I have wanted to write a book for as long as I can remember.
Not in a dreamy, “Someday when life slows down” kind of way. I mean the laminated-pages, marker-stained-fingers, happily-stay-after-school-to-learn-bookbinding kind of way.
When I was in fifth grade, our class was assigned to write and illustrate a book. Not a paragraph. Not a worksheet. An actual book.
We wrote every word by hand. We illustrated each page with colored pencils, markers, and crayons, pouring ourselves into every drawing with the kind of confidence only children seem to possess. At the time, those illustrations felt like masterpieces. Looking back, they probably looked like delightful chaos to anyone over the age of ten.
When we finished, our teacher laminated every page. It was such a small thing, but suddenly our stories felt official. They weren’t just school assignments anymore. They felt real.
There was even an author’s page where we were supposed to type our names and a little biography about ourselves, giving us an early chance to test our keyboarding skills. Apparently, spelling was optional.
Yikes.
But the part I remember most happened after school.
Our teacher, Mrs. Everett, announced that anyone who wanted to could stay and learn how to bind the books with fabric covers.
I can still picture myself standing there, holding my stack of laminated pages. My story was about a school of fish. I couldn’t begin to tell you the plot now. As far as I remember, it was mostly underwater friendship and good vibes.
What I do remember is choosing the fabric.
I picked a fish-print pattern that looked suspiciously like it had been cut from the short-sleeve button-down shirt of a middle-aged dad on a lake vacation in 1984.
It was loud. Slightly chaotic.
Fifth-grade me thought it was perfect.
Then we put it all together.
Fabric cover. A real spine. Some pipe cleaners to reinforce the pages. A book you could actually hold in your hands.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just someone who wanted to write a book.
I had written one.
And somehow, I still have it.
It sits in my keepsake box now. The pages have yellowed with age. The binding has started to loosen. The fabric corners are fraying, worn soft by time.
It isn’t pristine anymore.
But neither is the dream that started with it.
Every time I see it, I’m reminded of something that feels both beautiful and slightly inconvenient.
Sometimes dreams are planted early.
And they don’t always stay quiet.
For the last year, I’ve been working on two manuscripts quietly.
If you’ve followed my blog, you may have noticed something else. I haven’t posted anything in several months, which might make it seem like I stopped writing but the opposite is true.
School, work, and life have been consuming most of my free time lately. And the hours that remain have been spent writing behind the scenes.
Not polished blog posts.
Not tidy reflections.
Messy drafts. Long paragraphs. Half-formed ideas that only make sense late at night.
The work has been happening.
Just not publicly.
Recently, I found myself in a room with other writers. It wasn’t a formal event. Just a group of people talking about stories and craft and the strange obsession that convinces us to sit alone for hours, staring at a screen, hoping words will eventually cooperate.
At some point in the conversation, I said it.
“I’m writing a book.”
The words left my mouth before my brain had a chance to stop them.
And almost immediately, panic showed up.
Creativity grabbed her purse.
Courage started backing toward the exit.
Inspiration looked at me like, “You told people?”
I got the yips.
If you’ve never heard that term before, it comes from sports. It’s what happens when someone who absolutely knows how to do something suddenly can’t seem to do it because they start overthinking every move.
A golfer forgets how to putt.
A pitcher forgets how to throw.
Nothing about their ability changed.
Their brain just got loud.
That’s exactly what happened to me.
For nine months, I had been writing consistently.
Showing up.
Making progress.
But the second I said, “I’m writing a book,” something shifted.
Before that moment, writing was simply something I was doing.
After that moment, it became something I had claimed.
And apparently, my nervous system was not thrilled about the promotion.
There’s something strangely safe about keeping a dream private.
When the work lives quietly inside a document on my laptop, it belongs only to me. It can be messy. It can wander. It can be unfinished. No one is grading it. No one is waiting for it. No one even knows it’s there.
But the second I said it out loud, it felt as though I had placed something fragile in the middle of a table and invited everyone to inspect it.
No one actually did that, of course.
The only person who immediately began interrogating me was the voice in my own head.
Who do you think you are?
What if you can’t finish it?
What if people expect something now?
What if this whole time you’ve just been typing feelings into a document like a glorified journal?
It’s remarkable how quickly the brain can spiral the moment visibility enters the room.
At the same time, life was already loud. School deadlines. Work responsibilities. The ordinary chaos of adulthood has a way of filling every available corner.
And when the yips showed up, my instinct wasn’t to get louder. My instinct was to pull the walls in a little tighter. Everything suddenly felt too noisy. Too critical. Too uncertain.
So I went quiet.
Not because I stopped writing but because I stopped sharing.
No blog posts. No public drafts. Just the work happening behind the scenes.
Looking back, those quiet months taught me something I don’t think I could have learned any other way.
Visibility and creativity don’t always move at the same pace.
