You think you have what it takes?

I had no choice but to throw away 400 pages of my own first book.

You heard that right. 400.

It was like that scene in the lord of the rings when they were torturing Smegol and he had no choice but to cry: Shire! Baggins!

Every single second.

It took me 15 years to write this stuff.

It cannot be published.

Not because my publisher said no. It was self published.

It was my own humble subjective opinion that these paragraphs objectively didn’t belong to any of my published or to be published in the future books.

It wasn’t because of the quality of the presentation. That could be edited. I surpassed everyone when I was 25, so it wasn’t that my writing style sucked back then, because as long as this might take, it still could be edited.

What was discarded was stuff that I highly disagreed with in terms of accuracy. I no longer think these things to be true. I disagreed with my old self.

What was left is stuff that passed the test.

Stuff that I cannot disagree with in a million years.

Imagine how exceptional the quality of that could be.

Anyway, the point was, that wasn’t easy.

And I would do it again. No regrets whatsoever.

I cry when I think about my book for more than 5 seconds.

Not recalling the journey and the good old days when I was working on it. All the excitement. All the uncertainty. Feeling lost. Feeling like I’m dying all the time. Locked in prison with the only way out being writing a masterpiece.

No. None of the above. I don’t give a fuck about the journey. I hated it. It was worse a million times than hell could ever be.

I’m glad all this is over.

I cry because I can’t believe that something like this exists.

Reading randomly in it for 5 seconds or a minute takes you to a whole different plane of existence.

I worked hard. And the results paid off.

It sold zero copies so far. Still I feel more successful than Gary Vaynerchuk just because I am its author.

And it’s just the first in its book series. Introductory. Just a warm up.

It’s the only reason I love myself. It was the only reason I bothered to continue living. If I ever got a chance to live in the first place.

I love me. Because I love that book. Because I am this book. This book is me.

I am a writer not because society told me so, but because I think I am. And that, my friend, for me, is more than enough.