What Finishing my First Novel Taught me About Writing and Resilience

At my writing desk in Brooklyn

I began writing my first novel tentatively when my first son was a year old. Naïve, and overly optimistic, I told my husband, I would take a year or maybe two off from broadcast journalism to write the book that had been haunting me for years.

I’d written plentifully in the years leading up to this point — magazine articles, newspaper features…