Reflection on my Pre-Release Writing Milestones

Today I will share some insight into my writing journey’s pre-release milestones.

Let’s begin with the timeline from first draft to publication – that could sound like this blog is going to be a really long read, but that’s not where I’m going with this. The timeline: it was not realistic – I’d heard people say they’d written their books in less than six months. Some said in one week! Others, within one year. No, none of that was realistic for me. I have learned not to compare, built self-compassion and found self-acceptance because of that.

Whilst I saw writing Resolve as a project, I had not anticipated that it was going to open me up to the greatest healing years I could gift myself. It was on my mind that I needed to give myself a finishing line, for me, my husband and our family, but the healing slowed me down, opened me up, and changed me, and that was a good thing. The book must be written, yet it evolved because of the healing. What I wanted to say in the first manuscript I had already left behind me. I could see more clearly what the purpose of sharing was and was not about.

Yes, a full stop would one day be placed on the final page and my husband reminded me often that only I was giving myself that outcome to meet.

All I could do was remind myself to keep going, and signs that I was wandering away from the path towards publication, showed up as me expressing interest in a new course I could take, or something more fun to spend my time on. What we call the ‘shiny sparkly object’ distractions such as these, were met by my family and close friends asking ‘so how is the book coming along…?’

January 2023, I finally turned over the manuscript to the editors for its final review and professional restructure. The last they’d seen of it was in July 2022. Back in July 2022, the detailed developmental edit report that the editors Leigh Robshaw and Matt Earsman of Stellar Words sent me said:

Go and dig deeper – show us Alice, show the readers, don’t just tell them.

Do I have to? Did they understand what that was going to take? It meant something I hadn’t anticipated I’d be doing with this sharing of young Alice and adult Alice’s story.

I knew it meant that I needed to go back to the memories, the house, the many walks into the front hallway after school, feel my older brother waiting there for me. I saw the wallpaper he was leaning up against, the rooms the abuse happened, the furnishings, the times of day, and heard the words. It required that I go back and walk through with as many of my senses as I felt safe to. Recalling the design of each room’s wallpaper, and hearing the slow ticking of the clock on the mantlepiece at my Great Aunts was not a fun journey to take. There was so much I hadn’t wanted to dig around in.

I hadn’t realised that I was avoiding it though, and it made be see that at best the memoir would be like wading in safely to only waist-deep waters of my lived experience. I reminded myself that Resolve is about contributing towards breaking the silence of sibling sexual abuse. It was my choice to consciously walk this path. I had chosen not to allude to the fact that I was abused by someone in my family. I was consciously choosing to share my story specifically for the purpose of adding my voice to the conversation on the topic of sibling sexual abuse. As a child I was preyed upon and sexually abused by my older brother for more than four years. As an adult I could do good with what I’d experienced in life.

By acknowledging that I’d not yet taken the deep dive needed, I had to make a choice. I asked myself: Would I give the book more of me, or not release all the darkness that was stuck inside of me? The answer was Yes, give it all I can.

So between receiving their developmental edit report and that day in January 2023, I leapt into the deep waters of reflecting and reviewing my past alone. Those months became what I call living in a dark tunnel.

I’d resurface after rewriting a chapter, to see that the world was still spinning, and then dive back into my Mac and Word again. I remained connected with a very small group of family and friends and peers and the therapist. However, I know I was quieter and didn’t contribute much in conversation. I was observing. I couldn’t say I was fully present let alone feeling like I was on the same planet as everyone. Thank goodness for good people who understood.

I went over and over my past in order to bring those words out onto paper. I found memories that were pertinent not only for the book, but were answers to questions open in my mind. It was such a therapeutic process, because the research would put words in front of my face or I’d hear them on audio. Young me would say “yes, that’s what it was. Abandonment? That’s the word for how it felt”. She didn’t know the words to describe the feelings or what she experienced back then.

I’m not saying something new here, but I can reaffirm that taking the time to write and go deep for that writing, is healing.

