Wanted: Babysitter To Raise My Child

For the past 20 years, I have been raising a child. From the first twinkling in my minds eye, until its actual birth in May, my child has grown steadily. In May, when I finally got a look at my beautiful complete and wonderful child, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. My child weighed in at 1155 pages, and was allegedly written in English.

Cliche's aside, being a writer is a great deal like being a parent, with one glaring exception - the conception is not nearly as fun. I spend years agonizing over the birth of my next child. And when, on that glorious day, birth is finally achieved and I'm holding a brand new story in my hands, I am always filled with both joy for its birth, and fear for its future.

But I've never written a novel before - at least not a serious one that was 1155 pages long. Talk about labour pains - it took me 3 years to write this book. And when I was done, I celebrated. But as quickly as the celebration died down, the fears surfaced. What the hell do I do now?

I've been going through a sort of post-partem depression of the literary variety. I never knew how hard it was to write a novel until I sat down to do it. For 18 months straight, I sat down in front of my computer and poured my heart and soul into my computer. The novel took me to places I didn't want to go. I laughed. I cried. I banged my head on the wall more than once. And when I was done, I was completely drained. I couldn't look at this new child of mine. I couldn't love it. And when I tried to look at it, all I could see was its flaws. All I could find was its warts.

But like all parents, our children correct us through education. While we do our best to improve our children, our children work in ways to educate us. We learn far more than our children do. I've learned so much about myself through the process of writing, and now editing my book - things I would have never known without doing it. Flaws that I had taken for granted for years suddenly became strengths. Strengths suddenly became debilitating. Everything I thought I knew about writing was revealed to me as such a paltry sum. My child tried to look cute and remind me of all the promises its birth had once held for me, but all I could see was my flaws shining through its eyes.

I've realized now that I can't keep this child to myself. It can't grow. It can't accomplish anything. It can't be what it was meant to be, if I don't let it out of my sight. My child wants to, needs to, must see the world. It must grow. It must accompish what it can. It must become what it was meant to become. Its time I let it go.

So what I need is a babysitter with special skills. I need someone who has raised children before and knows what sort of corrections need to be made. I need someone who has experience placing these children in good homes so that they can achieve wonderful things. It will be hard to let my child go. It will be scary to send it off into the real world. But it would be cruel to keep it to myself.

And besides... there's always my next child.