Eight Years, Two Books, and the Space Between

They say time moves differently when you're deep in the middle of something—grief, joy, life, or writing. For me, the past eight years have been all of those things at once.

It’s strange to look back now and think about the night I won that literary award. The room was bright. My hands were cold. My name echoed off the walls in a way that made it feel not quite real. That moment—sharp, vivid, impossible to forget—felt like a beginning. And it was. But not in the way I expected.

I thought it would be a springboard. That I would ride the momentum and finish another book within a year. Maybe two. I had the stories. I had the drive. I even had outlines, characters, full chapters scribbled across notebooks and cloud drives.

But life doesn’t work like that, does it?

The truth is, the years that followed were filled with everything except writing. Life took the front seat—responsibilities, routines, changes I never saw coming. There were days, weeks, months when opening my manuscript felt too heavy. When storytelling became a quiet ache I didn’t have the time—or space—to answer.

And yet… I never stopped writing.

Not completely. Not really.

Between late nights and early mornings, I built two worlds. Two books, carried quietly like secrets. They’ve been rewritten, abandoned, picked up again, reshaped. One draft bled into the next. Characters aged with me. Dialogues grew sharper, sadder, wiser. These weren’t stories rushed to completion—they were grown, weathered by time. And I think that shows.

Now, after eight years, both of those books are nearly finished.

And I’m not the same writer I was when I won that award.

I’m slower now—but sharper. More patient with my process. More ruthless with my edits. I write less to prove something, and more to understand something. And what I’ve come to understand is this: momentum fades, but the story doesn’t. The story always waits. You just have to come back to it.

So here I am—coming back.

Thank you to those who’ve waited, those who’ve asked, and those who’ve quietly believed I wasn’t done.

You were right.

The stories are ready now. And so am I.

– Reelika