Returning to the Page
I have been quiet here for a little while.
Not because I wandered off completely.
Not because I stopped making things.
Not because Miss Bitsy finally packed her little judgmental carpetbag and moved to Bora Bora.
Although wouldn’t that be something?
I took a hiatus from Substack so I could bring The Art of Returning across the finish line. And by finish line, I mean the particular kind of finish line that keeps moving every time you think you’ve reached it.
The ebook is now available.
The paperback is available.
The audiobook is under review and should be available soon.
And my author copy is on its way to me, which means I am currently living in that very specific emotional neighborhood between excitement and “please let the formatting look the way it looked on my screen.”
Because here is the truth: I have never done this before.
I have narrated books. I have made art. I have written essays and stories and reflections. I have sat in a recording booth for hours with tea, snacks, pronunciation notes, and the occasional existential crisis over whether a sentence needed just a little more breath.
But self-publishing my first book?
That has been a whole new landscape.
There are so many steps. So many tiny choices. So many places where you think, Surely this is the final file, only to discover that no, sweet summer child, there is another upload, another preview, another pricing decision, another metadata box waiting for you.
And still, somehow, there is joy in it.
Nervous joy.
Tender joy.
The kind of joy that stands in the doorway holding a cup of coffee and whispering, Well, look at you. You did the thing.
Now I’m turning toward the next part of the process: learning how to promote the book.
Which is its own creative project, whether I expected it to be or not.
I’ve been working on a few book trailers to help spread the word, and they are surprisingly time-consuming. You think you’re just going to choose a few soft video clips, add some words, pick the right music, and call it done.
Then suddenly you have spent forty-five minutes deciding whether the word “weary” should fade in before or after the candle flame.
This is how it has been going. It’s an all day thing.
But I also enjoy it.
There is something deeply satisfying about taking the feeling of a book and translating it into atmosphere. A flicker of light. A sketchbook page. A hand moving across paper. Rain on a window. A quiet desk. A soft invitation.
It feels less like advertising and more like saying, Here. This is the doorway. Come in when you’re ready.
Still, being a one-person band is hard.
Writing the book.
Publishing the book.
Narrating the book.
Marketing the book.
Making the trailers.
Updating the website.
Posting the posts.
Remembering to eat something besides cheese crackers and coffee.
There are days when it feels like I am standing in the middle of a room full of instruments, trying to play the banjo with one foot, the tambourine with my elbow, and a kazoo with sheer willpower.
Miss Bitsy does like to check in on that. Always ready for the drum roll.
She peeks over her imaginary glasses and says things like, Well, if you had known what you were doing from the beginning, perhaps this would all be easier.
Thank you, Bitsy.
Very helpful.
But here is the surprising thing.
Since writing The Art of Returning, she has stayed more in the background.
Not gone.
I don’t think our inner critics ever disappear completely. They just change volume. They become less of a courthouse judge and more of an annoying neighbor with opinions about our flower beds. How we cut our lawns. Whether the placement of the mailbox is correct.
Writing helped with that.
Writing does that.
It helps you organize your thoughts and feelings. It gives the swirling things somewhere to land. It lets you process, categorize, sort, and gently file away what no longer serves you.
Art does that for me too.
As soon as I started illustrating my inner critic, she grew quieter.
The more I drew her, the less mysterious she became.
The more I painted and sketched and made messy little versions of the voice in my head, the less power she had over me. And while she shrank down to a more manageable size, my art skills grew stronger.
Funny how that worked out.
Sometimes the thing we are afraid to look at becomes smaller once we give it a face.
Speaking of the art studio, I have been busy making a variety of mixed media pieces lately. The photo at the top is a collage I’ve been working on. It’s a mess right now, but that mess took two days to get where it is. A lot of layers going on there. I have no idea where to go next with it. So I’ll let it sit for a while.
I’m still finding my voice as an artist.
