Nearing the Finish Line

Writing is a journey. It doesn’t matter if it’s for fun or for work. It’s still a journey that we all go through. For me, my writing journey stems from getting from the beginning point of my story to the conclusion. The stuff in the middle seems to drag its feet sometimes.

I enjoy watching my characters grow. Something about seeing them learn a lesson or coming to the epiphany that life needs to change somehow. We all go through our own “character arcs”, albeit your new love for brussel sprouts or learning a lesson from your youth and coming to that conclusion that you were wrong at 16.

Right now as I’m going through editing Summer Heat, I’ve seen the growth and journey that I have made as a writer. I think I understand the human connection a little more than what I thought I did when I was first writing. To see people I know grow, and to see myself grow, opens the eyes to what is beautiful about the human experience.

I know that sympathy and empathy are different. But they’re both the same with someone with an active imagination.

Editing is also a journey. You get to see all the simple mistakes you made while writing. The funny misspelled words or wrong spellings of words like blue instead of blew, or to instead of so. I will sometimes snicker at the fact that I misspelled a simple word like “to”, or how I completely forgot how to spell “of.”

Summer Heat has been a positive journey for me. It had been a while since I wrote anything… anything into fruition that is. Even when I came to a snag in this story, I found that the month or two that I needed a much-needed break from writing was everything that I needed to finish the story. I didn’t want a tragic ending. I wanted something empowering and hopeful to younger generations.

The story has also been a closure for me as well with my own past of being a Southern, gay kid. Many of the experiences of my own journey are laid out (nicely if anything) in the story. Some times we just need acceptance and inclusion to know that we’re okay in the end.

Summer Heat will be out June 1, 2023. I’m trying to make it so we can have some pre-sales going as well.

Love, not hate,

Ethan Bridges-Garcia