What Happens After You Finish the Book

I thought finishing the book would feel like relief.

It did. But not in the way I expected.

My editor kept saying, “You’ll know when it’s done.” I kept thinking, That feels wildly optimistic for someone who has never done this before.

She was calm about it. Certain. Like, this was all very normal. write a novel, get an agent, casually end up in a bookstore.

I know healthcare systems. I do not know publishing.

So when I typed “The End,” I had absolutely no idea what I had just signed myself up for.

When my mother died, something in me that had been waiting a long time finally pushed forward.

A grief therapist once told me I was afraid to write the book—that I was trying to solve my mother’s death instead of facing it.

I don’t respond well to being called afraid.

I fired her.

Then I went home and started writing.

Once I started, the writing didn’t let go.

Every woman in the book carried something familiar, my mother, myself, fragments of patients whose stories stayed with me long after my shift ended.

They weren’t entirely imagined.

They were remembered, reshaped, and finally given a voice.

And then it was finished.

I remember wondering, Does this mean the grief is over? Can I move on?

It doesn’t work like that.

Instead, I had to let the book go, let other people read it, interpret it, decide what it meant. And, inevitably, judge it.

Which, I’ve learned, people are very comfortable doing.

Not long ago, a family member managed to judge my grief, my life, my mother, the way she died, and even the circumstances of my birth...all in one conversation.

It was almost astonishing, if it had not been so hurtful and insane.

So I understood something quickly:

If people can judge something that personal, they will have no problem judging a novel.

Which, it turns out, feels a lot like everything else you love.

You hold it as long as you can. 

And then it leaves your hands.

I had never written a novel before. I didn’t understand publishing.

So I asked around.

“You need an agent,” they said.

That sounded important. Famous people have agents.

Perfect. That seemed like a reasonable next step.

Querying is a very specific kind of exposure.

You take something that took years, time, your grief, your brain and reduce it to a few paragraphs.

A letter. A pitch.

You send it to strangers and say, essentially:

Hi. Here’s my soul. Let me know if it’s marketable.

Some respond. Some don’t.

And then you realize something quickly:

You are not special. (I am an only child, that seemed odd.)

There are thousands of us sending our stories into the same inboxes, hoping someone reads past paragraph one.

And then there’s the silence.

No response. Not even a form rejection.

At first, you think, did this even go through?

Then you realize—oh, it did. They’re just not answering.

It’s not personal. It’s volume.

Still… you can’t help but wonder if somewhere there’s a high school intern who could hit “no thanks” on my behalf. So I would know someone even cared enough to reject the idea itself.

And still, there are moments that keep you going.

A full manuscript request. A real response from someone who actually read it. A line like, “This is beautiful writing.”

Even when they pass.

Because you start to understand something: This isn’t just about writing well.

It’s timing. 

Taste. 

Market. 

Luck.

And a kind of persistence that feels less like inspiration and more like showing up when no one’s asking you to.

I thought this would be the end.

It’s not.

It’s the part where you decide quietly, with no one paying attention that you’re going to keep going anyway.

After 59 years of being a nurse starting IVs, changing sheets, making sure people didn’t die on my shift (and sometimes sitting with them when they did).

I realized something.

I’m not afraid of hard things.

So having a voice is… inconvenient.

The next book is already starting.

It will still be about women, how we disappear, how we’re overlooked, how we somehow become more visible and less seen at the same time.

It may take more risks. 

It may get a little weirder.

But it will tell the truth.

If you’re here, you probably believe what I do:

That stories matter.

That memory matters. That women’s lives, quiet or loud, are worth paying attention to.

I’m glad you’re here. More soon - Donna