A Story of Almost

There’s something about standing in the ocean crying (they say it's the salt) that is either poetic or cliche, maybe a bit of both.

That’s where I was on a sunny warm day in August of 2020, hoping that no one would notice the heaving of my shoulders because the waves were also heaving. My toes were sinking into the sand with each wave, my feet an ankles numb in the cold water. My sunglasses and wide brimmed hat hid my face distorted by weeping. 

Why I thought, when I felt like what I was doing with Rise Run Retreat was so right, did I feel so much resistance. I was hustling so hard to keep my business alive and support my family. Earlier in the spring, I thought I’d figured it out when I sold out the first, then the second Virtual Retreat.

“You should do these once a month,” my husband said looking at the numbers. The very thought exhausted me, despite being virtual these retreat weekends were time and energy intensive. Finding the guest speakers, promoting registration, then finally hosting the weekend took all the energy I had on top of everything else I was doing. By the time we got to mid-summer 2020, Virtual Retreat registrations were dwindling with everyone’s Zoom-fatigue, they stopped selling out, first three-quarters full, then half full. I was covering guest speaker costs and when you added up all my hours I poured into the retreats, making less than if I were a barista at Starbucks. It seemed that no matter what marketing dance I did, nothing changed. I hired a business coach to help me figure it out, I tried what felt like a thousand different things, some worked, most didn’t.

Not to mention the anxious decision-making I was faced with regarding the 2020 Fall Retreat. Should I cancel? Should I keep going? Should I just shut down my business? Could we create a COVID bubble and keep it safe? Would anyone even come? 

We were quickly coming to the end of the savings runway we’d set to keep us afloat while I poured myself into Rise Run Retreat and Mark shut down his business to stay home and homeschool the kids. The financial pressure of providing for the family felt like it was crushing me. Even thinking about it now, my chest tightens, my throat constricts. 

Which is why I was standing in the Atlantic weeping, crying out in one of those “I don’t know what to do, please help me!” moments. In the past, this would have been a prayer to a god I believed in, I don’t believe in that god anymore (sorry, Mom and Dad). I was accutley aware that no one was going to rescue me, just like no one rescued me from my eating disorder like I hoped (prayed) someone would. 

I wasn’t alone, there were people willing to help and offer encouragement, but ultimately the responsibility was on my shoulders. Which were curled forward and shaking with each cry. And that’s when this tiny thought, cut through the discouragement and it whispered: 

“Write the book.”

My cry turned into an audible laugh. I scoffed at this idea that seemed to come from a place outside of myself. Write the book, what kind of bull-shit idea was that? 

Except, when I looked out over the rolling waves of the Gulf of Maine, out towards the Boon Lighthouse, a thin spire jutting out from the horizon, I knew that voice was right. I had a book in me, a book I’d been thinking about for a decade. A book I’d been piecing together in my mind and in a word doc, here and there, snippets in the notes on my phone for the past five years.

Write the book, I thought. You know how silly that is, I said to myself. How much work that is?! I groaned at the thought. Why do you have to have such hard ideas, Sarah? Why do you have to run up mountains and start your own business and write a book? Why can't you just get a job? But when I tried, even that didn't work. 

The thought of writing a book was daunting. Not just the drafting, but the revising and the rewriting, and the rewriting and revising again. It would take years. Books take years. A book was not an immediate solution to the problem I felt I was facing. I did not want to write a book.

But deep in my gut I knew that voice was right. I knew that despite how much work it would be, I had to write the book. 

I bargained with myself: just write one chapter and then you can stop. So I wrote one chapter. I shared it with a friend. He wrote in the margins, “Wow. Powerful.” And then in the margin of the next page: “Not powerful, toss this.” And then on the next, “This. This. This.” 

And that feedback was what I needed to keep going. And so for the rest of 2021 I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Quietly, daily between 4 am and 6 am I put words on the page. Some good. Some junk. 

I shared my writing, received difficult feedback, made revisions. I stripped things down and built them back up. I rearranged things. Re-wrote things. And worked and worked and worked. I put another year into it.

I kept it mostly to myself and a small group of writerly friends because it feels like one of those things that is too delicate to share, that if you open it up to too many outsiders it will crush the idea, or more importantly your confidence in executing the idea.

So I talked about a different book I was writing. I shared this past October that my novel idea had been picked as a semi-finalist for the Next Great American Author pilot season contest. Then I shared my novel progress and daily word count through November as I participated in NanoWriMo. All while, in the background, polishing the other book…The Book. 

In December, I sent off a brief synopsis of The Book and chapter summaries to an agent whom I’d connected with through a friend. He’d called. I missed his call. I called back. 

“You’ve got something here,” he said. I held my breath. “I’d like to see the whole thing.”

This is what they call a “manuscript request.” They are rare in the literary world. And for this agent in particular, even more rare.


“I only request about ten manuscripts a year,” he had recently told an interviewer in an article I’d read about him. 

At the end of December, I gave the manuscript one last look and hit send. And I waited. “Two weeks,” he said, he’d get back to me. He was on time. 

It came in an email. I knew before I’d opened it what it said. 

He provided helpful feedback, pointed out a few things that I already knew to be potential issues, and said, “I’m going to step aside,” a polite rejection. 

It’s almost good enough. 

Almost. 

I was a little crushed at first. OK, a lot crushed. Two years of intensive hard work to create a manuscript that was good enough to get in the door, but not quite good enough to stay in the room.

I set it aside for a week and let his feedback sink in, talked through it with a few friends, went for walks and journaled. 

Criticism is a funny thing, especially in creative endeavors. It’s incredibly subjective. Just think about the books you read and are drawn to, now think of the books you can’t stand or didn’t like or didn’t finish. Everyone has different literary tastes. Which is why critique of creative work is often correct broadly, but incorrect specifically. The critic's suggestion might not be the solution to making the work better, but serves as guide for the creator to go back and assess that thing. Likely the creator will know (like I knew) that there’s something that’s not working, and the criticism helps to hone in on that thing. The creator gets to dive into the specifics and work those out. The critic is just shining a light so the creator knows where to look. 

So why share all this now? 

Believe me, in January when I sent off that manuscript I wanted this to be a triumphant story of “look what I did!” not a story of “almost.” Almost feels sad, disappointing, a let down.

The truth I’m not done writing, because the story of almost is really the story of not yet. 

Not yet means there’s still time. Not yet means I’m not done. Not yet means I’ll keep taking the next step until I get there. 

Not yet means I believe in that whisper I heard standing in the Atlantic two, almost three years ago. 

I share this because, my idea doesn’t feel so delicate anymore. My confidence has been crushed and revived. And maybe there’s value in sharing the story of almost, perhaps even more value than sharing the story of “look what I did!” We hear on so many podcast, in so many interviews, the “ta da story,” when the “almost” and the “not yet” are distant memories because they have “arrived.” I’ve got a long way to go, miles to go before I sleep. I’m in the almost and the not yet. Maybe you are too?

And maybe you need to know you aren’t alone.

Not yet, friends. Not yet…

Sarah