It unravelled layers of confusion, hurts and numbness for me. I tore up and reshaped the manuscript 8 or 10 times to more accurately follow my personal healing timeline. Doing that messed up the manuscript I know, but it had to make sense to me. I knew that other survivors would also appreciate it. Given survivors need a safe harbour and may struggle with trust, as I did, Resolve was about telling the truth, with love and respect for all concerned.

I’m incredibly grateful I did choose to deep dive and gave it all I had, even if it didn’t do my mental or physical health and wellbeing much good. I’m not going to blame menopause for adding on weight that year. Me, sitting at my desk, working on a book that would share my personal story, had me in ‘ebb’ not ‘flow’. However, I knew that I’d be out of the writing tunnel and back to life as usual soon enough.

In November 2022, the manuscript was sent for legal review by Farrah and Micaela at Prosper Law. It came back with a thorough analysis of the risks from high to low that I had to consider. We agreed on actions and edits that were necessary to reduce risk to very low; whilst protecting the identity of extended family and my loved ones. I didn’t need to name my abuser brother to write and share this story.

In the weeks before Christmas 2022, I clicked find and replace all, and made all the recommended changes. I wanted the manuscript to leave my desk before we ticked over into 2023, so by Christmas 2022 it was time to click ‘save’ on my Mac for the last time and send the draft to Stellar Words ready for them to wave their magic wand and turn it into a read-worthy production.

I recall in a Zoom chat with Matt in January 2023, I responded to his question about deadlines, that I’d like to have it published by the start of February. He smiled, nodded and said:

Yes we all have dreams, six weeks is possible, we can aim for that if you’re prepared to work (homework once again!). 

Around all else that went on in my family’s life, Matt and I worked weekly with reshaping, rewriting and deleting a whole lot of content to make the book read-worthy with less words. That’s apparently part of the magic a professional editor knows about. Expand, contract, expand again. Then there were machete edits removing content not needed to tell the story. In the end, it is about being considerate of the reader’s journey.

The six week timeline was scrapped.

Between February and April 2023, Matt was sending the drafts away to Leigh, for her vetting, feedback and proofreading. Leigh marked up the copy with tonnes of recommendations, questioning how sentences were written. She challenged whether words used would be misconstrued or if they sounded flippant or appropriate. I respected all the critiquing. Then I stopped looking at their marked up copies going back and forth – it was an overwhelming process to watch.

Resolve is approximately a 90,000 word count. I estimate it has had one million or more words flow across its pages over the past four years. A lot of those words ended up benefiting me in my healing. I evolved and healed and the book also evolved and became stronger.

The next milestone was saying YES we are done with the editing process. FINITO!

In April 2023 I sent away the manuscript to Nada Backovic, the book’s designer. She started type-setting “the first pages”, that I was to proofread and mark up. I had no budget left for proofreading from anyone.

Nada had already created the beautiful front cover based on my vision of:

• how the word RESOLVE needed to depict firm resolve;
• the colours of hope and healing;
• discretion in sharing the subtitle conscious of the reader’s experience; and
• that little bit of sparkly glitter rising to the surface depicting the feelings and possibility that come from creating a life and reconnecting with our true selves, as we walk through the journey of healing.

Nada’s first pages meant the whole manuscript, not only the first pages of the book.

When I’ve said I took one walk back through my experience of sibling sexual abuse, I could say now, it was hundreds of walk-throughs between March 2019 and May 2023. 

On the day that Nada and I came to acknowledging that her fourth pages were beautiful, it gave me goosebumps that I got to send off the email saying YES. We are ready to publish. Another milestone. Matt and key people in my life had helped me find the right words for the back cover and the author’s BIO. It felt so important to ensure every word was the best we could find. The front and back cover were complete.

That was on the 24th of May 2023

The book got uploaded to Ingram Spark. Then on the 1st of June I received a celebratory confirmation email that it was Resolve’s birth date. Wow!

