Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, a few caveats:

• A big part of me doesn’t want to announce this intention because it means I’ll have to be accountable for it, which is exactly why I’m announcing it

• I am terrified—of so many things, but most importantly of failing myself. I’ve decided I’m brave enough to get started

• I’ve come to terms with it not being any good, especially not at first

• I’ve read so many things and listened to so many podcasts that tell me it’s hard, and the only reason to do it is that it feels more painful to not write than it does to write, so I’m writing

• I want my babies to see their mommy chase her dreams. Like, really go for them

I’d like to write a handful of fun and funny children’s books. There is a HUGE opportunity in that space to make kids’ books both educational for our babies and more entertaining for us. Some are brilliant [enter: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom]. Most make me think the author was on mushrooms when they were writing and I just don’t know who is benefiting from that kind of early literary trash.

But that’s not why we’re here. I am working on a novel that will tackle a lot of things, including Big C Cancer. Its protagonist is a relatively self-consumed young 20s pretty young thing who just wants to focus on her friends, her boyfriend, nights out, and figuring out if she wants to climb the corporate ladder. There were so few books that helped me through my experience with my dad getting sick that were also fun stories to read. His Big C Cancer was a part of our lives—a defining part, no doubt—but it was not our whole lives. I was just starting to try to be a little bit grown, to branch off from my nuclear family and create the life I wanted to live when we were hit with a literal death bomb. Years of therapy helped, continuing to talk about it helps, but I’m finding that if I don’t use this part of my becoming to fuel my creative process, at least for this first go, I will be denying some really important healing and processing. As my favorite local author said about her amazing book about a raising a transgender child, This Is How It Always Is, it is fiction, but it’s a little bit of wish fulfillment for me, a way of using characters to work through this thing I also experienced. I’ve never been much of a journaler…I don’t like writing to the great unknown, but to make this thing that I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing into a story that will help me—and might also help others—well, it feels like it’s time. I’ve gotten tired of thinking about it and not doing anything to move it out of my head and into somewhere else.

I learned through signing up for our local library’s email newsletter that this month is NaNoMo—National Novel Writing Month. The challenge I’ve taken is to write the first 50,000 words of my novel in the month of November. We were in California visiting my mom for the kickoff, so I’m a little behind, but I’m going to try to hit close to those 50,000 words. It feels like a sign. I hope it’s the one I’ve been looking for. I’m not going to say I’m the female Macklemore of currently nonexistent YA novels, but also what if Ben Haggerty hadn’t shared his gifts with us? I don’t want to live in a world without “Same Love” and I can’t imagine you do, either.

Even if nothing becomes of this story I’ve been wanting to tell, even if I never share any bit of it with any of you, I hope my sharing that I’m doing this big scary thing inspires you to take a step toward the big scary thing you’ve been avoiding, because even in the few days that I’ve been writing consistently during nap times, I’ve felt so much lighter, so much more fulfilled, and so much closer to getting where I want to go.

Here I am, yelling into the Internet that I’m chasing a dream that really scares me. It’s kind of thrilling.

I am becoming Whitney, the Big W Writer. What do you want to become?