I am participating in the Writing Contest You Are Enough, hosted by Positive Writer.

Let me let you in on a dirty little secret:

For the most part, I tend to not believe in myself. Not just as a writer, but in general. That’s just how I’ve always been. I tend to be hard on myself, to think I can’t accomplish something, that I’m not good enough — even when there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

As I type this, there are five full-length novels on my bookshelf with my pen name on the spine. Those same five novels are also loaded onto my Kindle, as is the short story I re-published back in late April. If there’s one thing I shouldn’t experience self-doubt over, it’s my ability to write a book.

And yet…

The human mind is a strange, fickle thing. Sometimes, it doesn’t work properly. Sometimes, it works against you. One day, I’ll wake up completely content with my station in life; the next, I might wake up desperate to quit my job, go back to bed, and tell all my problems I’ll deal with them later.

I have a ton of book ideas that are in various stages of development. Incomplete manuscripts. Half-baked ideas that haven’t quite gelled into something publishable yet. The inklings of a book plot that refuse to develop into something more substantial. It’s simultaneously invigorating and overwhelming. But here’s the thing to remember:

It can be done. I know because I’ve done it before.

Bounty and Notna are characters and stories I originally created when I was in middle school (let’s just ignore the fact that was over 20 years ago). They were originally meant to be comic books; I was going to be the next Jim Lee, the next Todd McFarlane. But along the way, I fell out of love with art — then writing.

I eventually got the writing bug back, but not the art bug. Oh, the art bug tried making its return, several times. But the magic was never quite there, even if the stories I mentioned above were. So I began the arduous process of trading in my panels and word balloons for prose.

I won’t lie; it was a difficult process. There were plenty of false starts. There were a lot of sleepless nights where I wondered if maybe these stories weren’t meant to be. But — and if you take nothing else away from this post, this is the important part — I kept plugging away. I kept trying.

And on June 1, 2015, I published Bounty.

Six months later, Blood Ties went live. Six months after that, Behind the Badge. In the span of a little more than a year, I went from unpublished, boy-I’d-love-to-write-a-book-someday to an author with three novels to his name.

This past October, I published Notna, meaning both of my childhood stories were finally out there for the world to see.

I’m not a bestseller. Far from it. But I am published. I’ve introduced characters who have been a major part of my life to the world. There are people who love these characters as much as I do. My series has a long way to go — I can’t envision a day in which I’m no longer writing a Jill Andersen book — and there are plenty of other books that need to be written.

There’s even a second series poking around in my head.

I’m not saying all of this is easy. There are still days when I’m blocked. There are still days in which I can’t bring myself to actually put words on the page, no matter how desperately I want to. There are even days when I just don’t want to. But I imagine that’s true of just about any job, and the fact is, whenever I doubt myself, all I have to do is look at my bookshelf.

If you have a story (or several) in you, let them out. Even if it takes years. Don’t compare yourself to other writers, even your favorites. Write your story, tell your tale. Worry about publication and sales and all that later; for now, today, focus solely on putting those words on that page. Even if it’s just a sentence, a paragraph.

You can do this. Trust me. There’s nothing stopping you.

After all, my dream came true. Why can’t yours?

 

Bounty has been nominated for a TopShelf magazine Indie Book Award!

It’s a big deal for my debut novel to even be nominated — and there are plenty of perks therein — but if by some stroke of luck I actually win, then there’s no end to the awesomeness that would ensue. Mostly I’m just jacked that someone thought enough of my work to nominate it. That’s pretty damn cool.

Anyway, check it out!

About J.D. Cunegan
J.D. Cunegan is known for his unique writing style, a mixture of murder mystery and superhero epic that introduces the reader to his comic book-inspired storytelling and fast-paced prose. A 2006 graduate of Old Dominion University, Cunegan has an extensive background in journalism, a lengthy career in media relations, and a lifelong love for writing. Cunegan lives in Hampton, Virginia, and next to books, his big passion in life in auto racing. When not hunched in front of a keyboard or with his nose stuck in a book, Cunegan can probably be found at a race track or watching a race on TV.