Sometimes creativity doesn’t need a spotlight. Sometimes it needs a basement. Sometimes the most important work is happening underground, long before anyone sees what eventually grows.
If you had judged my writing life by my blog, it probably would have looked like nothing was happening. But behind the scenes, the pages kept multiplying. Messy chapters. Rough ideas. Paragraphs that will survive editing. Paragraphs that absolutely will not.
And through all of it, that little fish book has been quietly waiting in my keepsake box, reminding me of something I somehow forgot along the way.
When I was ten years old, I wasn’t worried about whether the story was good enough. I wasn’t wondering whether anyone would buy it. I wasn’t thinking about reviews or expectations or whether I could call myself a writer.
I was focused on making a book.
Write the pages. Illustrate them. Laminate them. Bind them together. Make something real.
The girl who chose that aggressively fishy fabric cover never waited for permission to call herself a writer. She didn’t worry about whether anyone would take her seriously.
She just stayed after school and learned how to bind a book.
That instinct is still in me.
It just has to fight its way through a lot more adult overthinking now.
Because somewhere along the way, many of us start believing we need credentials before we can claim the things we love. We convince ourselves we need permission. Experience. Proof.
But that little fish book reminds me that the desire came first.
Long before I knew anything about credentials.
Sometimes dreams are planted early.
Sometimes they wait quietly while we grow into them.
The yips didn’t show up because I suddenly forgot how to write.
They showed up because, for the first time, I said the quiet part out loud.
“I’m writing a book.”
Those words didn’t create the dream.
They simply gave it a name.
So if my blog has been quiet lately, it isn’t because the writing stopped.
It’s because the pages are still being written.
One chapter at a time.
One messy draft at a time.
Last week, I finished the manuscript draft of one of my books.
And last night, as one final farewell to 44, I did something that felt equal parts exciting and terrifying.
I submitted my book proposal to five literary agents.
Five.
I know traditional publishing isn’t the easy road.
I know the odds.
I know there will probably be waiting.
And rejection.
And more revision than I can currently imagine.
I also know there are wonderful authors who choose self-publishing. If that’s ultimately where this journey leads, I’ll embrace it with gratitude.
But I’ve always wanted to see what doors might open through traditional publishing first.
So I took a deep breath…
…and hit send.
Today I turn 45.
And I keep thinking about that fifth grader standing after school with her fish-print fabric cover.
She wasn’t thinking about literary agents.
She wasn’t worried about platform building or query letters or whether her manuscript fit the current market.
She just wanted to make a book.
Looking back, I don’t think she’d be impressed that I queried five literary agents.
I don’t think she’d care how publishing works or what happens next.
I think she’d just be thrilled that we never stopped.
That the little dream she stitched together with laminated pages and fraying fish-print fabric kept growing, even through school, work, adulthood, self-doubt, and the occasional case of the yips.
I think she’d be amazed that we kept the promise she made all those years ago.
She made a little book about fish.
I finished one.
And whatever happens next, whether it arrives in the form of an agent’s phone call, another round of revisions, or a completely different path than the one I’ve imagined, no one can take that away.
Because somewhere in a keepsake box is a little handmade book that’s beginning to fall apart.
And somewhere on my laptop is a finished manuscript that’s just beginning its journey.
Turns out they were never separate stories.
They were always the same one.
And no matter what the future holds, that feels like a birthday worth celebrating.
What is this new book you are talking about? Here’s a little peek at Adventure & Triage:
Adulting was supposed to feel more organized than this.
Instead, Rachel Richard found herself navigating broken-down vans, awkward jobs, motherhood, burnout, grief, nostalgia, overcooked dinners, emotional landmines, and the ongoing realization that most people are simply figuring life out in real time.
In Adventure & Triage, Rachel blends humor, heart, and sharp emotional insight in a collection of essays inspired by the songs that shaped a generation. From small-town memories and public embarrassments to workplace struggles, family dynamics, marriage, and quiet resilience, these stories explore the messy middle of becoming who we are.
Warm, witty, and deeply relatable, Adventure & Triage is for anyone who has ever:
- wondered if everyone else secretly got an instruction manual
- cried in a parking lot before pulling themselves together
- used music to survive difficult seasons
- felt both exhausted and hopeful at the exact same time
- realized growing older does not automatically mean feeling grown up
Part memoir, part cultural reflection, and part emotional survival guide, this book is a reminder that life is rarely polished, but it can still be beautiful.
Adventure & Triage will resonate with readers who love the compassionate honesty of Kate Bowler, the conversational humor of Lauren Graham, the practical wisdom of KC Davis, the reflective storytelling of Shauna Niequist, and the lyrical encouragement of Mary Marantz. Like those writers, Rachel believes the most meaningful stories aren’t told after life is neatly resolved. They’re told from the middle, where most of us are still figuring it out.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
Leave a Reply