The Book Writing Process: A Manuscript That Refuses to Leave


Five years. One small book. Endless returns.

I have written and rewritten this book for over five years.

It keeps coming back to me.

Rejected.
Reframed.
Reedited.
Repurposed.
Re-everything.

It is not a feature-length novel. Not an epic. Not a sweeping saga.

It is a small book — a nonfiction diary of sorts.

And yet it has asked more of me than anything I have ever written.


Writing Is Rewriting (And Then Rewriting Again)

If you’ve ever been deep in the book writing process, you know this truth:

Writing the first draft is the easy part.

The real work begins in the return.

The quiet reopening of a document you swore you were done with.
The email that says “not quite right for us.”
The gentle suggestion that it needs reshaping. Again.

For years, this manuscript has circled back like a persistent tide. Each time different. Each time asking to be seen from another angle.

I have wanted to abandon it more times than I can count.

But I know this book.

And somewhere beneath the edits and exhaustion, I know it is meant to exist in the sphere — for whatever purpose it carries.


The Emotional Side of the Writing Journey

We talk a lot about craft. Structure. Plot. Marketability. Publishing strategy.

We talk less about attachment.

About the way certain stories root into you.
About how some manuscripts feel less like projects and more like assignments.

This small nonfiction fairy tale has shaped me far more than I have shaped it.

It has taught me:

  • Rejection is refinement.
  • Delay is not denial.
  • Size does not determine significance.
  • Some books choose their own timing.

A Small Book With a Persistent Pulse

There is something almost stubborn about it.

Every time I think I am finished, it returns with a quiet insistence:

Not yet.
Look again.
Listen closer.

The book writing process, I’ve learned, is not linear. It spirals. It circles. It stretches time.

And sometimes the books that take the longest are the ones doing the deepest work — not just on the page, but within the writer.


Why I Haven’t Let It Go

Because even in my doubt, I feel its presence.

Because even in rejection, I sense direction.

Because even in exhaustion, I know this story is meant to be released — not as a spectacle, but as something small and steady.

A book does not have to be loud to be necessary.

Sometimes it only has to be true.

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About Me

My name is Ava Wells and I’m a skincare lover with a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

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