What started as a love of watercolor has evolved into this mad love affair with texture, pattern, and layering. I still love watercolor. I always will. There is something about the way it blooms and wanders and refuses to be bossed around that feels familiar to me. My four year old grand daughter loves watercolor. She came over for the weekend and we dabbled a bit with the wet on wet technique. Her gasps as the water moved across the page was absolutely delightful. Time with her renews my spirit.
She reminds me of life’s important things.
More depth.
More texture.
More marks.
More mystery.
More of that delicious feeling of not knowing exactly what will happen when I press something into wet paint or scrape across a surface or layer paper over ink over paint over something I almost gave up on yesterday.
There are things you just can’t get with paint alone.
So I keep throwing things at the canvas to see what sticks.
What fits.
What I like.
What I can do without.
And honestly, isn’t that how an artistic voice grows?
Not through one perfect decision.
Not through waking up one morning with a fully formed style and a tidy artist statement.
But through practice.
Through sketchbooks.
Through curiosity.
Through trying things just to see what might happen.
Through making something strange and then wondering if it is strange-good or strange-please-hide-this-in-a-desk-drawer-nobody-will-ever-open.
Through noticing what keeps calling you back.
I am enjoying this state of curiosity.
It has been such a gift because it balances the stress of learning so many new things as I navigate the unknown landscape of being a published author.
There is the business side of it all, of course. The pricing. The platforms. The categories. The promotion. The endless question of how to help the right people find the book without turning into someone who only shouts, Buy my book! into the void.
But then there is the creative side.
The part that reminds me why I made the book in the first place.
The part that says, Make the trailer beautiful because beauty matters.
The part that says, Share the messy sketch because someone else might need permission to be messy too.
The part that says, Go back to the studio. Put your hands in the paint. Follow the texture. See what happens.
That part saves me from tipping too far into the machinery of it all.
My nature walks, though, have fallen by the wayside this week.
We have had so much rain, and my body is feeling it.
The dampness.
The lack of movement.
The stiffness that creeps in when I have spent too much time hunched over screens, files, art tables, and all the little tasks that come with trying to build something meaningful.
It is a reminder.
A gentle one, but still a reminder.
Do not let what you love slip away while you are working hard to share what you love.
Isn’t that the trick?
To build the creative life without accidentally abandoning the things that make the creative life possible?
The walks.
The quiet.
The sketchbook.
The trails.
The studio.
The pauses.
The ordinary rituals that hold us together when the bigger dreams get loud.
I am learning that balance is not something you figure out once and then place neatly on a shelf.
It is a practice.
A returning.
Again and again.
There is never enough time in the day to do all the things I love.
Write the next essay.
Promote the book.
Record the audio.
Make the art.
Walk the trail.
Post the update.
Clean the studio.
Rest my body.
Answer the email.
Create the trailer.
Learn the next thing.
Take the breath.
Some days, it feels impossible.
But then I remember what this whole book has been teaching me.
Not all at once.
Not perfectly.
Not by force.
So I take a breath.
I settle into the knowing that it will come together.
Just not right away.
Just not all at once.
And maybe that is not failure.
Maybe that is the way a real creative life unfolds.
Layer by layer.
Walk by walk.
Page by page.
A little paint.
A little courage.
A little rest.
A little return.
In order to avoid another round of burnout, I am trying to let the process unfold organically and in its own time.
Which does not mean I am doing nothing.
It means I am learning to move without running myself into the ground.
It means I am learning to trust slow growth.
It means I am letting curiosity have a seat at the table beside ambition.
And honestly?
Curiosity is much better company.
She does not tap her watch.
She does not demand a five-year plan before breakfast.
She simply tilts her head, hands you a paintbrush, and says, What if we tried this?
That feels like enough for today.
Into Your Hands
This week, give yourself permission to return gently.
Not dramatically.
Not with a brand-new life plan.
Just gently.
Open the sketchbook.
Take the walk.
Clear one small corner of the studio.
Write one paragraph.
Make one mark.
Light the candle.
Drink the tea while it is still warm.
Ask yourself what you are curious about right now, and let that be enough of a beginning.
You do not have to come back all at once.
You are allowed to return in layers.
Still returning, still learning,
Jenn