I was busy with creating accounts with GoodReads, Amazon and Kindle, having chosen to also sell directly from Amazon and Kindle, not solely distribute it through Ingram Spark. Then I chose to also make the book available via my website. I created the website and social media accounts and Resolve was listed on the national and Queensland collection. That felt so good!

Whilst all of that was going on I emailed the PDF of the manuscript to people I have great respect for. I feel honoured to have these people give up their valuable time and share their words about RESOLVE.

See some of their words expressed below.

As they read, my inner critic voice tried nagging at me “what if it’s no good…”. I consciously listened to those words and said “no, I know it is going to help someone…”. 

It’s such a vulnerable exercise, all of this, every step.

My publishing journey was a huge learning curve for me. Mistakes were made, changes were needed, some costly. Epiphanies went off like fireworks in my mind, at any time of day or night, as I changed within myself and would slip back into my office, to open up the manuscript and make it feel current and as me being fully me.

Resolve is imperfect and evolutionary, as am I. I blew my budget but it was a project that was to give the best final produced work as I could get, with what I had and the supported offered to me. I am so grateful for the incredible souls who are listed on the Acknowledgement Page of Resolve.

It was a memoir writing journey that I fully embraced and didn’t ever feel like giving up on. Ok, that’s not true. I know that out of fear and tiredness, a few times I asked myself ‘really, are you sure you want your story shared with the world?’ Yes! On I’d go, facing my fear as I went.

The last big hurdle was to speak the story out of my body, not just write it. This mission of mine would not be over until the audiobook was released.

In my heart I didn’t want Young Alice’s story read by an actor.

In July 2023 I turned up to Tom Johnson’s JamPot Studios. I filled him in on the topic he would be listening to me talk about for the next month of 2-hour recording sessions. I’m so glad I had chosen Tom for this recording mission. Lots of pauses were involved with the recording. I had never spoken my whole story out loud until then. It was nerve-wracking to have to narrate at a good pace, consistently. Narrating it took many stop/starts, mopping up of tears and many sips of warm honey water when my throat dried or fatigued.

At the end of most sessions there’d be an appreciated hug from Tom, the recording studio manager. We high-fived and celebrated too as we moved beyond the early hard chapters of Young Alice’s abuse story with Tom saying over the loud speaker between our rooms of the recording studio, ‘see ya Darryl’. We laughed at that – with relief – and continued to work in small chunks of recording all the other chapters.

Now, I’m feeling the ease of life.

All of that is done and I’m chipping away at the self-published promotion work of Resolve. Doing so without urgency and with intelligence and advice from researchers and professionals working in the field of sibling sexual abuse. We celebrated a private launch in September, with everyone in my trusted circle of friends and family who supported me in this writing expedition these past four years. That small celebration was enough for me at the time.

Now it’s 2024 and I’m feeling a sense of clarity, I’ve connected with advocacy and activist organisation leaders, and am scheduled to speak on their podcasts, and have had guest blog spots on their websites. The survivorship community is an incredible loving and compassionate tribe. I am ready to walk beside them and do more.

Sibling sexual abuse isn’t a new thing. Unfortunately it has been happening forever. I know my one shared story will not stop it.

I couldn’t do that alone. My story, in Resolve, will contribute to the bigger movement. Together, we will break the silence. That’s what will help professionals develop frameworks for prevention and strategies to care for survivors who feel so alone.

Resolve is a book written from a place of love. That feels good and like I have fully honoured Young Alice and the woman I have become by committing to the process that I did.

My blog is shared to Goodreads as they are published and are available here at: www.aliceperle.com.au/blog.

With love,

Alice

Resolve: A Story of Courage, Healthy Inquiry and Recovery from Sibling Sexual Abuse is now available globally on Amazon, and all online bookstores. Libraries and bookstores can order copies. Please follow me on Instagram and Facebook. The audiobook is now also available via over 50 audiobook sites.