Confession time: I can be my own worst enemy when it comes to finishing and publishing books.

It isn’t that I don’t love writing (I do—it’s the thing that makes me feel most alive). It’s that I carry this weighty little voice in my head whispering, “It’s not good enough yet. Fix it. Make it better. Readers deserve perfect.”

That voice is sneaky. It means I’ll spend days agonizing over one chapter, or circling back to change something I already decided on. It also means that instead of pressing “publish” and moving forward, I’ll often get stuck in endless tweaking.

And here’s the really wild part: I don’t just do this with new stories. I go back to books I’ve already published—especially my paperbacks—to reformat and refine them. I want every single book to look its best in a reader’s hands. But with 28+ books in my catalogue, you can imagine what a mountain of a task that becomes.

Perfectionism tricks me into believing that if I just keep polishing, one more time, my books will finally be “ready.” But the truth? Stories are never really perfect. They’re living things. They grow with me, and the moment I put them into the world, they belong just as much to readers as they do to me.

This is why I lean so much on my memberships and weekly chapter posts. They force me to let go of the idea that everything must be flawless before I share it. You’d be surprised how freeing it is to show up, chapter by chapter, as the story takes shape—messy edges and all.

Because what I’ve learned (and am still learning every day after doing this for almost 20 years) is this: you’d rather have my stories, imperfect but real, than wait years for something I’ve over-polished into silence.

So thank you for being patient with me, for cheering me on, and for reminding me that perfection isn’t the point—connection is.

With gratitude,
💛 Lynette / Rosaline / Stephen