucking out the stables of giant horses. you have to let them come to the surface and float between piles of homework and a slow-burning candle that sometimes sizzles when sweat and tears drop on the flame. 

if you love writing—and you have to love it to write a book—you hustle and you cry through the late nights and you don't get any sleep and then you sleep too much 

but you keep going because you love it. 

it's the words—not time—that brings you back to the page.

:: elora nicole

{what writing a book looks like to elora}

I want to tell you what writing a book looks like. 

it looks like that fallen dead tree on the beach, digging thick marks into the sand. it looks like no stone unturned, finding words hidden between diapers and electric bills. it looks like lighting a candle and pressing your forehead to carpet or stone or ceramic tile while you breathe in the story that fell on the floor in a puddle that looks more like a portal to another dimension instead of spilled milk. 

it looks like holy holy holy in the dead of night. it whispers like suitcases and cardboard boxes and Sharpie markers for labeling. 

I want to tell you what writing a book looks like. 

it looks like where you are. it looks like who you are.

{show me what writing a book looks like to you. use the hashtag #whatwritingabooklookslike :: which was invented by my dear friend Preston Yancey :: on Instagram. I want to see you.}